It's a good thing malls are "Gun Free Zones"...

Or else someone could get shot.



Unsurprisingly, two of the three suspects have criminal records:

Officers are searching for 20-year-old Daniel Jermaine Anderson, 16-year-old Michael Mayberry and 17-year-old Anton Nelson. Anderson served a short sentence in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for possession of a controlled substance in 2008-09. Muskogee police issued a warrant for Mayberry's arrest earlier in the week on an unrelated case.

Perhaps it's time to make the "gun free zone" a less target rich environment.

Father, 2 children shot on South Side.

Hopefully, this will be my last post on the war zone that used to be Chicago.

April 6, 2010 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A father and two children were shot near 61st and King Drive Tuesday night.

Witnesses say they were just walking down the street when a man walked up and shot them.

The gun banners say that when you're confronted with an armed criminal, you should just give them what they want. What if they just want to shoot you?

More Chicago violence:
More Chicago Madness
What is going on in Chicago?
Chicago: 40 shot, 4 killed in 48 hours.
Blood in the Streets
Spring has Arrived

11-year-old Chicago boy stabbed while saving mom from intruder.

More victims of the civilian disarmament brigade. Luckily, they came out on top this time.

Eleven-year-old Luis Reteguin is being called a hero after fighting off an intruder in his family's home on the Northwest Side Friday.
A man smelling of alcohol and carried a knife broke into the home at about 1 a.m. and entered Luis' mother's bedroom.

You have to be pretty bold to invade an occupied home with nothing more than a knife. Or you have believe that no one in the house is armed. Either way, I believe Chicago will be a safer place when it's citizens have the right to own handgun.

More Chicago Madness.

The past two weeks in Chicago have been very bloody. This is just the latest in a long string of events:

A 21-year-old man told authorities he shot an 84-year-old man outside a South Side McDonald's restaurant because the elderly man had "disrespected" him, Cook County prosecutors said this afternoon.

The elderly man is moderately hard of hearing and didn't understand when his attacker asked him for $1 on Monday, according to prosecutors.

Melvin Hammond responded by shooting the man, hitting him in the thigh, Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto said as Hammond appeared in Cook County Criminal Court.

There isn't much more to say than what i've already said in other posts:
What is going on in Chicago?
Chicago: 40 shot, 4 killed in 48 hours.
Blood in the Streets
Spring has Arrived

What is going on in Chicago?

Apparently, the warm weather has caused the criminals of Chicago to lose their collective mind:

A 14-year-old boy was critically wounded after he was shot as many as three times as he was walking to school this morning in the West Side's Austin community, Chicago police said.

There are people who will maintain that this is a gun problem and all that's needed is stricter gun laws. But why is it that places where guns are exponentially more available suffer fewer crimes of this kind? Chicago doesn't have a gun problem. It has a culture problem.

A culture created by generations of broken families, career criminals, and government dependence all leading to a significant portion of the population having little to no education, no marketable skills, no desire for a better life, and no hope for a better future. And it's not limited to Chicago. Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, New Orleans, and any other city plagued with gun crime is dominated with a similar, broken culture.

Open carrier the first one to be shot?

One of the common criticisms of open-carry is that having a gun on your hip will result in an increased chance of you being the first person killed during a robbery/etc. The scenario is played out as follows: Crazed gunman runs into Starbucks, sees you with a gun on your hip, and says to himself, "That guy's armed. He's a threat. I better shoot that guy first." *BANG* Then he goes on to rob the place and/or shoot everyone else.

I've recently come across a good counterpoint to that criticism:

First One To Be Shot:
There are some who criticize open carry and claim it will make you more of a target or ‘the first one shot’ when a robber walks into the 7-11, despite the absolute lack of credible evidence that this has ever happened.

[...]

Robbing is an inherently apprehensive occupation, and one that doesn’t respond well to instant modifications. He is not prepared to commit murder when he only planned for larceny. He knows that a petty robbery will not garner the intense police manhunt a murder would. He doesn’t know if you’re an armed citizen or a police officer and isn’t going to take the time to figure it out. Either way, if someone in the 7-11 is unexpectedly armed, how many others might be similarly adorned and where might they be? Does this armed individual have a partner who is likewise armed behind him in the parking lot, someone who is watching right now? Self preservation compels him to abort the plan for one that is less risky. So we see that the logic matches the history; open carriers are not the first ones shot because it doesn’t make any sense that they would be.

And if you look at the anecdotal evidence, the author is right.

Banned in the UK...

Flame throwing scooters are illegal in the UK. The reasoning? It's considered an object converted to a firearm.



Interestingly enough, flame throwers are legal to own in most of the US as they are not considered firearms. Naturally, California is one of the states that prohibits them. You can always depend on California to ban the fun stuff.