The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Violent Chaos in Chicago and … Alabama?

Posted on | April 16, 2023 | Comments Off on Violent Chaos in Chicago and … Alabama?

First, the “teenager” problem in Chicago:

Hundreds of teenagers flooded into Downtown Chicago on Saturday night, smashing car windows, trying to get into Millennium Park, and prompting a major police response. At least one person in a car was attacked.
Shots were fired near the corner of Madison and Michigan, and FOX 32 Chicago decided that it was unsafe to keep our news crew on the scene.
Two teens were wounded by gunfire in the crowds in the first block of East Washington Street. A 16 and 17-year-old boy were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fair condition with gunshot wounds. . . .
A woman whose car was smashed by people jumping on the windshield said her husband was beaten as he sat in the driver’s seat. He’s been taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. . . .
Video posted on social media shows people standing on top of a CTA bus and dancing. The CTA said that some service through the downtown area was disrupted on Saturday night because of police activity.
This is the second time this weekend that a group of rowdy teenagers has prompted a police response. On Friday night, hundreds of kids went to 31st Avenue Beach, and a 14-year-old was shot.

What do we know about these “rowdy teenagers” — something everybody knows, without even having to watch the videos — that the media aren’t reporting? While you ponder that mystery, let’s turn our attention to a town of about 3,000 people in southeastern Alabama:

Four people are dead and as many as 20 reportedly injured following a shooting at a birthday party in Dadeville Saturday night, according to multiple reports.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency reported that at 11:45 p.m. Saturday special agents launched an investigation at the request of the Dadeville police chief.
The shooting occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. near the 200 Block of Broadnax Street in Dadeville.
“Currently, there have been four confirmed fatalities and multiple injuries,” an ALEA press release stated. “Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.”
The county coroner declined to comment when reached by AL.com this morning.
The Alexander City Outlook is reporting the shooting happened at Mahogany’s Masterpiece dance studio, in a converted bank, on North Broadnax Street in Dadeville, a town of about 3,000 in Tallapoosa County.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is handling the investigation but has not yet released any details. Crime scene tape flapped in the wind outside the venue this morning as people waited for more details.
WRBL of Columbus, Ga., reported more than 20 people were shot and transported to local hospitals, citing law enforcement sources.
The gathering was a Sweet 16 Birthday celebration, and most of those injured are teenagers.

For many years, I have criticized the news media for their use of what I call The Atrocity Narrative method of propaganda:

In a populous nation . . . it is always possible to find a few examples of almost any phenomenon. Police brutality, for example. From time to time, innocent people are killed by police and, if the media are willing to be manipulated by activists, you get protest movements like “Black Lives Matter” promoting the idea that such killings are so routine as to constitute a crisis. Heather Mac Donald has pointed out that a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than the other way around, but during the height of the “Black Lives Matter” riots, a counterfactual narrative was promoted by CNN and other liberal media, inciting a paranoid anti-police rage.

The media’s selectivity in the determination of what constitutes a story of national importance can produce a warped perspective, where 24/7 cable TV coverage is devoted to events that are statistical anomalies, presented as a “crisis” that demands an emotion-driven political response.

Because so much of what people know (or think they know) about the world is derived from media, the willingness of journalists to engage in systematic distortion of reality is harmful to society in many ways, not least of which is its impact on politics. Why are some “mass shootings” more important than others? Why do some “mass shootings” generate media coverage that focuses on the identity and motive of the killer, while others are presented as arguments for gun control? And why are some massacres treated as strictly “local news,” undeserving of national media attention? Americans need to think critically about this:

Crime is a people problem. If you understand nothing else about crime, you must understand this — crime is committed by people. It is not committed by inanimate objects, and while data on criminal activity can be charted as a trend over time, trends don’t commit crimes, people do. There is a word for people who commit crimes; we call these people “criminals” and, if anyone is interested in investigating trends, one trend is fairly consistent — most violent criminals are repeat offenders, and will not stop this behavioral pattern unless they are locked up in prison.
Keep all these facts in mind the next time you hear Democrats or the news media (but I repeat myself) discussing “gun violence” as an issue. Democrats do not want to discuss crime as a people problem, but rather as a gun problem, because (a) most gun owners are Republicans and (b) most criminals are Democrats. Or, that is to say, the violent crime problem in America is largely concentrated in urban areas where Democrats get the majority of the vote. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.



 

 

Category: American Spectator, Crime

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