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Trillions of dollars of federal COVID-19 relief checks have been sent out across the country to help people buy food and pay rent. In Chicago, they’re also helping to fuel gun sales — legally and illegally.

That’s according to authorities on the subject — including a 25-year-old convicted felon in West Garfield Park who says he spent some of his coronavirus stimulus money to buy a gun on the street.

“You gotta do what you gotta do to stay safe out here,” said the man, speaking on the condition his name not be used.

Law enforcement officials say they’re been building cases against people who have used their pandemic-relief checks to buy guns and illegally resell them on the street.

Law-abiding people are buying guns with their relief checks, too.

“It’s a concern,” said Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, a not-for-profit agency whose mission includes mediating conflicts on the West Side and Southwest Side in an effort to avoid violence.

Tio Hardiman, executive director of Violence Interrupters, a not-for-profit Chicago peace initiative, said the two first rounds of federal relief checks have helped fuel a hot market for guns in low-income neighborhoods in Chicago.

“Yes, people are using money they are receiving from COVID-19 resources to buy firearms,” Hardiman said, describing illegal gun possession as out of control. “We hear stories about people selling semi-automatics out of shopping bags these days.”

Though guns have been easy to pick up illegally in Chicago for decades, Hardiman and others say that fears over the huge rise in violence that Chicago has seen over the past year are leading to an even wider proliferation of firearms that’s being seen citywide.

Last year, the number of killings in Chicago was up 55% over the previous year. And the numbers are continuing to soar.

Illinois set a record for lawful gun purchases last year. The Illinois State Police reported more than 554,000 gun-transfer inquiries in 2020 compared with 385,000 in 2019.

In Chicago, law enforcement officers, speaking on the condition their names not be used, said they, too, attribute the influx of guns in the city in part to the COVID relief checks that went out over the past year.

AP

The first round provided checks of up to $1,200. The second checks were for up to $600. And the $1.9 trillion relief package approved by Congress last month provides up to $1,400 more per person, with families eligible to receive up to $1,400 for each dependent. The Internal Revenue Service has said most of that latest money was expected to be distributed electronically by this past week.

One law enforcement official said investigators have found that scams involving CARES Act pandemic grants for small businesses to make their payrolls are being used to pay for weapons used in gun-trafficking.

The officials also said law-abiding citizens buying guns at suburban stores have told clerks they’re using “COVID money” from their relief checks to pay for them.

Given the rise in violence, Hardiman said, “A lot of people living in the heart of the city have to protect themselves.”

Gross said “it’s not an irrational decision” for people to buy guns these days– “but we will regret this arms race.”

The huge demand for guns is driving up their price on the street: a Glock pistol that might have sold for $500 a few years ago is now going for more than $700, a law-enforcement source said.

He and Hardiman said law enforcement officials need to do more to crack down on illegal gun-traffickers.

“The ATF and FBI are not doing a good job intercepting the illegal gun trade in Chicago,” Hardiman said.

Gross said law enforcement officials should consider giving people caught with illegal weapons deals in exchange for providing information about where they got them. He even suggested putting the faces of convicted gun traffickers “on a billboard on the highway.”

Gross said the demand for guns is driven by more than just the need for protection. In places where there’s a lack of hope, a gun is a symbol of manhood. The COVID-19 relief checks just make it easier to buy one.

The best way to reduce gun-carrying — and violence — is to provide those same people with job opportunities, Gross said. He said he hopes President Joe Biden’s proposed $2 trillion plan to improve America’s infrastructure will provide some of those needed jobs.

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A person was killed and eight others wounded in shootings Thursday across Chicago.

A 30-year-old man was fatally shot early Thursday in a drive-by at a gas station in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.

He was identified as David Walker of West Englewood by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Someone fired shots from a passing vehicle at the man about 2:15 a.m. as he sat in a parked car at a gas station in the first block of North Kilbourn Avenue, Chicago police said.

Walker was struck in the head and back, and pronounced dead at the scene, police and the medical examiner’s office said.

