Mass Shooting in Chicago

[Content Note: Guns; violence; racism.]

Last night, 13 people were shot in a park on Chicago's South Side. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but a three-year-old boy who was shot in the head remains in critical condition at a local hospital.

[A] total of 13 people were shot, the boy, two teens, and 10 adults, with the boy the most seriously wounded. The boy suffered a gunshot wound to the head at an ear that exited through his mouth, and was in critical condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, police said.

Four adults are in serious condition. No suspects are in custody.

The little boy who was shot, Deonta' Howard, lost his uncle to gun violence in the Labor Day shootings in Chicago, during which eight people were killed at least 20 more injured.

This story is, so far, not getting quite the same level of media attention as most mass shootings. Currently, NBC News is featuring it as a secondary headline, next to multiple stories and a giant slideshow about the new iPhone, including images of people cheering about their new phone:


That about sums it up.
(Note: The source of NBC's accompanying grainy photo of a black, tattooed man in a tanktop is a mystery; it is not a still from the video at the story link that I could find, so I've no idea who that guy is. But the shooter is not known, so if he is indeed someone related to this shooting, he's a survivor of it. ETA: He is an investigating police officer.)

This media deprioritization of another mass shooting is partly because murder by gun violence has become so routine on Chicago's South Side that a mass shooting is barely newsworthy. It's partly because the victims are black. And it's partly because:

Chicago police were making no information about what happened public, except to say that the shooting appeared to be gang-related.

Which makes it easily dismissed out of hand with racist stereotypes about violent thugs, and impossible to frame as the work of a crazy lone gunman with a suspicious religious affiliation. This shit is about guns, and access to them.

And poverty. And institutional neglect. And a lot of stuff that makes Chicago two different cities north and south of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Stuff that we bury behind ten metric fucktons of vile public commentary about bootstraps and welfare queens.

Chicago had more homicides than any other US city last year. Our President's hometown. Thirteen people were shot in one incident last night. Thirteen people. Across the city, there were twenty-three shootings last night, and two people died.

I desperately hope the survivors get the care and support that they need. I hope they get justice.

I hope their country gives a fuck about them.

[H/T to Jordan. Related Reading: These Chicagoans Matter, Too.]