VICTOR JOECKS: The remedy for evil is repentance
Gun control won’t stop evil. Just look at what happened in Chicago.
Over the weekend, 58 people were shot in Chicago. Eight people died. These shootings have received only a tiny fraction of the coverage that last week’s church shooting in Minneapolis did. And much of the coverage revolved around President Donald Trump’s desire to use federal resources to lower crime in Chicago. Absent Trump’s moves, these deaths would likely have received little national attention.
Just consider Chicago’s previous Labor Day weekends. In 2024, Chicago Labor Day shootings killed five and wounded 26. In 2023, the totals were eight dead and 41 injured. In 2022, there were 55 shot, including 11 fatalities.
The question is why the left doesn’t call for gun control in response to these shootings. The obvious answer is that gun control doesn’t work. In 2022, the AP reported, “Gun laws in Chicago and Illinois are strict.” Illinois requires background checks and bans ghost guns. Chicago has also banned some semi-automatic rifles.
If you follow the gun control debate, you probably recognize those proposals as the left’s “solutions” to mass shootings.
But the more interesting question is why these shootings receive so little attention. The first is that Chicago gun crimes complicate the left’s preferred racial narrative.
“Black Chicagoans were over 20 times more likely to become homicide victims during the past 12 months than their white peers,” Illinois Policy reported in 2024.
Just 25 percent of homicides resulted in an arrest. That makes it hard to know the race of the murderers. Unlike what Jussie Smollett may want you to believe, however, these Black Chicagoans aren’t being killed en masse by white MAGA supporters.
Even the most committed CRT adherent would have a hard time explaining how systemic racism causes Black people to murder other Black people.
The second runs even deeper. Shootings this pervasive can’t be explained away by “mental illness,” unless the term is defined so broadly that it loses all meaning. What happened in Chicago and Minneapolis requires a different explanation.
An aside: I don’t usually read other columnists because I want to generate my own ideas. But the work of my colleague Debra Saunders is too terrific to pass up. The headline on her recent column really struck me: “Call the Minnesota Catholic school shooting what it was: Evil.”
Evil is the common thread here. But acknowledging that reveals the inadequacy of the left’s proposed solutions. Gun control makes the debate about objects. Mental illness makes it about a disease.
Those aren’t a remedy for evil. Repentance is.
And now you can see why this solution receives so little attention. Acknowledging the existence of evil implies the existence of moral absolutes. That requires the existence of God. Further, the government can’t repent for you or for a group you belong to. Each individual must acknowledge their own sin and need for a Savior.
This reality is yet another reason to pray after mass shootings.
Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.
