Following the nearly 4,400 shootings that marred Chicago’s 2016, hopes were high that 2017 would be different. But as of January 4, a total of 54 people had already been shot in Chicago during the new year.

Moreover, on January 3 — just three days into the new year — 12 people were shot in 13 hours in gun-controlled Chicago.

According to the Chicago Tribune, there were 54 shooting victims between January 1, 2017, through January 4, 2017. Of those, seven were shot fatally.

Two of those fatalities occurred around noon Tuesday when the Tribune reports that 16-year-old Malik McNeese and a 17-year-old Stevie Jefferson were shot and killed. Both boys were on a sidewalk “in the 3400 block of West Fulton Boulevard” when a “black SUV” rolled up and someone in the vehicle opened fire. A 65-year-old woman was also struck by the gunfire too, but she is expected to survive.

Twenty-three-year-old Simmison McGruder was also shot to death on Tuesday. He was “in the 3200 block of West Lexington Street, just down the street from the Harrison District police station” when he was killed shortly after 11 pm.

During the January 3 airing of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’s (CSGV) Joshua Horowitz refused to admit that the carnage and bloodshed in Chicago prove the failure of gun control. Instead, he said of CSGV, “We really believe the evidence is showing that, in fact, a group of gun violence prevention laws, in fact, do lower the homicide rate.”

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.