A 4-year-old girl was shot in the hand Wednesday morning on Chicago's South Side — and the man charged was already a convicted felon with an active order of protection against him, meaning he had no legal right to possess a firearm in the first place.
Patrick Wallace, 30, was charged with possessing a weapon as a felon, endangering a child, and violating an order of protection, according to Chicago police. The shooting happened around 9:05 a.m. on the 8200 block of South Hermitage Avenue in Auburn Gresham. The girl was taken to Comer Children's Hospital in good condition. Wallace is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported the bare facts — the charges, the location, the child's condition — but offered no examination of why a convicted felon with a protection order against him was free and armed in the first place. That question is the entire story.
This isn't a gun problem. It's a civilization problem. Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Felons can't possess firearms. Orders of protection carry legal weight. None of it stopped Wallace from getting a weapon and putting a bullet near a toddler. The laws were already on the books. The system simply failed to enforce them before a child paid the price.
The pattern repeats. In Westfield, Massachusetts, MassLive reported that Mark M. Rudy, 54, was ordered held without bail after shooting a man 14 times with a CO2-powered air rifle. Rudy had an active restraining order filed by his ex-girlfriend requiring him to surrender all firearms and ammunition. He told officers he had turned in his guns — but not the ammunition. Police found loose ammo, Tannerite explosives mixed and ready to use, seven boxes of marijuana, illegal fireworks, and the air rifle in the apartment he was squatting in. He now faces seven charges, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, possession of explosives, and violating the restraining order.
Two cities, two men prohibited from possessing weapons, two violent incidents that happened anyway. In both cases, the legal mechanisms designed to prevent exactly this outcome — felon-in-possession laws, restraining orders, surrender requirements — existed on paper and failed in practice.
The establishment press will report the charges and move on. Democratic officials in Chicago and elsewhere will call for more laws, more restrictions on the law-abiding, more curbs on the people who actually follow the rules. They will not explain why the rules already written meant nothing to Patrick Wallace or Mark Rudy. They will not confront the decades of progressive social policy that have hollowed out the communities where these shootings happen with predictable regularity.
A 4-year-old in Auburn Gresham is the latest evidence. She survived. The next one might not.