In nonfatal shootings, a 30-year-old woman was shot Thursday in Humboldt Park on the West Side.

About 1 a.m., she was sitting in a parked vehicle in a vacant lot in the 1000 block of North Avers Avenue, when shots were fired, police said. She was struck in the right leg, left thigh, and brought to Stroger Hospital in fair condition.

A man was in critical condition after a shooting late Thursday morning on Interstate 57 near Halsted Street.

Paramedics responded shortly after 11 a.m. for a shooting victim west of Halsted Street in the inbound lanes, according to Chicago fire spokesman Larry Merritt.

The man, in his 20s, was taken in critical condition to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Merritt said.

Hours later, a man was grazed in a shooting Thursday in Englewood on the South Side.

Someone in a gray-colored vehicle fired shots about 2:35 p.m. toward a gathering in the 7000 block of South Bishop Street, Chicago police said. The man, 34, was grazed on the thigh and brought himself to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition.

Two men were wounded, one critically, in a shooting Thursday evening in Gresham on the South Side.

About 6:30 p.m., the two men, both 21, were near the back of a home in the 7600 block of South Peoria Street when two other people approached and fired shots, police said.

One man was struck in the arm and transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition, police said. The other man was hit in the leg and taken to the same hospital in fair condition.

A 31-year-old woman was shot Thursday in West Rogers Park on the North Side.

About 7:30 p.m., she was shot at by the father of her child in the 1900 block of West Peterson Avenue, police said.

She was grazed in the head and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where here condition was fair, police said.

An hour later, man was shot during an attempted robbery Thursday night in Calumet Heights on the South Side.

The 22-year-old was standing outside about 8:40 p.m. in the 2600 block of East 94th Street when two people approached in a dark colored sedan, police said.

The person riding in the passenger seat then got out of the sedan and pointed a gun a the man, according to police, When the man refused to hand over his belongings, the person opened fire, police said.

The man was struck once in the back and once in the chest, according to police. He was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, police said.

The shooter fled the scene, according to police.

In the day’s first reported shooting, a 27-year-old man was shot after getting into an argument on a CTA platform Thursday in Englewood on the South Side.

About 12:35 a.m., he was standing on a platform in the first block of West 69th Street, when he got into an argument with a man who pulled out a gun and fired shots, police said. He was struck in the right arm and brought to St. Bernard Hospital in good condition.

Twelve people were shot, 1 fatally, Wednesday citywide.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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The coronavirus pandemic sparked a mental health crisis. For Asians and Asian Americans also facing a rise in hate incidents across the country, it’s been “trauma upon trauma,” says Anne Saw, a Chicago psychologist.

“A lot of our communities are experiencing so many pandemic stressors that are then compounded by a lot of anti-Asian discrimination that we’re also experiencing,” says Saw, who teaches at DePaul University and directs the

“It’s tough to, like, get your head above water and get some room to breathe when every day we’re confronted with new traumas,” she says.

In Illinois, 92 anti-Asian hate incidents were reported from March 19, 2020, through the end of February to the group Stop AAPI Hate, which monitors anti-Asian hate incidents, and 3,795 nationally.

Many Asians and Asian Americans are still reeling from the shooting last month at Atlanta-area spas where a white man killed eight people, six of them Asian women.

Saw is researching the pandemic’s impact on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in the United States and the effects of hate incidents on Asian Americans.

She says that, so far in her study, 69% of the people responding who said they experienced hate incidents also reported mental health concerns, “and 72% report anti-Asian discrimination as among their greatest sources of stress.”

Among their concerns were depression, anxiety, lowered self-worth, intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance.

It isn’t only those who are the targets of hate incidents who are affected, according to Saw. Witnessing racial discrimination, hearing about it or seeing news reports are “race-based trauma incidents or exposures” that she says can cause physical symptoms.

These seven Chicagoans talk about how anti-Asian violence coupled with the pandemic have affected their mental health and their everyday lives.

