With high-tech help, there's been less bloodshed in Chicago this year, but results are mixed on the West Side

CHICAGO - As a pastor, Curtis Britt Sr. has counseled numerous grieving parents from his West Side congregation who lost children to Chicago's unrelenting gun violence.

Now, with the killing last month of his own 26-year-old son in broad daylight, he truly understands the depth of their pain - and the obstacles to meaningful progress.

"It's sad that in certain neighborhoods ... the violence is such where it almost seems like you're in a situation where it's nothing you can do about it," said Britt, 51, who delivered both the sermon and eulogy at the funeral of his son and namesake. "A lot of (residents) have gotten to the point where they just feel like this is something that they're going to have to live with because it's not going to change."

At the halfway mark of 2018, shootings in Chicago overall have fallen by double-digit numbers for a second consecutive year, while homicides have dropped even further - a contrast to 2016 when violence hit levels unseen for two decades. But the violence is still outpacing 2015 and