Murder in Chicago
Quantifying the savagery of a major U.S. city.
Listening to the overfed Governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, talk tough about “defending Chicago” from President Trump’s national guard initiative made me wonder about how the number of murders per annum in Chicago—a city of 2.72 million—compares to the number of murders per annum in Austria, a nation of nine million.
I selected Austria because I lived in the country for many years and enjoyed the tranquillity of its cities in which one rarely if ever sees any aggressive behavior of any kind. The country encompasses the large city of Vienna and the relatively small cities of Graz, Linz, and Salzburg.
I found the following graph published by the Illinois Policy website.
While murder in Chicago is down to its 2018 level, the number of aggravated assaults is at a 20-year high. The definition of aggravated assault differs from murder in that it does not result in the victim’s death. However, injuries from aggravated assault can be devastating, with lifelong sequelae.
I then found the following graph of murders in Austria during the forty-eight years between 1970-2018. The 2000s, when I lived in Vienna, was an especially happy time, with less than 30 murders per year in the entire country.
Much of Chicago is a violent dump and Pritzger should be ashamed of himself for defending such a savage state of affairs.