The FBI’s “Crime in the United States” report shows violent crime rose in the United States in 2016 and the Chicago Tribune reports that a large portion of the elevated crime numbers came as a result of murder in the Windy City.
Moreover, the Tribune reminded readers that President Trump was criticized when he warned about an uptick in violent crime while on the campaign trail in 2016. Pundits and naysayers pointed to a decline in violent crime over the past 25 years as a way of disproving Trump, but those critics failed to take into account the way Democrat-controlled cities—like Chicago—were driving overall crime numbers higher and higher.
In fact, the Tribune pointed to a Brennan Center for Justice study which showed that “Chicago [accounted] for more than a fifth of the nationwide murder increase last year.”
The crime figures are based on instances of “murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.” The FBI’s “Crime in the United States” shows that Chicago homicides came in at 765 for 2016. There were between 800 and 1,600 rapes—approximately, depending on which definition the FBI uses—and over 15,000 aggravated assaults.
On December 21, 2016, Breitbart News reported that crime in Chicago was so high that would skew national reports for 2016. The Washington Post noted that the Brennan Center of Justice expected “the homicide rate for the country’s 30 biggest cities … to go up by 14 percent.” At that point in the year, the Brennan Center showed that Chicago, by itself, accounted for over two-fifths of the murders throughout the country.
ABC News ran an interview with President Trump on January 25, and the Wall Street Journal quoted from the interview, noting that Trump compared Chicago to a “war zone.” Trump actually suggested Chicago is worse than some of the areas where our troops are currently deployed, saying, “Afghanistan is not like what’s happening in Chicago.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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