One of the best vacations my family and I ever took was to Chicago. We did the museums, wandered about taking in the sights, and ate some great food. Unfortunately, several decades of left-wing governance have taken their inevitable toll. As anyone who has watched the news will tell you, Chicago has a bit of a violence problem these days.
It’s pretty tough to buy a legal gun in Chicago, though the illegal sort apparently litter the place. Until recent times, the Windy City had no gun shops. There are a few now, but you still have to have special cards, government permission, and similar stuff to obtain a weapon legally. Despite all that, in 2020 there were 780 murders in Chicago. Over the July 4th weekend in 2021 more than 100 people were shot. Tragically, eighteen perished.
Per capita, Chicago is far from the worst. In 2020 they had about 25 murders per 100,000 people. I’m disappointed to report that the reigning champion that year was actually Jackson, Mississippi, with a murder rate of roughly twice that. Our sordid tale this day takes us through both places.
My Credentials
I live in a small town in the Deep South today. A great many folks are armed, and, with blessed few exceptions, everybody is friendly. Crimes of violence are quite unusual. Property crime happens from time to time, but thankfully that’s rare, too.
I learned to be a doctor in Jackson, Mississippi, apparently per capita one of the most violent places in the country. I would assert that this was also the best place on the planet to learn medicine. The facility and faculty were indeed both top flight, but that wasn’t the secret to a stellar medical education. Jackson was a great place to learn medicine because of the patients.
That part of Mississippi is one of the most morbidly obese places on planet earth. It is a uniquely modern phenomenon that our poor people are fat. With such profoundly poor diets and a dearth of exercise come scads of metabolic maladies. Diabetes and hypertension were ubiquitous, and there was a thin scattering of venereal disease sprinkled over the top as well.
My patients routinely neglected to do what I asked of them. We often discussed stuff like diet and exercise, but that was clearly more for my benefit than theirs. Oftentimes some enormous Jacksonian endured my spiel about the many-splendored dangers of fast food, cigarettes, and a sedentary lifestyle before departing my clinic determined not to change a blessed thing.
Lastly, in their free time my patients not infrequently shot each other. I never did a shift in the ER at the Level 1 trauma center where I trained without at least one gunshot wound. My personal record was seven. However, those sordid attributes also made it a great place to learn. Once I hung out my shingle in a normal place with moms, dads, and patients who heeded my advice, being an effective doctor seemed relatively breezy.
Profiling
Terrion Pouncy was a thug. While I have not had the pleasure of meeting Terrion myself, I have indeed met many like him. At risk of being labeled whatever it is you get labeled with these days for simply describing the world as it is, here’s what these guys are like up close.
These are the gladiators. They’re often exceptionally fit and typically covered in gang tats. They are invariably combative and belligerent when they present to the emergency department acutely shot. I mean, who wouldn’t be? However, once you save their lives and get them out of that environment they’re most commonly quite friendly. I have had some of the most delightful conversations with these guys as they recuperated after surgery.
None of them had dads, and their moms often stayed in the rooms with them. These long-suffering ladies did the best they could considering, but there aren’t a whole lot of positive role models in that world. These guys gravitate toward crime, drugs, and violence in an effort at escaping their dreadful circumstances.
Occupational Hazards
At 6 am on a chilly November day in 2017, Terrion Pouncy approached a 24-hour hotdog stand at 11656 South Halsted Street in the West Pullman neighborhood in Chicago. The stand was manned by a pair of unidentified guys aged 39 and 45. Terrion was dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head. He had a similarly dark scarf that concealed his face.
These were the days before covid, so facial coverings were not quite as commonplace as is the case today. Surveillance videos posted on YouTube demonstrate that modern criminals are exceptionally conscientious about mask-wearing. Regardless, it was cold and dark, so Terrion likely got pretty close before the hot dog guys grew suspicious.
