A Glock used in five shootings that killed two people sits at the Homan Square police facility June 9, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
One gun's journey — 42 bullets fired, 2 killed, 5 wounded
Gun Stolen from legal owner...
The story of the Glock's journey from safe to shoebox comes at a tumultuous time for Chicago as homicides spike to levels unseen in the city for two decades. Chicago police say the proliferation of guns plays a key role in the seemingly endless cycle of violence, particularly in impoverished pockets of the South and West sides.
As police battle the glut of firearms, the Glock illustrates the devastation — both human and financial — that a single gun can leave behind.
The Glock was what police call a gang gun, passed among its members as needed. Its devastation — unusual for one firearm in a year's time — was spread over a significant stretch of the South Side.
Guns get to Chicago in many ways.
In so-called straw purchases, those with a firearm owner's identification card can carve out a niche business buying guns in Illinois for felons barred from owning weapons because of their criminal records. Another option lies a few miles away over the border in Indiana, where gun shows require no background checks.
A study in 2015 by the University of Chicago Crime Lab found 60 percent of the newer guns recovered from gang members had come from out of state — half of those from Indiana. In separate interviews done at Cook County Jail, gun offenders said gangs sometimes tapped members to make buying trips.
"All they need is one person who got a gun card in the 'hood and everybody got (a gun)," the study quoted one inmate as saying.
For now, the Glock's journey has ended at the Homan Square police facility on the city's West Side. Sealed in a Manila envelope, it is stored on a metal shelf in the department's mammoth gun vault, a secure, fenced-in area that includes tens of thousands of guns taken off the street by police over the years.
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