Chicago’s Murder Problem - The New York Times

Sometimes maverick Judge Richard Posner made his own contribution to the Chicago murder mess.  He ruled that the right to carry a gun on the street is unfettered:

"[O]ne doesn't have to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense in the eighteenth century could not rationally have been limited to the home. Suppose one lived in what was then the wild west, the Ohio Valley for example (for until the Louisiana Purchase the Mississippi River was the western boundary of the United States), where there were hostile Indians. One would need from time to time to leave one's home to obtain supplies from the nearest trading post, and en route one would be as much (probably more) at risk if unarmed as one would be in one's home unarmed."

Such thinking has brought us to the current pass: Our personal arsenals are built on a legal foundation devised for a state of war, to protect settlers committed to occupy the lands of an aboriginal people.

Chicago’s Murder Problem - The New York Times
by Ford Fessenden and Haeyoun Park

Guns Are a Key Difference

People who know both cities say there are some significant differences in policing, especially around the issue of guns.

The homicide rate in Chicago is just a little higher than in New York when guns aren’t involved. But when it comes to shootings, both fatal and not, Chicago stands out, suggesting a level of armed interaction that isn’t happening in New York.

Chicago has a reputation for strict gun laws, and gun rights advocates often point to it as proof that gun regulation doesn’t reduce violence. But its laws aren’t what they used to be: Federal courts struck down its ban on handgun ownership in 2010, and its ban on gun sales in 2014. And a New York Times analysis showed guns were easily available from nearby jurisdictions, especially Indiana.