There was a lot of death and injury in the Chicago region over this last July 4th weekend. One has received international coverage, the Highland Park parade shooting. The other gets the perfunctory media tally.

In Highland Park, six were killed and 30 wounded. On the south and west sides of Chicago, 15 were killed and 60 wounded. Of the former, it brought out a governor and a president to decry the madness. The latter, no governor and no presidents.

The alleged Highland Park shooter is a rapper. He is also apparently a loner and a social misfit. On the south and west sides of Chicago, the shooters are gang members who listen to rap and are social misfits.

There have always been loners and misfits. They have always had access to weapons. The mass shootings like Highland Park took off in the 1990s. Gang shootings have been a part of big cities for decades. Again, access to guns has always been there.

Who is to blame? Rather, what is to blame?

Given that guns are a constant in American society, even those with high magazine capacity, there must be some driving factor, some catalyst for horrible behavior, for murder. Maybe it is time the progressives who have been in charge of American society and institutions and major cities for decades admit that they favor a society where there is no responsibility for mayhem and allow that it is part of their plan to reshape the world into some type of ill-described utopia.

It is time for them to stop blaming the gun. Progressives are the guns.

Meanwhile, a governor shows up in a rich suburb and blathers on about “gun violence” in a suburb that has very strict gun laws, and a demented president echos the same tired excuse. Nobody shows up in Englewood except the coroner. Too bad the governor and the president don’t look in the mirror and see that they (and those they represent) are the problem. They are the guns.

We need sensible “progressive control.”

These tales are the same. Murder and death and blood. This is progressive “progress.” It is only the milage between that is the difference. It is a very long distance as it rolls but brings us to the same place.