Kaylee Cong, 32, Uptown, nail spa manager

On March 20, four days after the Atlanta shootings, Kaylee Cong says, her 60-year-old Vietnamese father was punched in the head as he walked alone that night near Broadway and West Ainslee Street. He turned to run, saw a white man holding a baseball bat watching him and called 911.

“We’re really scared,” says Cong, who’d been talking with her father about the Georgia shootings the day before he was attacked. “What if the person come back and do revenge? My entire life living here, it was so peaceful. There was no violence like this.”

She says her father hasn’t wanted to leave the house since that happened.

Older Asian Americans “just want to keep quiet and don’t want to make waves,” Cong says. “I have really different mentality. We deserve to, you know, feel safe. And we shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for ourselves.”

Catherine Shieh, 28, South Loop, anti-hate training coordinator

“There’s a sense of tiredness that’s not only being tired to function in a world that continues to tell you that you don’t belong and that your life is worth less than somebody else’s,” says Catherine Shieh, a second-generation Taiwanese American who was hired by the organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago to facilitate bystander- intervention training sessions as hate incidents were being reported at the start of the pandemic. “There’s also a tiredness in having the same discussion. We know what the problem is. The problem is racism and white supremacy.”

Shieh says that the combination of the pandemic and anti-Asian violence have left her feeling isolated in three ways: from social distancing, because she fears being attacked and because she’s uncomfortable venturing to the North Side, where she has seen fewer people wearing face masks.

“I feel vulnerable as an Asian American woman, ” Shieh says. “And I have always felt that way.”

Jaye Hobart, 32, Lakeview, board member, HANA Center and Korean Adoptees of Chicago

Jaye Hobart, a Korean American transnational adoptee, says she’d experience subtle racist and misogynistic interactions often before but that the pandemic brought that to another level.

“Now, during the pandemic, it’s inflicted a different type of kind of fear and paranoia that I’ve never experienced before,” says Hobart, who says people have spat at and yelled at her. “I’m feeling, you know, much more dependent on my partner, who I live with, that I can’t really walk outside without him.”

She says it’s difficult having been born in Korea and raised by American parents.

“It’s, like, externally isolating because I just feel like culturally, I feel separated, right, from kind of your mainstream narrative around immigration, around Asian American women, and kind of feel like maybe I’m not qualified to be a part of this space because, you know, I don’t have kind of those shared narratives,” Hobart says.

Milana Dam, 15, Bridgeport, Whitney Young Magnet High School freshman

Milana Dam says she is afraid for her mother, who works at a nail spa and is often there alone.

“I don’t live with her full time, so I can’t, like, watch over her all the time,” Dam says. “My mental health has gotten a lot worse, I would say, because I’m not going out as much. I’m not interacting with people as much. So, of course, I’m going to be, like, surrounded by my own thoughts.”

Ok Kyung Kim, 66, Old Town, senior service coordinator

Since moving to the United States at 15, Ok Kyung Kim says she has felt free, like she always had more than enough of what she needed. But the pandemic and the Georgia shootings changed that, she says.

“I was shocking and afraid for myself,” says Kim, who works for Koram Senior Housing at a senior building that’s home to 60 Korean Americans.

“I’m an Asian elderly who live in the U.S.A., but, yes, I’m afraid of to go out and have a shopping and go outside, so I still I have some worries, so not totally free, and I don’t feel safe anymore in this community.”

Daranee Amornkiatipisan, 40, Lakeview, registered nurse

“It pains me deeply that Asian people are being verbally and physically attacked, you know, during this pandemic when we’re supposed to be healing together as a nation,” says Daranee Amornkiatipisan, a Thai-Filipino-Chinese nurse who brought her children to a Stop Asian Hate rally in Chinatown because she wants them to be proud to be Asian.

