Study: Democratic Chicago Three Times More Dangerous Than Afghan Combat Zone

Many of America’s largest cities are more dangerous for young men than Middle Eastern war zones. According to a study published by the jama Network on December 22, young adult males from the most violent zip codes in Chicago, Illinois, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have a notably higher risk of firearm-related death than did American soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  • This study looked at 129,826 young adults in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and Philadelphia from 2020 to 2021 and found that minority men in Chicago and Philadelphia were at the greatest risk.
  • The worst neighborhoods in Philadelphia were twice as dangerous as Afghanistan, while the worst neighborhoods in Chicago were three times as dangerous.
  • Los Angeles and New York were dangerous but less dangerous than actual theaters of war.

Blue state problems: Heritage Foundation legal fellows Charles Stimson and Zack Smith, along with Heritage chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna, dug into murder rate data and found that of the 30 cities with the highest murder rates, 27 have Democratic mayors. Even in conservative states that voted for Donald Trump, a large portion of the murders occurred in the counties run by Democrats. So contrary to the opinion that racist law enforcement officers are the greatest danger to ethnic minorities, the data indicates that it is the Democrats’ pro-criminal and anti-victim policies that are the problem.

Long-term causes: American political commentator Heather MacDonald, author of The War on Cops, argues that the recent surge of murders is a result of the “the Ferguson effect”—the concept that public hostility toward law enforcement in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014 has caused police officers in minority neighborhoods to back off from interacting with residents when not absolutely necessary.

Former Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. digs deeper and blames government entitlement programs for making his fellow black Americans in America’s inner cities dependent on the state, fueling a breakdown of nuclear families that exacerbates criminal behavior. While one fourth of American children are raised without a father, this figure goes up to half or more in some cities.

Prophecy says: In the Bible, God warns that rebellion against His law produces horrific murders and bloody crimes. An end-time prophecy about the nations of Israel (America, Britain and the Jewish state in the Middle East primarily) states, “Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence” (Ezekiel 7:22-23). There has indeed been a chain of bloody crimes in America. The nation cannot go a single minute, on average, without Americans committing or suffering two violent crimes. It can hardly get through a single day without experiencing another mass shooting.

The eternal, unchanging moral laws revealed in the Holy Bible bring great peace, happiness and true freedom when obeyed. But because society rejects, ignores and mocks these laws, mass shootings and other bloody crimes continue and worsen.

Learn more: Read “The Real Solution to Mass Shootings and Violence.”