While fewer Illinois residents died of gunfire in 2022, longstanding racial disparities among victims remain, according to a new report released Friday.
Bookending the first week of Gun Violence Awareness Month, the report issued by the Violence Policy Center and One Aim Illinois found that nearly 1,800 deaths in Illinois in 2022 were caused by firearms. Of those, 1,091 were homicides and 676 were suicides. The overwhelming majority of homicide victims — 76.4% — were Black, while the lion’s share of suicide victims — 79.9% — were white.
At a press conference Friday morning, Yolanda Androzzo, executive director of One Aim Illinois, said the report’s findings should serve as an “urgent reminder to address gun violence, which continues to devastate our communities, even more so in Black and brown communities.”
Androzzo and others called on the Illinois legislature to pass more “common sense” gun laws to minimize future fatalities.
In analyzing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the report found that, in 2022, “Black Illinois residents were more than 39 times more likely to die by firearm homicide compared to white residents — the Black firearm homicide rate was 47.2 per 100,000 and the white firearm homicide rate was 1.2 per 100,000.”
Androzzo was joined by other gun violence survivors and families of those killed, including Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, mother of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl shot and killed in a South Side park in early 2013 shortly after she performed at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, the mother of Hadiya Pendleton, is seen on Stony Island Avenue in Chicago, outside the site of the proposed Obama Presidential Center, Jan. 27, 2022. When completed, the center is supposed to have a gathering space named the Hadiya Pendleton Winter Garden, in memory of Pendleton, who was shot and killed in Chicago in 2013. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
“When this happened in 2013, a piece of me died, too,” Cowley-Pendleton said. “The issue of gun violence is not small. You’re not a small, minute population of people. It affects everyone. Whether your blood, your family’s blood, has been shed or not there’s a potential for that. And the fact that there’s a potential for it means that something needs to be done.”
Eric Wilkins was paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot 25 years ago. Since then, he founded Broken Winggz, an advocacy group for gun violence survivors.
“My story is a reminder of the lasting impact of gun violence,” Wilkins said. “It’s not just for the immediate victims, but the families are also impacted, and the futures of countless individuals. That’s why advocacy is so crucial. We need to push the policies to prevent these life-altering tragedies.”