“But instead we’re divided in pain,” says Amornkiatipisan, who was caring for COVID-19 patients at the beginning of the pandemic. She contracted the disease in March 2020 and was “very ill” for three months, an experienced she called “very traumatic.” “I’m a healthcare worker, and I take care of others, you know, and, especially during this pandemic, I’m fighting for my life, too.”

Mari Yamagiwa, 30, Jefferson Park, North Park University student

Mari Yamagiwa, a fourth-generation Japanese American, says that, she has become hypervigilant and that she and her friends have had “visceral reactions” like fatigue, pain and nausea after hearing of the Georgia shootings.

“I think it can be really triggering for so many of us,” says Yamagiwa, who says she also was told, “Go back to China,” while President Donald Trump was in office. “I’m also trying to grapple with the feeling of being invisible — unheard and unseen for 30 years — and then, all of a sudden, now feeling super-visible.”

Contributing: Mengshin Lin

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Jim Zwit never forgot the hot, sticky smell of Vietnam. And he never forgot the eight Army buddies he lost there in an ambush in 1971.

He made it his life’s mission to track down each of their families, spread across the United States. And that was in an age before finding people was made easier by the likes of Google, email and social media.

It took him 40 years, but he finally found the last of them.

“He let the families know their sons did not die alone and they’d never be forgotten,” said Pat Condran, a fellow vet who plans to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., to mark the 50th anniversary of the April 15, 1971, firefight that forever changed the lives of those who survived.

Mr. Zwit, 70, a former Chicago cop who later ran his own investigations agency, died last month at his home in La Grange Park of bladder cancer, though his doctors think his wartime exposure to the chemical Agent Orange contributed to his health problems, according to his wife Grace.

Young Jim grew up on the Southwest Side and went to St. Bede the Venerable grade school and Bogan High School.

He was a student at what was then called the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle when he decided to enlist in the Army.

He served in the 501st Battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. In Vietnam, whenever he met another kid from Chicago, he had one question: “Cubs or Sox?”

He was all Sox all the way.

In an interview for Honor Flight Chicago, Mr. Zwit said he and fellow GI Robert C. Hein bonded over their love of motorcycles. They dreamed of riding the Pacific Coast Highway when they returned home.

“He made a pact with me, don’t ask me why,” Mr. Zwit said, that ” ‘If something happens to one of us,’ he goes, ‘the other guy has to go back and see the family to explain what happened.’ ”

Provided

In 1971, Mr. Zwit and 77 other members of D Company were assigned to retrieve a soldier’s body from the A Shau Valley.

Provided

“Our motto is: You never leave a man behind,” he said in another interview, with the Veterans History Project.

Mr. Zwit said he and his comrades didn’t realize they were surrounded by 1,500 North Vietnamese troops who shadowed them for two days without their knowledge.

Provided

“They watched us land. They followed us for two days — and our command knew this,” Mr. Zwit told the Veterans History Project.

On April 15, 1971, “All hell broke loose,” he said in the Honor Flight Chicago interview.

Eight men were killed and 13 wounded in an ambush — more than a quarter of his company.

Mr. Zwit was badly injured by shrapnel.

But Hein dragged his 20-year-old friend to safety, propped him against a tree and kept fetching water for him.

“He’d crawl back every so often, canteen of water, canteen of water, canteen of water,” Mr. Zwit said. But then: “There was a point where he didn’t come back.”

Hein had taken a direct hit. He died instantly.

Mr. Zwit always wondered whether his friend died because he was trying to get him a drink.

“Something I have to live with,” he said later. “I think about it to this day.”

He was choppered to safety in a rescue so perilous that the helicopter had to zoom off with Mr. Zwit clipped to a cable, swinging through the foliage.

“I was kissing every tree that was in front of me,” he told the Veterans History Project.

Mr. Zwit suffered massive injuries. Much later, he found medical records that spelled out just how badly he was hurt. They said: “Doctors do not believe he will live.”

He underwent 12 hours of surgery and was given 25 units of blood. He lost 70% of his liver, part of his stomach, his gallbladder, a kidney and four ribs. It took him 20 months to recover.

