CBS News correspondent Adriana Diaz hit the ground running after returning from a post she held in Beijing to set up in Chicago, earlier this year. Perhaps her most courageous assignment came in the form of her exploration of the shooting endemic in the Chi, for the second episode of CBSN: On Assignment, "Guns of Chicago."

According to police superintendent, Eddie Johnson over 5,000 guns have been seized in Chicago thus far in 2017. While efforts to quell gun violence have resulted in a 7% dip in murders by gunfire to date, the number of citizens killed in shootings is still staggering. Chicago recorded its 500th murder this past weekend. That mark was reached 14 days earlier in 2016, a year during which 4,331 were injured and 764 were killed via gun violence.

Diaz took her crew into the hoods of the South Side, where most of the 600+ crews claim territory. What she finds is a community caught up in a cycle of violence that even the hardest of gangsters admit being less than ideal, but feel helpless in stopping. As one local explained, he does not like guns, but as is the case with many of his neighbors, he doesn't feel safe leaving his home without one. Such an atmosphere has left thousands able to attest, first hand, to having friends and family members lost to gun violence in the Chi.