You like odds? I don't, but here are some anyway.

[dales]

Assuming there is a desk drawer large enough to contain 100,000,000 pair of dice.

[Gob]

JANUARY was a big month for Hadiya Pendleton. The 15-year-old drum majorette travelled to Washington to march in Barack Obama's inauguration parade, before returning home to Chicago for her finals.

Then, on January 29, Hadiya was shot dead, the 42nd person to be murdered in Chicago last month. The honour student had just finished an exam and was sheltering from rain with friends under a canopy in a local park when a volley of bullets whistled in from a nearby car park. One boy was wounded. Hadiya was hit in the back and died.

The gunman fled and has not been caught. Police believe he mistook the children for rival gang members invading his turf.

The Chicago Tribune reported that between January 1 and December 21 last year there were 2634 reported shooting incidents in Chicago, while in the school year that ended in June 2012, more than 300 public school students were shot, 24 of them fatally.

During the Memorial Day long weekend in May last year, 10 people were shot dead and 43 wounded. At that point it was calculated that violence had increased 50 per cent in 2012 compared with the previous year.

There were 1353 shooting incidents in New York - about half as many as in Chicago. The violence has become so bad that the Tribune has established a blog called redeye (http://homicides.redeyechicago.com) simply to keep track of the killings. Each murder is located on a map and information about the circumstances of the murder and the victim is logged.

Another website, DNAinfo .com, established a memorial page for those killed in 2012. One of its creators, Je Sabella, wrote in The Huffington Post that as a reporter in Chicago over the past few years ''it became a Monday routine: come into the office early Monday and count how many people were murdered over the weekend … After all, we were used to it. Sometimes there are seven or eight people killed in a single weekend - and don't even try to count all the non-fatal shootings.''

[oldr_n_wsr]

he mistook the children for rival gang members invading his turf

And registering and/or limiting guns to law abiding citizens would have prevented this exactly how?

[Econoline]

Okay, I'll take a quick stab at that: universal background checks might have prevented the shooter from buying the gun from a private party. Cracking down on dealers who are complicit in "straw sales" (to someone who intends to pass along a legally purchased gun to someone else who might not qualify to purchase; often this is done quite openly: 2 people go into a gun shop, one picks out a gun and hands money to the other, who fills out the paperwork and "buys" the gun from the dealer) might have prevented the shooter from obtaining a gun. Stricter laws about securing guns in the home might have made it harder to obtain a gun by means of burglary. Those are just off the top of my head; maybe others can come up with more.

This is where your earlier comment about just letting the gangbangers off each other falls apart, oldr. It seems like the number of innocent "civilians" killed and injured in gang-related shootings is several times the number of actual gang members killed.

Well, do YOU have any idea how to make incidents like this less common, or are you just willing to chalk it up as the cost of living in a "free" society (as long as it's not happening in your neighborhood)?

[oldr_n_wsr]

Okay, I'll take a quick stab at that: universal background checks might have prevented the shooter from buying the gun from a private party. Cracking down on dealers who are complicit in "straw sales" (to someone who intends to pass along a legally purchased gun to someone else who might not qualify to purchase; often this is done quite openly: 2 people go into a gun shop, one picks out a gun and hands money to the other, who fills out the paperwork and "buys" the gun from the dealer) might have prevented the shooter from obtaining a gun. Stricter laws about securing guns in the home might have made it harder to obtain a gun by means of burglary. Those are just off the top of my head; maybe others can come up with more.

And how many mass murders have been the result of any of those scenarios? In Newport, mom bought and owned the guns legally. Whether or not they were secured is not known but surely mom should have had them away from son, no argument there.
I have said before, perhaps guns should be more like owning a car, you get a "title" for the gun and when you sell that gun, you sign over the title and the new owner has to get a new title in his/her name.

This is where your earlier comment about just letting the gangbangers off each other falls apart, oldr. It seems like the number of innocent "civilians" killed and injured in gang-related shootings is several times the number of actual gang members killed.

Have any data on that? Of course a gang banger killed might only be a paragraph in the news but an innocent killed by stray bullets warrents a whole column.

Well, do YOU have any idea how to make incidents like this less common, or are you just willing to chalk it up as the cost of living in a "free" society (as long as it's not happening in your neighborhood)?

It has happened in my neighborhood. And I have worked for years in Bedford Styvesant which at the time made the south bronx look like shang-ri-la at the time. Do you have any stats proving your assertion that more innocent people are killed by gang bangers than there are gang bangers killed?

And where did these gang bangers get their hand guns and are they registered? Here on LI you can't have a hand gun unless you have a permit which is nearly immpossible to get. I am trying, meanwhile I could walk down the block and buy a handgun right now

[Econoline]

And how many mass murders have been the result of any of those scenarios? In Newport, mom bought and owned the guns legally. Whether or not they were secured is not known but surely mom should have had them away from son, no argument there.