“He was beat up pretty good,” his wife said.

Provided

Mr. Zwit told an interviewer, “I knew when I got better, I knew where I was gonna go.”

And so he set out to find Hein’s mother. That would take him 17 years.

Mr. Zwit’s backpack and address book had been destroyed the night of the attack. Hein had told him he was from Sacramento, so he called the Sacramento Bee, but the newspaper couldn’t find a death notice for him.

In the late 1970s, when a friend visited Sacramento, Mr. Zwit said he told him, “Go to a phone booth, and rip out all the pages with ‘Hein.’

“I called every one. Nothing.”

Then, in 1988, he spotted a story in a military magazine about a new Vietnam veterans’ memorial in Sacramento and wrote a letter to Sacramento newscaster Stan Atkinson, who was helping with the tribute. Atkinson alerted Mike Kelley, a 101st Airborne vet who was on the memorial committee. Kelley worked in the assessor’s office but had no luck finding Hein’s family through records there.

By coincidence, though, Kelley heard another volunteer, Doug Durham, say that Condran — Durham’s brother-in-law — was coming there from his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, to march in the parade for his fellow Company D member — Bob Hein.

It turned out that Hein was from Sacramento County, not the city. And his relatives were in a town Mr. Zwit hadn’t checked — Rio Lindo, California.

It was “a series of miracles,” Mr. Zwit told WTTW-Channel 11.

Hein had made the same pact with Condran about getting in touch with one another’s relatives if either of them was killed.

Condran, who’d already met the Heins, gave Mr. Zwit the phone number for his mother, Catherine Hein-Markley.

“It was the hardest call of my life. I called her the next day,” Mr. Zwit said in the Honor Flight Chicago interview. Soon, “She was like another mom to me.”

He went to Sacramento and met Hein’s mother. And he and Condran both marched in her son’s place in the parade to dedicate the California Vietnam Memorial.

Hearing about how her son helped Hein that night, Hein’s mother told a reporter, “I’m real proud of my son, and it is as if just a part of Bob has come back now through Jim.”

“Meeting the first mother, the first parent of one of those eight guys that died that night, it was unbelievable,” Mr. Zwit told WTTW. “It was the most satisfying thing. . . From that day on, I said, you know, I’m going to keep trying to find the other seven families.”

Hein’s sister Toni Doucet said the meeting helped heal his relatives and that, like Condran before him, “Jim became part of the family.”

Provided

He and Condran made Hein come alive to the nieces and nephews who never met him. They explained the details in the Instamatic photos that soldiers took of each other when things were quiet.

Mr. Zwit stayed in touch with Hein’s mother. “She got 13 years with him” before she died, Doucet said. “Phone calls, emails, cards, letters.”

After returning home from Vietnam and joining the Chicago Police Department, where he worked for about a dozen years, Mr. Zwit started an investigative and process-serving agency.

He used his detective skills and the Internet to continue his research, locating relatives of six more of his buddies killed in Vietnam. But he was stymied finding the family of William J. Ward, who was from Greene County, North Carolina.

That is until he went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington on April 15, 2011 — the 40th anniversary of the firefight. He noticed a woman kneel to study the bottom of panel 4W, where his friends’ names were.

“He asked me, ‘Ma’am, can I ask you who you came to see?’ ” Lois Daniels said. “And I said, ‘William Ward.’ He got all choked up, and he said, ‘William Ward — I’ve been looking for you all these years.’ We just cried together.”

Daniels is married to Emanuel Daniels, a cousin of Ward.

“I put my arm around her, and I said, ‘I’ve been looking for your family for 40 years,”‘ Mr. Zwit recalled in a speech at a 2018 veterans’ memorial ceremony in Anthem, Arizona.

She didn’t know it was the anniversary of the firefight. An educator from Hampton, Virginia, Daniels had decided to visit the memorial with her grandchildren while on spring break.

“I just call it a true miracle,” she said.

