CHICAGO, IL - It looked like good news for Chicago as the skyrocketing murder rate finally started to level off, but the reason for the decline turned out to be alarming: murder has gotten so bad in Chicago that now even the average murderer won't go out at night for fear of being murdered.

"I love murder," said local murderer Carl Gross, "but I don't want to be murdered. It's gotten so bad out here, though, that we regular, salt-of-the-earth murderers are being preyed upon by all the really deranged murderers who don't follow the murderer's code of not murdering murderers."

Bennie Arnold, Chicago resident and occasional strangler, agreed. "I just want to strangle people," said Arnold. "But now I'm too scared to go out at night to find victims, so I just stay home with the doors locked. I guess now I know how I made regular folk feel… which would really make me think if I weren't a sociopath."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel wouldn't meet with reporters to talk about the crisis, instead releasing this statement through a locked door: "How do I know you're really reporters and not just murderers in disguise who have come here to murder me? You're not tricking me. I'm staying in here, safe behind this murder-proof door."

It's uncertain how to stop this epidemic where even murderers are getting murdered. President Donald Trump offered to deploy Space Force personnel to the scene until he learned Chicago wasn't in space and then lost interest in the problem.

"They could try gun control," suggested Gross. "I mean, that never worked on me - I always still got a gun and murdered people with it - but maybe they can come up with some gun control that would actually work and stop even people like me from getting a gun. Then I'd feel safer and could finally go out at night and murder people with a pipe. I love pipe murder."