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Trump's Chicago Shooting Stats Actually Low: 2,223 Shot This Year Already

By Alex Nitkin | July 21, 2016 9:40pm
 Chicago has become Trump's go-to example of crime and gun control run amok.
Chicago has become Trump's go-to example of crime and gun control run amok.
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Flikr/Gage Skidmore

CHICAGO — Donald Trump has used a lot of statistics in campaign speeches — and some of them have been way off. But while accepting the Republican nomination for president Thursday, he was pretty close when it comes to Chicago's gun violence problem. 

"In the President’s hometown of Chicago, more than 2,000 have been the victims of shootings this year alone," he told the crowd at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. "And almost 4,000 have been killed in the Chicago area since he took office.” 

Actually, his numbers are low. 

According to DNAinfo records, as of Thursday morning, 2,223 people had been shot around the city since midnight on Jan. 1, stemming from 1,817 separate shooting incidents. Of those, 319 were killed.

Trump's also not far off when it comes to total murders since 2009; his claim of "almost 4,000 killed" was more accurate than his guess at an Indiana rally last Tuesday, where he asserted that there had been, "since President Obama became president, almost 5,000 killings in Chicago."

Trump has had a contentious relationship with the city: He's repeatedly criticized the city and its gun control laws, but activists have said he doesn't care about Chicago and a rally for him was canceled in mid-March as protesters spoke out against him.