Mr. Zwit connected by phone with Ward’s family and got photos from Vietnam and news clippings to Ward’s mother Mary Lena Ward.

He regularly spoke at schools about his military service.

Mr. Zwit was buried this month at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. In addition to his wife Grace, survivors include his daughter Jennifer Hennessy, sons Jeffrey, Vincent and Christian and four grandchildren.

“He lived every day to the fullest,” his wife said, “because he was so grateful he survived Vietnam.”

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It’s always a shame when a group of talented humans get together and deliver something that comes across as a halfhearted effort, even if they poured their blood, sweat and tears into it. Such is the case with the alleged action-comedy titled “Thunder Force,” and I’ll start with this:

During one of the many lulls in the plot, co-stars Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy get into a discussion about Glenn Frey and in particular his song “Smuggler’s Blues,” eventually singing along with the tune. Later in the story, they hear “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal, and they sing along with THAT pop hit.

You know what’s kind of fun? Singing along to classic tunes. You know what’s almost never fun because it’s so overdone? People in a movie singing along to classic tunes.

(We also get a dopey fantasy dance sequence set to “You Belong to the City.” Writer-director Ben Falcone — McCarthy’s husband — must really be a fan of Glenn Frey songs that were used on the old “Miami Vice” TV show.)

The pop culture nods and the Chicago-centric references fly in “Thunder Force.” McCarthy does an Urkel impersonation and calls one overly serious female executive “Jodie Foster,” and there are numerous shoutouts to the Bulls and the Bears, and even “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and Jim McMahon’s sunglasses. (A cop also refers to a crime on “Grand Street” instead of “Grand Avenue,” sigh.) All well and good — but while “Thunder Force” is set in Chicago, it was filmed in Atlanta save for a few establishing shots, and it looks like a Chicago-set movie that was filmed in Atlanta.

Geographical groans aside, it’s also a feeble superhero comedy with lazy, gross-out jokes, mediocre action sequences, some bad sitcom-level acting and the appearance of Jason Bateman as a criminal who has crab legs for arms, and you read that right: crab legs for arms. Imagine the hilarity, or lack thereof, when this guy goes out to dinner and the waiter suggests the seafood tower! SMH.

Netflix

“Thunder Force” kicks off with comic-book style graphics as we’re told, “In March of 1983, a massive pulse of interstellar cosmic rays struck the Earth [and] triggered a genetic transformation in a select few, unleashing unimaginable superpowers … unlocked in rare individuals who were genetically predisposed to be sociopaths.”

I hate when that happens.

After an overlong prologue set in the late 1980s, we pick up the story in present day, with Melissa McCarthy’s working-class gal Lydia reconnecting with her estranged childhood best friend Emily (Octavia Spencer), who runs a powerful tech company called Stanton 4.0. Ever since Emily was a little girl and her parents were killed in a CTA train explosion caused by a miscreant (that’s the name given to the evil mutants) she has devoted her life to receiving the education and training necessary to develop a genetic platform that will give ordinary, decent people superpowers so they can fight back against the miscreants. Now, finally, Emily has achieved her goal — and that’s when Lydia bumbles her way into accidentally receiving the first treatment that will give her superhuman strength.

There’s no going back, so Lydia continues to receive the very painful (and painfully unfunny) injections to make her ultra-powerful, while Emily takes a series of pills that will give her the powers of invisibility. Put the duo together and you have … Thunder Force! Capable of squeezing into a purple Lamborghinis (cue the sight gags of McCarthy and Spencer struggling to get into and out of the car) and fighting crime all over Chicago/Georgia!

Bobby Cannavale hams it up as “The King,” a psychopathic crime boss running for mayor who loses it every time someone calls him just “King.” Pom Klementieff is the villainous and quite uninteresting Laser, who shoots fireballs at everything and everybody and speaks in bad Bond villain accent.

