The horror of 13 people being shot during a memorial service is self-evident, but it is being compounded by a refusal to acknowledge the underlying reality and instead blaming guns, the inanimate objects that were used as tools of horror.

Chicago's Englewood neighborhood is used to shootings, but the massacre that occurred yesterday in the early morning has received national publicity and evoked a strong response from Chicago's mayor Lori Lightfoot and the governor of Illinois, Jay Pritzker.

Our hearts are with the 13 individuals whose lives were significantly harmed after gunmen opened fire at a memorial gathering last night.

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) December 22, 2019

I’m outraged and devastated by last night’s shooting. Our communities and our children should not have to endure these unspeakable tragedies and my heart goes out to the people of Englewood.

— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) December 22, 2019

Consider this headline in Vox: "Two gunmen wound 13 at a Chicago house party honoring a gun violence victim."  The website, which considers its mission to be educating younger readers, goes on to blame two factors:

First, America has uniquely weak gun laws. (snip)

Second, the US has a ton of guns. 

Chicago and Illinois have among the strictest gun laws in the nation, of course.  And there are many parts of the nation where gun ownership is high and violence very low.

But to really understand the depth of Vox's propaganda (and that of many other media outlets), consider who the "gun violence victim" that was being honored was: a carjacker who was killed as he was committing his violent crime.  Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas reported on his death for the Chicago Tribune last April:

A man who fatally shot a would-be carjacker in the Loop has been cleared through investigation and will not be charged with a crime, Chicago police said Sunday morning.

In a shooting around 3:15 a.m. on Friday, a 41-year-old concealed carry license holder drew his own weapon after being confronted with a gun near the intersection of State Street and Ida B. Wells Drive, police said. He was in his 2015 BMW when he was rear-ended by a 22-year-old man in a 2019 Volkswagen, according to officials.

When the man in the BMW got out to check the damage to his vehicle, police have said, the other driver pulled a weapon, announced a carjacking, demanded the man's keys and shoved the man into the BMW, where he was able to retrieve his own gun from an area on the passenger side of the car and fatally shoot the man in the head. The man who was fatally shot was identified as Lonell Irvin, 22, of the 5700 block of May Street, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Irvin was a gun violence perp before his ineptness made him lose his life to an honest citizen who was defending himself against Irvin's armed assault.  By this standard, Mussolini is best understood as a victim of mob violence.

That such a man as Irvin was being honored suggest a deep problem with the local culture in Englewood, one that explains "gun violence" far more meaningfully than any statistics on gun ownership.

Second City Cop, a cop blog in Chicago, sums up the message minus the hypocrisy:

This is the type of person that is celebrated in Englewood?

• "It's so real, that lack of caring for life," [Terence] Daniely said. "It's reckless, just reckless. How does it continually happen? When is it going to stop?"

Well, you could stop having parties for dead carjackers — that might be a start.

Photo credit: Chicago 7 screen grab.

Hat tip: Peter von Buol.