Guns don't kill people–people kill people, so let's not talk about the guns or gun control laws, because it really is not necessary.
That 19 people were shot in Chicago last night, most of them within half an hour and "many of them teens" notwithstanding, the situation's really not that bad. This guy even made it out okay:
Another 17-year-old was shot after 1:30 a.m. Friday in the 3500 block of West Grenshaw Street in the Homan Square neighborhood. He's in good condition at Mount Sinai Hospital. Someone walked to him and started shooting, police said.
There is nothing to fear but fear itself, even when
Illinois doesn't require registration of handguns. After all, as Illinois State Senator Gary Forby puts it, "
The rights of the people of Illinois outweigh the self-interested policies of politicians from Chicago...Illinois doesn’t need gun registration, fee." You see? The rights of a person to not get shot while just standing there in the street and incur thousands of dollars in hospital fees (or incur death itself) are outweighed by the rights of a gun owner to not have to register her or his gun for a measly $65.
So people like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg need to shut their mouths about the need for stronger gun control laws, because they are absolutely not needed and they would impinge on your constitutionally-protected right to bear arms or go hunting, which creates a market of easily obtainable guns through the United States's tapestry of 50 different state gun laws. Doesn't Bloomberg understand that tighter gun control laws wouldn't make it any harder for ten people, nine of them innocent, to get shot outside the Empire State Building, as happened this morning? Anything can be used as a weapon to kill a living thing, including a kitchen fork, so let's not parrot gun control laws as some savior of lives.
We should be ashamed of ourselves for even talking about it.
UPDATE
A recently fired store worker shot a former colleague to death and then randomly started shooting others near the Empire State Building before he was shot by police officers, law enforcement officials said. -Washington Post
IDEA: Maybe everyone should start walking in random patterns when outdoors to lower the chance of being randomly shot. This will be a good solution to the problem of gun violence without impinging on the rights of gun owners.
UPDATE X2
In fairness to accuracy and to those arguing below that the NYC incident this morning was exacerbated moreso by the NYPD shooting towards the armed shooter:
Jeffrey Johnson, a fashion accessories designer disgruntled over being fired a year ago, shot a 41-year-old former co-worker three times at close range with a .45 caliber handgun, officials said.
As police closed in, Johnson fired on them. The police returned fire and killed him, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Investigators were attempting to determine whether Johnson shot anyone beyond his initial target. Some of the surviving victims could have been hit by the two police officers who returned fire, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
-Chicago Tribune
On face value, it would seem to me that the NYC example would hamper the argument that tighter gun control would lead to fewer mass shootings, since it could be said that the shooter only shot the one co-worker (now deceased) and that the other 8 were wounded in the gunfire exchange with the police.
THEN AGAIN, if this example is representative, it blows a common argument out of the water: we actually would benefit from looser gun control laws, because a more highly-armed populace would be better able to thwart these kinds of shootings (remember the idiots saying that if everyone in the Aurora theater had been armed, the shooter would have been subdued with minimal casualties?)...because if even highly-trained, skilled POLICE OFFICERS have a difficult enough time subduing an armed shooter, just imagine the carnage that would result in an exchange between armed citizens.
Perhaps access to the guns, then, is a problem still worth addressing: had the shooter not used a gun to kill a co-worker, the police department would not have been engaged in a gunfire exchange with him. Is this fair?
UPDATE X3
H/T to decembersue for this awesome link, "AUSTRALIAN GUN LAWS LED TO FEWER DEATHS". Australia got rid of 700,000 privately owned guns and the decline in gun deaths was precipitous because...there were fewer guns to use! Imagine that!
"Not only were Australia's post-Port Arthur gun laws followed by a decade in which the crime they were designed to reduce hasn't happened again, but we also saw a life-saving bonus: the decline in overall gun deaths accelerated to twice the rate seen before the new gun laws," says study lead author and Acting Head of the School of Public Health, Professor Simon Chapman.
"From 1996 to 2003, the total number of gun deaths each year fell from 521 to 289, suggesting that the removal of more than 700,000 guns was associated with a faster declining rate of gun suicide and gun homicide," said adjunct associate professor Philip Alpers, also from the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. "This was a milestone public health and safety issue, driven by an overwhelming swing in public opinion, and promptly delivered by governments."
[snip]
The authors conclude that "The Australian example provides evidence that removing large numbers of firearms from a community can be associated with a sudden and on-going decline in mass shootings, and accelerating declines in total firearm-related deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides."
No further comment.