They were eating dinner when the shooting started.
That’s a pretty American sentence, when you think about it.
Shootings just happen in this country. During dinner. During mass. During parties and picnics. On shopping trips. At class. In movie theaters.
Four people were eating dinner Saturday night in a condo on Chicago’s Northwest Side when a 66-year-old neighbor came in and opened fire.
The man, who police say had a history of confrontations with the building’s residents, left the first condo and went to another where he shot a 53-year-old woman.
All five victims, three men and two women, are dead. The alleged shooter, Krysztof Marek, was charged Monday morning with five felony counts of first-degree murder. And other neighbors in the condo complex are, of course, shaken.
Bill Popper, 67, has lived there for five years. He told the Tribune he’s scared. And he summed up the tragedy in a way that struck me: “That’s Chicago.”
With respect to Mr. Popper, that’s incorrect. Saturday’s mass shooting isn’t a Chicago thing, it’s a uniquely American thing.
The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that tracks gun violence across the country, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are either killed or injured.
By that metric, on the same day as Chicago’s condo shooting, there were four other mass shootings in the country: one killed, three injured in Baltimore; six injured in Eastpointe, Michigan; one killed, three injured in Philadelphia; and four killed, three injured in Brooklyn.
The Chicago victims are: a 66-year-old woman; a 61-year-old man; a woman in her late 30s; a man in his late 40s; and the 53-year-old woman.
On a street in Baltimore, a 20-year-old man died and three men — 18, 22 and 23 — were injured.
Outside a bar in Eastpointe, Michigan, a 34-year-old man was shot in the head and five other customers were injured. The man was hospitalized in “very critical condition.”
In Philadelphia, two gunmen, one who police believe was using a military-style rifle, shot four people. One, a 22 year old, was struck in the stomach and died in the hospital. One of those injured was a teenager.
Four men were shot dead at a Brooklyn gambling club and three others were injured and hospitalized.
That was just Saturday. Ten dead, 16 injured. And that’s only shootings that involved four injuries or fatalities.
So you can’t look at the mass shooting in Chicago’s Dunning neighborhood and say, “That’s Chicago.”
Because it’s everywhere.
According to the Gun Violence Archive’s data, there have been 16 mass shootings in America this month. In Missouri, North Carolina, Kansas, Massachusetts, Colorado, Florida and the other states already mentioned. Twenty five dead, 55 injured.
It’s only the middle of the month.
In September, there were 37 mass shootings that left 46 dead and 117 injured. They happened in Ohio, Alabama, California, Wyoming, Louisiana, Connecticut, New Mexico and many of the states already mentioned. And again, those are only shootings in which at least four people are killed or injured.
Chicago has a massive violence problem, obviously. People are gunned down on our streets almost daily. The weekend death toll can be numbing.
But given the city’s size, we’re not statistically the most violent city in the country, not even close.
The broader problem is that we’re a violent country, and when you couple that with an insane supply of firearms, you get mass shootings — everywhere.
Four people shot to death while eating dinner in their condo and a fifth gunned down in a neighboring unit by a Chicago man police say had a valid firearm owner identification card? That’s not Chicago. That’s America.
And that’s the issue people seem unwilling to accept. Chicago is an easy bag to punch when politicians want to decry the “failure of Democrat-run cities” or make dishonest claims about tougher gun laws not working. And mass shootings like the one in Dunning make good leverage for NRA-backed politicians who want to lay the blame on mental health while never doing a thing to increase access to mental health care.
But it’s not just Chicago. It’s not just Democrat-run cities. It’s everywhere. And if it hasn’t visited your town or city or neighborhood directly, it will soon enough. At the school or around the dinner table, in the shopping mall or on the street, in the church or at the movie theater.
This is a national problem. It involves mental health, repeat gun offenders, assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines no civilian should ever need and the endless flow of guns from states with lax purchasing requirements into American cities like Chicago.
A national problem requires a comprehensive solution. It requires a recognition of what’s happening and a willingness to cooperate. It requires more than the feckless repetition of liberal or conservative talking points, which at this juncture is all we’ve got.
Chicago is a violent city that has struggled for decades on end with its own inability or unwillingness to address the problems that lead some to kill with ease.
But the mass shooting in Dunning, the senseless slaughter of five people by one man with a gun, is not Chicago.
It’s America. The sooner people grasp that and demand better, the better chance we all have of surviving.
rhuppke@chicagotribune.com
