The following story was published by the Chicago Sun-Times on May 8, 2023.

"Small and mid-sized Illinois cities have surpassed Chicago’s gun homicide rate in recent years, mirroring a national trend, a new analysis of city-level firearm violence data found.

Magic Wade, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, studied firearm homicide and injury data from the Gun Violence Archive for small, mid-size and large cities nationwide from 2015 to 2021.

“There’s a cluster of cities in Illinois that have gun homicide rates that are actually higher than Chicago’s, or they’re close to it,” Wade said."

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