Argument: Gun control doesn't reduce gun violence because if it did, Chicago's strict gun laws would make it very safe relative to other large US cities. Instead, Chicago/another large city (e.g. Washington, DC) has an especially big problem with gun violence compared to other cities.
Example: "So far in Chicago, where Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff for Barack Obama, is mayor, there have been 519 murders this year...In 2015, 2,988 people were victims of gun violence, according to records kept by The Chicago Tribune....Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, right up there with New York and Los Angeles" (the Daily Wire).
Example #2: "Chicago, run by liberals, liberals who are very likely protected by their tax-paid armed security details, is one of the nation’s riskiest places to live in terms of avoiding gunshot wounds. And yet, it has some of the toughest gun control laws" (the Washington Times).
Response:
Chicago's gun control laws are not the strictest in the United States, nor are Illinois' the strictest of any state in the U.S. (Politifact 2017). San Francisco, for example, has a safe-storage law, which Chicago does not have. This argument also ignores the well-documented ability of states with weak gun laws to influence rates of gun violence in nearby states with stricter laws (NPR 2017).
Claims about Chicago being the "murder capital" of America do not stand up to scrutiny either. For example, Chicago's homicide rate is the 8th highest of any U.S. city (The Trace 2017). The number of homicides there has been increasing in recent years, but the rate is still much lower than it was in the 1990s (Quartz 2017, FiveThirtyEight 2017).
Sources:
FiveThirtyEight 2017: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/chicagos-murder-rate-is-rising-but-it-isnt-unprecedented/
NPR 2017: https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555580598/fact-check-is-chicago-proof-that-gun-laws-don-t-work
Politifact 2017: http://www.politifact.com/illinois/statements/2017/oct/03/sarah-huckabee-sanders/chicago-toughest-gun-control-claim-shot-full-holes/
Quartz 2017: https://qz.com/1086403/fbi-crime-statistics-us-murders-were-up-in-2016-and-chicago-had-a-lot-to-do-with-it/
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