And yes, Jason Bateman is “The Crab,” who became half-man, half-crustacean after a horrific accident and is conflicted about his life of crime, especially after taking a liking to Lydia. (On a dinner date, he tells her he’s actually just “half-creant,” which she mistakenly hears as “half Korean.” In case you didn’t cringe the first time, the alleged joke is repeated in a later scene.) I didn’t think it was possible to ever tire of Jason Bateman and his spectacularly unique way of putting the perfect spin on even the most innocuous of lines (a skill equaled only by Robert Downey Jr. and a handful of others), but it doesn’t take long for The Crab to grate on me to the point where I wanted him to buzz off, pincers and all. Like everyone else in “Thunder Force,” he’s mired in a thunderously bad film.

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Moon Alert

Avoid shopping or making important decisions after 6:30 p.m. Chicago time. After that, the moon moves from Pisces into Aries.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

Don’t try to persuade others to agree with you today because your efforts will be half-hearted. (You might not even believe your own words.) That’s because there’s a discouraging element out there that affects everyone. It’s an Eeyore day that comes around every six months.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

This is a poor day for important financial decisions because you might have no faith in your decision or whatever you’re dealing with. The thing to know is that everyone feels this way in varying degrees. (It must be the spores in the air.)

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

Mars in your sign is at odds with fuzzy Neptune, which is like throwing water on fire. You might question yourself and what you’re doing. You might even want to give up. Even if you stay in bed, don’t give up. Things will change.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

This is a classic day for recriminations, guilt and self-doubt. You might feel you’re facing the consequences of past actions and they’re overwhelming. That’s why there’s a tendency to cave in. Or hide. Or lie. This feeling will be gone soon. Save your energy.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)

This is a poor day to negotiate a financial deal with a friend or a group. You will doubt your own wisdom. You might feel you don’t have the energy that it takes to do whatever needs to be done. Don’t be hard on yourself. Relax. This discouragement will fade.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

It might be difficult dealing with bosses, parents, teachers and the police today because you’re facing the consequences of a bad choice. But hey, this is a temporary situation. Remember: Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Issues related to higher education, publishing, the media, politics or religion are confusing. It feels like the bottom dropped out of everything. You feel uncertain about what’s going to happen next. Fear not because everyone is uptight today. Relax.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

You might be disappointed in your fair share of something. You might be disappointed you didn’t get the backing or the money or the support that you hope you would. There are many reasons to feel discouraged, today but all of them are fleeting and temporary. You’re fine.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

Your closest relationships might be a source of disappointment today. You feel misunderstood or let down. You might be backed into a corner and tempted to be deceitful or hide something. Hey — your own integrity is more important. Remember that.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

You’re discouraged. You’re disappointed in results or the lack of support you get or even the misdirection? Your health might be flagging right now as well. Take it easy. Relax. This is a fleeting dark cloud on your horizon.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

Something to do with money, assets, your kids or perhaps a creative project could be disappointing today. Don’t focus on your disappointment. Instead, focus on your reality. Your reality is that you have divine protection this year because lucky Jupiter is in your sign. (Drinks are on you.)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

When you get discouraged, you feel victimized. Today you might feel you have no energy to do what you need to do. You might want to give in. You might not want to get out of bed? Relax, because many people feel this way today. The thing to know is it’s temporary.

If Your Birthday Is Today

Actor Dennis Quaid (1954) shares your birthday. You are sensitive and caring which is why you are so charismatic. People like you. As your new personal year begins, you enter a year of endings and wrapping up things. It’s time to get ready to move on to something new! This is not loss. You are cleaning up things and clearing the way for a new way of doing things.

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Jushawn Brown, who faces a felony gun charge for allegedly possessing a 9-mm handgun without a FOID card, was released from custody Thursday after posting a $500 bond.

A man who was behind the wheel when a child was critically wounded in a road rage shooting this week on Lake Shore Drive was hit with a felony gun charge Thursday for possessing a weapon without proper state identification and later released from custody on a $500 bond.

