CHICAGO (AP)
"The Rev. Jesse Jackson was arrested Saturday at a demonstration outside a south suburban gun shop.
Prompted by the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old honor student on a Chicago Transit Authority bus, Jackson and other community activists have held several protests at Chuck's Gun Shop in Riverdale in recent weeks. Jackson says the gun shop's proximity to Chicago provides gang members and criminals easy access to firearms.
At a protest Saturday, Jackson and the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest who oversees a South Side congregation, were arrested when they refused to move away from the gun shop's entrance, police said in a statement. Both were charged with one count of criminal trespass to property.
Jackson has used the protests outside the gun shop to call for stricter gun laws.
A message seeking comment from the gun shop was not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.
Blair Holt, an honor student at Julian High School, was killed when a gunman opened fire on a CTA bus. Two teens have been charged as adults with taking part in the shooting, which police said was gang-related. Holt, who was not the intended target, was among nearly three dozen public school students killed this year, school officials say."
Proximity to a gun shop provides easier access to firearms. Kind of goes without saying doesn't it? But, really now, how many gangbangers are going to the suburbs to legally purchase a gun in a gun shop? Chicago's no gun policy has simply moved the legal source for personal protection away from town. Gangbangers will have no real problem buying or stealing guns from other street criminals. Using the "proximity" argument that Jesse makes, then he is working toward disarming all of downstate next. If he is successful at persuading the whole state of Illinois to be disarmed, which seems to be his goal, then I suspect that Indiana gun shops, by reason of their "proximity" to a gun free zone would get much, much busier. Making access to firearms more difficult for non-criminals is not even remotely solving the problem of gang violence. Denying the non-gangmember citizenship of their 2nd ammendment rights to arm and defend themselves is certainly no solution.
The biggest problem with this silly protest by the Reverend JJ is that he seems to give the gangbangers who did the shooting a free pass in order to harass a legally operated business. I've heard no public comment yet from JJ about the shooters. Will Jesse be providing their legal defense and perhaps be giving the gangbangers in question a scholarship after they are eventually released? That has been a common theme with Jesse and gangbangers in the past, such as the football game brawlers in Decatur, back in 1999, and even up to the scholarship he offered to the Pole Dancing Duke Rape Accuser. Jesse wants to make news or better yet for him, be the news, but does not seem to want to attempt to cure the anti-social behavior that is the underlying cause of much of the gang related violence that spills over into the legally unarmed population of Chicago.
It seems like a better idea to convince his "constituancy" of gangs and criminals to take some personal responsibility, as Bill Cosby has suggested, rather than simply taking every insult or disrespect so personally and seriously that they will spray lead randomly when offended. The only gun control that would have prevented the murder of an innocent bystander in this situation would have been better marksmanship. Lack of, or impared social skills and poor marksmanship are two of the real problems plaguing the innocents in Chicago, not Chuck's Gun Shop out in the suburbs.
Another question for school officials who are quoted that nearly 3 dozen students were killed this year... How many of these were non-involved innocents, and how many were active gangbangers? It seems that these figures should not be combined unless you are trying to subvert reality.
The problem, as has been noted for many years by many people, isn't the guns, it is the criminals who use them to commit crime. Rather than deal with that, JJ seems to prefer that innocents should not have any defense capability. The gangland criminal element will continue in their tribal like civil wars, armed to the teeth, but John Q. Law Abiding Citizen must be disarmed. How can this make sense to anyone?
2 comments:
As I've heard many times before, if guns were responsible for killing people, then spoons are responsible for making Michael Moore fat.
Cwazy wethwuglican,
You can have my spoon when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
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