Pouncy approached the two men, produced a .38-caliber handgun, and demanded the money in the cash register. The younger of the two victims readily complied. However, this man was also holding a bucket of hot grease at the time. As he fumbled for the cash in the register he accidentally dropped the bucket, spilling hot grease liberally across the floor.
Terrion lustily grabbed the cash, most of it in ones, and started shoving it into his pants. Before departing, Terrion availed himself of the man’s wallet and cell phone as well. All this was captured on surveillance video.
As Pouncy turned to jog away he stuffed his handgun back into his waistband and slipped on the spilled grease. Unfortunately, his hands were full, and he was in a rush. The trigger caught on something, and the gun went off. This is where Terrion’s morning took an unexpectedly dark turn.
Pouncy ran down the street to an abandoned car wash now bleeding vigorously. There he was seen throwing something, presumably his weapon, over a fence. He then called 911 and reported that he had been shot.
First responders found Pouncy with a through-and-through gunshot wound to his penis and another to his thigh. Both injuries were clearly from the same round. The cops later found his discarded hoodie and weapon. The younger of the two robbery victims discovered his wallet near the spot where the ambulance retrieved the freshly neutered criminal.
Pouncy was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and admitted. While there he missed his initial hearing, so Judge Stephanie Miller ordered him held without bond. I bet hers is a simply fascinating job. Despite an aggressive Google search, I never could find out what became of poor Terrion. Even if they just let him go, the argument could be made that he has already been punished adequately.
Closer to Home
I myself had a similar encounter while working in the ER in Jackson. A young unlicensed pharmacist got sideways with a competitor, and they both slapped leather. This guy’s Hi-Point 9mm went off on the draw stroke, centerpunching his male member mid-shaft but fortuitously missing everything else. His opponent apparently felt that justice had been adequately served and abandoned him bleeding on the sidewalk.
This guy was justifiably unsettled when we met, but the paramedics had gotten much of the bleeding staunched enroute. We packaged him up for the Urology residents who were thrilled to get an interesting surgical case. When your world orbits around bladder cancer and inflamed prostate glands a good old-fashioned gunshot wound to the shlong is a reliable crowd-pleaser.
I actually saw that guy for something else some months later and he offered to let me take a peek at his offended member. It had indeed healed nicely, no doubt a tribute to the rarefied skill of our resident Urologists. It did, however, cock off at a jaunty angle around mid-shaft. Our hero was thrilled to report that it still functioned as intended. He explained that his injury might have even made him more popular with the local ladies based solely upon the novelty of the thing. Thank goodness he could still reproduce.
The Gun
I write for the gun press, and I proudly own a Hi-Point pistol. Those who denigrate the performance of these inexpensive guns have clearly not logged a great deal of trigger time on one. My Hi-Point shoots quite well.
Originally launched in 1992, Hi-Point produces inexpensive, reliable firearms. Their catalog includes both pistols and carbines in a variety of calibers. All of their weapons are based upon the straight blowback operating system. This design mandates an unusually heavy slide.
Hi-Point slides are die cast from an inexpensive zinc alloy called Zamak-3. The frames are steel-reinforced polymer. Ancillary bits demanding gun-grade strength are cut from steel as well. The aesthetic result looks like a blow dryer had a baby with an electric toaster.
The single action trigger on the Hi-Point is a bit mushy but quite serviceable. The gun’s single-stack magazines are relatively easy to swap, and the safety is intuitive. One of the red dots on my rear sight fell out, but Hi-Point pistols shoot plenty straight. Mine has also been unflinchingly reliable. The bulk of the slide makes concealment a chore, but that doesn’t mean that literally countless young thugs haven’t successfully pulled it off. My Hi-Point C9 set me back $46 without a magazine from a Law Enforcement auction.
Ruminations
So if you were pondering a life of petty crime let me encourage you to seek out a career elsewhere. The money can be good, and the tax burden is admittedly minimal. However, Terrion Pouncy can no doubt attest that the occupational hazards far outweigh the potential rewards. Nobody wants to be shot in the Johnson no matter how much easy cash rides on the enterprise.