Jushawn Brown, 43, was found with a handgun when police officers asked whether he had “anything he wasn’t supposed to have” while at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, where the 1-year-old boy was taken after being shot in the head, prosecutors said in court Thursday afternoon. Contrary to initial police reports, there was no evidence, prosecutors said, that Brown fired his weapon or displayed it during the road rage incident.

Prosecutors initially described Brown as the wounded boy’s grandfather, but a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office later clarified that he’s “in a relationship” with the boy’s grandmother.

Brown told the officers about the gun, which he called his “protection,” and allowed the officers to take the loaded 9 mm handgun from him, prosecutors said.

Shell casings recovered at the scene of the shooting did not match the gun.

Because of that, Judge Charles Beach said he would release Brown to be with his family but sternly warned him to not miss any court dates. Beach set his bail at $5,000, and Brown later posted the required $500 bond to be released.

“Mr. Brown, if there’s any time for being with your family and staying home with your family, now is that time,” Beach said.

Brown, of Englewood, was driving his car on Lake Shore Drive about 11:30 a.m. when an SUV that attempted to merge onto the highway nearly struck his car near Soldier Field, prosecutors said.

Brown pulled over and yelled at the driver of the SUV, and the two exchanged words until the driver of the SUV pulled out a gun and showed it to Brown while asking him, “What did he want to do about it,” prosecutors said.

Brown took out his own gun and placed it on his lap before attempting to drive away from the SUV, which followed him.

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The driver of the SUV then fired several shots at Brown’s car near the Shedd Aquarium, striking the vehicle several times. One of the bullets entered through the rear passenger window where the boy was seated in a car seat, striking the toddler in the head.

Brown continued to drive north until he lost control of his car and crashed.

A good Samaritan picked up Brown, Brown’s girlfriend and the child and drove them to Northwestern Hospital for treatment. The boy was later transferred to Lurie Children’s Hospital.

The child, Kayden Swann, suffered a severe brain injury and was put in a medically-induced coma and on a ventilator, Dr. Marcelo Malakooti, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Lurie, said. The boy has shown some signs of improvement, Malakooti said Thursday in the hospital’s most recent update about the boy’s condition.

Prosecutors said the driver of the SUV has not been taken into custody as police continue to investigate.

Earlier Thursday, officers shut down the northbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive near the Field Museum for about an hour to canvass the area as part of that investigation, police said.

An assistant public defender said Brown has two children, ages 16 and 21, and works as a machine operator at Blommer Chocolate Company.

Brown’s attorney asked for her client to be released on his own recognizance, saying he appeared to be a very “honest gentleman.”

Beach said that because there was no indication that the driver of the SUV even knew Brown had a weapon worked in his favor.

“Which means the other individual didn’t know you were armed and that was not a response to your actions. They were acting aggressively on their own accord,” Beach said.

However, the judge, citing the class 4 felony Brown faces — calling it a “serious offense” — said Brown should have to post some money to be released.

“The reality is that weapons unfortunately lead to this very scenario,” Beach said.

Brown was expected back in court Wednesday.

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The 22-year-old was standing outside in the 2600 block of East 94th Street when two people approached in a dark colored sedan and attempted to rob him.

A man was shot during an attempted robbery Thursday night in Calumet Heights on the South Side.

The 22-year-old was standing outside about 8:40 p.m. in the 2600 block of East 94th Street when two people approached in a dark colored sedan, Chicago police said.

The person riding in the passenger seat then got out of the sedan and pointed a gun a the man, according to police When the man refused to hand over his belongings, the person opened fire, police said.

The man was struck once in the back and once in the chest, according to police. He was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, police said.

The shooter fled the scene, according to police.

No one is in custody as Area Two detectives investigate.

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The Sox come home after an underwhelming trip out West. Defensive issues, injuries, and poor offensive production leave a sour taste. Despite it all, the Sox have plenty to build on as they get ready to take on the AL Central.

The post GGTB Ep. 90 – Don’t Bring It Home first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More