Chicago Had So Much Gun Violence Over the Weekend That One Hospital Stopped Admitting Gun Shot Victims

Screen grab via WGN News.
Chicago gun violence
Screen grab via WGN News.

As Red State‘s Mike Ford wrote yesterday, in addition to the horrific mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH Saturday and Sunday, Chicago also experienced a mass shooting incident – on top of the other gun violence that plagued city streets over the weekend.

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To quickly recap, via NBC 5 Chicago:

Seven people were wounded in a shooting Sunday as they gathered in Douglas Park on the West Side.

At about 1:20 a.m. Sunday, a group was standing in the park in the 2900 block of West Roosevelt Road when someone opened fire from a black Camaro, Chicago police said.

All totaled, 7 people were killed and at least 48 were injured by gun violence in the city of Chicago from Friday night to Sunday:

Chicago’s most violent weekend this year began Friday evening when a 5-year-old boy was shot in the leg while sitting in a car as adults around him argued.

[…]

By Monday morning, 55 people had been shot across the city, seven of them fatally. The victims ranged from 5 to 56 years old, and the shootings stretched from Rogers Park on the North Side to West Pullman on the Far South Side. Nearly all the gun violence happened on the West and South sides.

Watch a short WGN News report on the incidents below:

The week prior, two mothers who worked to rid their communities of gun violence were shot and killed:

Two women involved with a group called Mothers Against Senseless Killings were shot dead Friday on a South Side Chicago block where moms gather to help curb gun violence. Police say they don’t believe the two young mothers were the intended targets.

The deaths of Chantel Grant, 25, and Andrea Stoudemire, 35, in the Englewood neighborhood served as a grim reminder of the kind of violence that led them to participate in neighborhood activities organized by Mothers Against Senseless Killings. The anti-violence group launched five years ago following the shooting death of another young mother at the same corner.

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As it turns out, the gang violence was so bad in Chicago over the weekend that one local hospital had to temporarily stop admitting victims:

Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital temporarily stopped accepting patients Sunday morning because they were at capacity following a series of shootings, a hospital official said.

The hospital went “on bypass” in the early morning, said Roberta Rakove, Senior VP for External Affairs.

Hospitals use the term “on bypass” when they stop accepting ambulance runs and those ambulances are diverted to other trauma centers. Mount Sinai Hospital is one of five trauma centers in Chicago, according to Rakove.

Chicago had 561 gun murders in 2018, which was down about 100 from the year before. In all, the city had 2,948 shooting victims in 2018.

There are two reasons why people point out Chicago’s gun troubles in the aftermath of mass shootings, and it’s not to minimize what happened to victims of those shootings, or to play “whataboutism” games. It’s:

1) To show Democrats and the national media that even with the strong gun control measures a city like Chicago has in place, violent offenders are still illegally obtaining firearms at alarming rates – with no end in sight.

2) To point out to those same people that if they are serious about tackling gun violence, then they will not just virtue signal about it only when they believe there is a political angle they can take advantage of.

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The lives of all victims of gun crime matter, not just the ones liberal politicians and their media enablers believe they can exploit for political gain.

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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –

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