The big news out of Chicago, city of my birth and upbringing, is murder. According to a reliable website called HeyJackass!, during 2017, someone in Chicago was shot every 2 hours and 27 minutes and murdered every 12 hours and 59 minutes. There were 679 murders and 2,936 people shot in the city. This, for those who like their deviancy defined down, is an improvement over 2016, when 722 people were murdered and 3,658 shot. The overwhelming preponderance of these people, victims and murderers both, are black, and the crimes committed chiefly in black neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides. Many of the murders were among the sorts of gangs long familiar in Chicago, which over the years has seen the Egyptian Cobras, the Blackstone Rangers, the Disciples, and the Conservative Vice Lords, among many others. According to a 2008 Department of Justice report, something like 100,000 members of up to 75 gangs were operating in the city. Gang involvement in drug trafficking has upped the stakes and intensified the violence in many of the city's black neighborhoods.