After the weekend Chicago had, Mayor Richard M. Daley shouldn't have to defend the city's ban on handguns.

The figures coming out of Chicago sound like a report of casualties for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over a 48-hour span, 54 people were shot and 10 of those died. That's an average of more than a shooting an hour. Someone was murdered every 4.8 hours on average on the city's streets. On Saturday alone, 22 people were shot.

The last two victims were two young men between the ages of 16 and 20, who were found lying naked and face down near some railroad tracks.

The shootings touched every age demographic, from a 1-year-old girl grazed in the neck by a bullet to a 16-year-old girl who was critically injured when shots were fired on the street. A 19-year-old man was shot after being approached by a gunman on the streets, and a 45-year-old was killed in what police believe was a gang-related killing.

"Look at all the guns that shot people this weekend. Where did they come from? That is the issue," Daley said at a South Side high school Tuesday.



The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on Chicago's handgun ban shortly. Even if the city loses, Daley said it will look for other ways to limit guns within its borders. The Chicago ban, in effect since 2008, has withstood challenges even as other cities, such as Washington, D.C., had their own handgun ban struck down.

Daley is on the right track: The government must do something about the accessibility of guns in this country. It doesn't make sense that we are one of the most heavily armed nations in the world. If we didn't produce so many guns, there would be fewer in the hands of criminals.

Researchers estimated that 41 percent of gun-related deaths would not have happened if the circumstances were the same and no one had a gun. Almost 100,000 people are shot per year in this country, and about 85 people per day are killed as a result of gun violence.

The majority of these shootings were black-on-black. Daley said that 75 percent of the shootings over the weekend were by people who knew one another.

Beatrice Sumlin, who is raising her children on the city's South Side and said she knows lots of kids joined gangs, agreed with the mayor on the danger of family and friends hurting one another.

"People get in heated arguments, drinking and what have you," Sumlin, 70, told the AP.

We are killing one another for reasons that can't ever make sense. Shooting someone over a petty dispute or in the course of a robbery is outrageous. Killing over drugs or money is simply a form of self-genocide. We need to put the weapons down.

Similarly shocking statistics can be found in cities across America, including Newark, N.J, Baltimore and Oakland, Calif. President Barack Obama, who calls Chicago home, should step up and expend some political capital on this issue. Otherwise, it's going to be a long, hot and deadly summer.