Chicago Violence Creates Problems for Obama...Again

The violence that plagues Chicago is having a negative effect on the city's native son:

At least 47 school-age children in Chicago have been killed in homicides, mostly by guns, since the month President Barack Obama took office.

The latest youth homicide in his adopted hometown was different only in that the attackers used splintered railroad ties and were captured on video broadcast globally.

The Sept. 24 attack prompted Obama to send his attorney general and education secretary to Chicago today after the killing tarnished the city’s drive to win the 2016 Olympics.

“The savage beating of Derrion Albert, recycled on television, embarrassed Chicago and the nation,” said the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a civil-rights activist and founder of the RainbowPUSH Coalition. “You can’t ignore the case.”

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plan to appear at City Hall with Mayor Richard Daley in what the Obama administration described as a search for solutions to youth crime. They also will meet privately with students and parents.

Chicago’s violence has long burdened Obama’s political career, including the embarrassment of a missed vote as a state senator that hurt his 2000 bid for Congress. Duncan, 44, a Chicago native and Obama friend, admits to “total failure” in curbing violence during his seven years as chief of the nation’s third-largest school system, which serves more than 400,000 students, 85 percent of them living below the poverty line.

Some gun-control advocates question the administration’s timing as Duncan and Holder arrive after a highly publicized beating that didn’t involve a gun.

Missed Opportunities

“Where there have been opportunities for the president to speak out about the issue of firearm violence, he has missed any number of opportunities,” said Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

Doing so in the Albert case “provides the cover” to address youth violence without confronting the gun lobby, said Mannard, whose group’s board of directors included Duncan until he left for his current post.

What about the railroad tie lobby? Aren't they going to condemn the violence too?

Drudge beat the drum of Chicago violence mercilessly in the days before the failed Chicago Olympic bid and that may have made Obama's trip a fool's errand.

And this isn't the first time Chicago's violence has hurt Obama politically:

One of Obama’s first high-profile brushes with the anguish associated with gun violence came amid his unsuccessful primary campaign for Congress against Representative Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther.

Rush’s son was shot in October 1999 and died four days later, producing an outpouring of support for the incumbent.

You can read the entire article are not learn that Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country...but those laws are failing miserably. Keeping guns out of the hands of the law abiding citizens of Chicago has not made the city a safer place, it has done the opposite. And if there's one thing the Derrion Albert case proves if evil people want to commit murder they'll find a way, even if guns aren't readily available.

Chicago doesn't have a gun problem, they have a people problem.