Gunfire was heard throughout the Christmas weekend in Chicago, continuing a trend that has shocked the nation.

While other big cities have also seen a rise in homicides, the number of gun violence victims in Chicago hasn't been seen in decades.

Over the last three days, 11 Chicagoans have lost their lives, and another 50 have been wounded.

Chicago Tribune:

Seventeen people have been wounded in shootings since Monday morning, including a 14-year-old girl in critical condition after a shooting in Gresham.

She was among 61 people shot since Christmas weekend began on Friday afternoon, according to data kept by the Tribune.

The 14-year-old was with a 13-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy in a van outside Leland Giants Park just after 11:30 p.m. The 13-year-old's father had just left the van to speak with someone in a nearby house when two people came up and fired shots into the vehicle, police said.

The 14-year-old was shot in the back and went to Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition. The 13-year-old was grazed in the arm and taken to Saint Bernard Hospital in good condition. The 2-year-old was unharmed, police said.

Eleven of the 60 people shot over the weekend died from their wounds. More than a dozen others were listed in serious or critical condition. 

[...]

The mass shooting in East Chatham overnight, and the others on Christmas, added to the tolls this year in Chicago, where more than 700 homicides have been recorded with more than 4,000 people shot -- a level of violence not seen in Chicago since the late 1990s, according to Tribune and police data. Last year, 488 people were killed in Chicago.

Authorities continue to blame "gang violence" for the shootings:

Guglielmi said most of the attacks were targeted attacks by gangs against potential rivals who were at holiday gatherings. That only brought on retaliatory gun violence. In response, police adjusted their assignments as needed and seized 45 guns from areas with a heavy presence of gangs, Guglielmi said. 

"While we have promising leads, this unacceptable level of gun violence demonstrates the clear and present need for policy makers to convene in January and give Chicago the gun sentencing tools against repeat offenders so that we can adequately hold people accountable," he said. 

While gang violence may be the reason the bullets are flying, it is apparent from the statement above that Chicago law enforcement authorities and political leaders have learned absolutely nothing.

Chicago already has some of the most restrictive, draconian anti-gun laws of any major city in the nation.  But these anti-gun statutes do not target criminals who have ridiculously easy access to illegal firearms.  By definition, criminals don't care about the law and therefore are not deterred by a few extra years added on to their sentence for owning a gun illegally.

In fact, the laws on the books against gun ownership are obeyed only by law-abiding citizens, who must jump through hoops in order to legally own a gun.  For city fathers to consider more restrictions on gun ownership would prove that the politicians meet the criterion for insanity: doing the same thing over and over while getting the same result.

In the case of Chicago gun violence, that result continues to break records for the slaughter of innocents.