I thought it would be obvious that I was just answering the question you had asked directly above my post:

he mistook the children for rival gang members invading his turf

And registering and/or limiting guns to law abiding citizens would have prevented this exactly how?

This is where your earlier comment about just letting the gangbangers off each other falls apart, oldr. It seems like the number of innocent "civilians" killed and injured in gang-related shootings is several times the number of actual gang members killed.

Have any data on that? Of course a gang banger killed might only be a paragraph in the news but an innocent killed by stray bullets warrents a whole column.

Not when the innocent person is a 16- or 17-year-old African-American male who never took part in a Presidential inauguration. I will try to find statistics...but just because something doesn't make the national news doesn't mean it wasn't reported, at least briefly, in a local or neighborhood newspaper.

Well, do YOU have any idea how to make incidents like this less common, or are you just willing to chalk it up as the cost of living in a "free" society (as long as it's not happening in your neighborhood)?

It has happened in my neighborhood. And I have worked for years in Bedford Styvesant which at the time made the south bronx look like shang-ri-la at the time.

And where did these gang bangers get their hand guns and are they registered?

I don't know (but I did offer 3 possible scenarios above), and probably not (at least not to the person doing the shooting).

And I'd like to apologize for my snarky comment about "as long as it's not happening in your neighborhood." That was mean spirited and I shouldn't have said it. But I would like to reiterate the question itself--to you, oldr--or anyone else here:

Well, do YOU have any idea how to make incidents like this less common, or are you just willing to chalk it up as the cost of living in a "free" society?

Well, do you, bunkie?

[Gob]

Well, do YOU have any idea how to make incidents like this less common, or are you just willing to chalk it up as the cost of living in a "free" American "society" (as long as it's not happening in your neighborhood)?

Fixed.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Well, do you, bunkie?

I have already said here (maybe not in this thread but on PlanB) that perhaps, every gun be given a title and every buyer gets that title and his name put on that title. If it is sold, the title passes to the next owner who then has to get the title changed to his name. Cars in NY have titles and anyone buying a car gets the title signed over to him and then obtains a new title with his name on it.

...but just because something doesn't make the national news doesn't mean it wasn't reported, at least briefly, in a local or neighborhood newspaper.

I would venture to guess that far fewer gang on gang violence makes the news than gang on innocents.
I still say (and you seem to have argued against) that more gang on gang killings happen than gang shot stray bullets on innocents. Not that innocents being killed are to be marginalized.

[Econoline]

I'm still looking, but so far the only hint of a statistic that I've found comes from here (from 1999):

A UC Irvine survey of local crime statistics shows that violence against non-gang victims has increased as a percentage of total gang crimes over the last few years. In 1996, about 59% of gang crimes involved non-gang victims; in 1997, it rose to 65%. In the first six months of last year, it increased again to about 70%, according to the UCI study.

So that at least implies that as of a few years ago in Orange County CA the figure was well over 50% and rising. There seems to be anecdotal evidence that it's continued to increase since then...and I also suspect that Chicago might be higher than the national norm for this sort of thing.

[Lord Jim]

I meant to comment on this earlier:

Insp Munnee is calling the grandfather “the Herne Hill hero” and says he is being supported by friends and family. He says police are not providing extra protection, but will remain on high alert.

“Mr Valenti knows if he were to ring the police, we won’t be treating it like a normal person ringing up. Mr Valenti is high on our priorities and if possible, I don’t want him to go through this ever again, and I’m sure he doesn’t either.”

And just what do you mean by that Inspector?

"Usually of course, when an emergency call comes in from someone telling us that there is a home invasion in progress at their residence, we take our time responding...especially if we've got something better to do, say we're in the middle of a hot card game, or there's Cricket on the telly...life's too short to rush about in a lather..."

"But in Mr. Valenti's case we intend to make an exception. We'll just chug down our beers and head over straight away..."

[Gob]

CHICAGO: An 18-year-old Chicago woman has been killed on the same day her sister sat on the stage behind President Barack Obama, listening to him push for gun control legislation.




Janay Mcfarlane was shot once in the head about 11.30pm on Friday in North Chicago, Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd told the Chicago Sun-Times. Ms Mcfarlane, the mother of a three-month-old boy, was in Chicago visiting friends and family.

North Chicago police said two people were being questioned in connection with Mcfarlane's death, but no charges had been filed.

"I really feel like somebody cut a part of my heart out," Angela Blakely, Ms Mcfarlane's mother, said. She said the bullet that killed Ms Mcfarlane was meant for a friend.

Hours earlier, Ms Mcfarlane's 14-year-old sister sat near Mr Obama at Hyde Park Career Academy, where he spoke about gun violence and paid tribute to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old student shot dead last month in a Chicago park. Police have said it was a case of mistaken identity, and two people have been charged.

Hadiya's death was one of more than 40 homicides in Chicago last month, a total that made it the deadliest January in the city in more than a decade.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/woman-shot- ... z2LEP2kgSw