ANDERSONVILLE — Mayor Rahm Emanuel fumed Monday while addressing gun violence that plagued the city this weekend — and left nine people dead and 39 people wounded.
Emanuel repeatedly attacked the "values" of those responsible for the violence during a news conference at Peirce Elementary School in Andersonville Monday afternoon.
"When some people go, 'well, it's the weather,'" Emanuel said, he quickly countered, "It's whether you have values.
"Values do not matter only in warm weather," the mayor said. "They matter every day."
The mayor decried the "senseless, meaningless violence" over the weekend and said simply, "Enough."
Emanuel spoke with barely contained outrage after talking to five mothers whose children were injured in a drive-by shooting Sunday evening. He called it "the hardest part of my job" to call parents whose children have been victims of gunplay.
"Every child deserves a childhood regardless of where they live," Emanuel said, stressing the innocence and optimism of that age. "Too often that innocence and hopefulness is replaced by the familiarity of a gunshot."
Emanuel again blasted the "code of silence" among neighborhood residents that protects shooters, saying, "They have to live by a moral code."
Referring to two recent slayings, Emanuel raged against "the idea that, when you have a disagreement on Facebook, it turns into a homicide," ... a husband comes home, kills a wife."
He cited a new group of police recruits he'd greeted on Monday morning, as well as after-school and summer job programs as evidence of the city's crime-fighting efforts, but added, "We have to do all that and more."
"That's not about policing," Emanuel said, returning to the five children shot in a drive-by Sunday. "That's not about summer jobs. ... It's not only about gun control. It's about when you say, enough is enough, it means it."
