Chicago Boy Shot to Death: How's That Gun Control Working For Ya, Chicago?

Another bloody weekend in Chicago.

Here's a sampling of headlines: 

• Boy dead, 2 hurt in drive-by shooting - ABC7 Chicago
• Man riding in vehicle critically wounded in shooting - Chicago Breaking News 
• 2 arrested in South Side shooting -Chicago Tribune 
• 3 men, 1 woman shot in CHA lot on Near North Side - Chicago Sun-Times 
• Man Shot Outside Green Dolphin Street - NBC Chicago 
• Man Killed In Lincoln Park Shooting - CBS2 Chicago 
• Man charged in girlfriend's shooting - Chicago Tribune 
• Two found shot near each other on South Side - Chicago Breaking News 
• Man charged in shooting that led to police chase - Southtown Star 
• Another Uptown Shooting Not Thwarted by Positive Loitering - Chicago News Bench   

There were a number of other shootings over the past weekend in Chicago. Business as usual in this city of tight gun laws. Chicago anti-handgun laws are ineffective and not worth the paper they're printed on.

Perhaps that's an overstatement: Law abiding citizens do not own handguns in Chicago, so in that regard it's a smashing success. However, the bad guys still have plenty of guns, and they're not shy about using them. If Mayor Daley and his City Clowncil want to justify the Chicago handgun ban by saying it's intended to prevent gun-related homicides, then you'd have to say they are deluded.

The criminals have guns and use them to attack innocent people and, of course, each other. They laugh at the Chicago gun laws. Law abiding citizens are denied their right to own guns for self defense, thereby making it easier for the bad guys to attack them. The murder rate in Chicago is high, very high, and the overwhelming majority are committed by criminals with guns.

Don't blame the guns, though; guns are inanimate objects, as incapable of committing murder as any baseball bat, kitchen knife or screwdriver. A gun is a tool, and like a screwdriver or a hammer, it can be used properly or improperly. The proper use of a handgun is self-defense, but Chicagoans are denied this right.

How many attacks in Chicago would be thwarted before they leave victims dead or maimed if the victims had been able to fight back with a gun?

We cannot know the answer to that, of course, but it is reasonable to say that with a fighting chance some of those victims would have come out on top of the situation, instead of under a gravestone.

There is good reason why security guards are allowed to carry guns. Mayor Daley's bodyguards carry guns, and they are right to do so. The ordinary citizens of Chicago should have the same right to defend themselves with firepower that is allowed the merchants and the mayor.