By the hundreds, mourners filed into the pews of a crowded church on this city’s South Side on Saturday, clutching one another, weeping and wearing buttons adorned with the smiling face of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl whose death has come to represent the miserable cost of gun and gang violence.
“She is a representative not just of the people in Chicago, she is a representative of people across this nation who have lost their lives,” said Damon Stewart, Ms. Pendleton’s godfather, as he urged people not to politicize her death.
An array of Washington officials — the first lady, Michelle Obama; Arne Duncan, the education secretary; and Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser — were among dignitaries sitting in the front row. Ms. Pendleton, a member of her high school’s majorette team, traveled to Washington to perform during President Obama’s inauguration festivities only a week before she was fatally shot here.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has met with the girl’s family and spoken emotionally of her dreams for her future, attended, too, as did Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, who had alluded to Ms. Pendleton in his State of the State address.
As an emerging national debate about firearms has focused largely on mass shootings in places like Newtown, Conn., Ms. Pendleton’s death last month became a symbol for a different element of gun violence — urban and often quickly forgotten. Ms. Pendleton, a student at King College Prep high school, was shot Jan. 29 as she sat after school in a park, about a mile from Mr. Obama’s Chicago home, with friends — a group that the police say was probably mistakenly swept up in the cross-fire of a gang fight.
In Chicago, people said they viewed the sudden rush of attention on Ms. Pendleton as a needed shift in the consciousness of the nation’s third-largest city, which experienced more than 500 homicides in 2012, many of them from gun violence, and 46 more deaths since the start of 2013. If the city had grown inured at times to the stories of gang-related shootings, largely on the South and West Sides, Ms. Pendleton’s death appeared — at least for now — to have reawakened many people, even those in more upscale neighborhoods away from the worst of the violence and far beyond Chicago.
Yet another senseless death. And this one had nothing to do with assault weapons. Like the majority of gun deaths in this country she was murdered with a handgun.
You know the gun control advocates are taking great pains to tell the pro-gun people that they are not "coming for their guns." But you know I personally have no such compunction.
I have very little respect for the 2nd Amendment these days and would have very little problem with seeing it dramatically changed or repealed altogether. I know that is never going to happen, but that does not make me want it any less.
The real problem with guns in this country is that there are too goddamn many of them! They are fucking everywhere!
I cannot fathom the rational which seems to say that if having one gun makes you safe, than having an arsenal makes you even safer. How does that compute? What are these people frightened of?
Oh that's right, they are afraid of their government.
But not the one that started tapping their phones, or lied them into two wars, or trashed their economy. No THAT government was perfectly fine, it was only when the guy with the dark skin took up residence in the White House that suddenly guns started flying off the shelves by the thousands.
But he problem with having more guns in the hands of so-called "responsible citizens" is that those same people store their weapons in their glove compartment, in their closet, or stuff it under their mattress. And then some unsavory sort steals it from them, and the next thing you know some young girl, with her whole life in front of her, gets gunned down on the streets.
If your right to own a gun infringes on our right to raise our children in a safe environment, guess which one has to go?
Earlier today somebody made the point that there are more deaths by car accidents than by guns. And that is true.
However the main purpose of cars is for the sake of transportation, NOT to deal death.
What's more you have to pass a test in order to be issued a license to operate a vehicle, when you purchase a car it has to be registered in your name, not to mention that there are safety laws which dictate how fast you can drive one and that also require you to wear a seat belt while driving one, and if you are caught operating one under the influence of drugs or alcohol your right to have one GETS TAKEN THE FUCK AWAY!
So let's compromise. We keep the 2nd Amendment in place, but we have to adopt the same safety measures and regulations that dictate a person's right to operate a motor vehicle on the highways and byways of this country.
If you agree with that, then you are a undoubtedly one of the millions of reasonable gun owners. If not, then you are either a criminal, a paranoid anti-government zealot, or somebody with a mental deficiency, which to me means you should never have access to a gun, of any kind, in the first place.
And yes the government should then most definitely take away your guns.
I'm just saying.
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