While many in the nation celebrated peace and love over the holiday weekend, in the major metropolitan location of Chicago, Illinois, a record-breaking 57 incidences of gun violence rang out over the four days, killing at least 12.
During the same period last year – Friday to Monday of Christmas – just 30 shootings occurred in Chicago, with six murdered.
The cause for such high volume gun violence is multi-faceted, with trauma and violence spurring even more of the same. The violence began on Friday evening when five teenagers were shot in the same vicinity in South Austin. All survived, but many others did not.
Susan Johnson, who runs a city organization, Chicago Survivors, which focuses on the trauma of gun violence, said that the city is “traumatized.”
According to Johnson, many of Chicago’s residents act out because their society has taught them to respond violently to perceived slights “as a result of living in trauma and in violence.”
The Chicago Police Superintendent set out to tell the city and nation at-large in a press conference held on Monday that this volume of violent crime should never be normalized.
“[A]nyone thinks this is okay or it’s normal, then you’re wrong, because it’s not okay and it’s not normal.”
