Chicago’s experiment in blaming others for their incompetent self-governance continues with this result:
It has been a violent weekend in Chicago: in a 30 hour period, 25 people were shot, and one man died from his injuries.
I guess it’s the Texan in me but I found myself morally offended that with all that lead flying only one of those numbnuts managed to hit a center of mass. If you’re going to abuse your basic right to self defense the least you could do is have the good grace not to spray and pray (especially in a crowded urban environment!)
One of the charms of the old-fashioned Mafia was their ability to commit gruesome murders by the gross lot without hitting innocent bystanders. Marksmanship played a big role in that ability and its something the young murderers of today should seek to emulate.Just because you’re a sociopathic criminal, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some pride in your craft. Waste not, want not. You might need those bullets tomorrow when the SWAT team comes for you.
I would also note we can take some pride in the criminal class outside the large urban war zones. At least when two meth addled rednecks blaze away at each other, they usually managed to get at least one of them killed with only a shot or two. Surprisingly often, it’s a mutual takeout which works out well for everyone. Deaths of innocent bystanders are almost unknown. This is one of the many benefits of teaching your children to shoot.
Clearly, the long rural and small town traditions of teaching the moral responsibility of fire arms from a young age has not translated to the modern urban environment. This is why we need mandatory fire arms training education in our nation’s schools.
Since neither parents, communities nor schools in our urban areas seem to be able to raise up a generation of 16-25 year old males who understand that it not actually acceptable to murder another human being for a pair of tennis shoes, we could at least try to bring a certain expectation of professionalism to the mayhem. Who knows, perhaps technical standards will evolve into moral standards. If the criminal class learns that you should take the time and effort to learn to be able to kill in an efficient and responsible manner, it might occur to them that they should take the time and effort not to kill in the first place.
I mean, obviously, we have to start somewhere. Consider it a modest suggestion.
haha this post is awesome. I have to agree, if you are going to be a thug, at least be a great one.
The Mafia reputation for marksmanship might be a bit inflated as usually the gun is pressed against the head behind the ear.
One of my few criticisms of the movie, “Casino” was the fact that Joe Pesci shot the woman in the head and it did not explode in blood. Head wounds bleed pretty actively.
Some years ago physicians in the San Francisco emergency services published a study noting that 50% of the people in the emergency room who had been shot, had also been shot in the previous year. 80% had been shot within the previous 3 years.
The solution was, of course, education. You could see various ways it might go – graphic photos of the business end of pistols, with legends (assuming they can read) for the incipient victims to read: “When you see this, duck.” Or perhaps, “Leave the area. Tell an adult.” And some practice ducking, of course. Or perhaps lectures by ER Doc volunteers saying, “You don’t have to hang around with people who shoot you. You got 6 billion people in the world and not more than 2 of them have shot you, so far, so hang around with the other 5+ billion.”
I was always stumped by the question, “Who’s dumber? Someone who having been shot reselects associates so as to be shot again, or someone who thinks that “education” is the solution to getting shot repeatedly.
Simon Kenton made the point I wanted to – big city ER’s see the same gunshot victims over and over, meaning, I suppose, that some people are not very good shots.
It is horrifying. One of the main reasons I slid from left to right over the years was living in a succession of cities and urban environments and seeing the failures of standard progressive policies. The schools are awful, public services are awful, violence is awful, public finances are mismanaged. I’m not well read as many of you are, I can’t name classic conservative writers or thinkers much, but I look out at the world around me and think,” why can’t you draw the obvious conclusions?”
I am furious at my little corner of Chicagoland. Let me give you examples of my furiousness (some of which spills over into the local papers. I am very popular, naturally.)
1. Spending thousands on random painted signs to warn of the “dangers to the environment CO2” poses. No one knew what the signs meant.
2. Spending thousands on consultants who come up with ideas like, “you need a new slogan to improve local sales!”
3. A hippy-dippy concert will bring in patrons to all the local shops!
4. One cop covering an important beat, but many, many managers.
5. And my final EPIC FAIL: some city person designing an alley way where two garages and two pedestrian walkways converge, so that there is always the danger that cars will run over pedestrians because of the blind spots. It is almost literally a cross with two walkways crossing over two driveways. In a narrow cramped alley. Where trucks park to unload items because there is nowhere else for them to park. Sometimes you have people stranded on all sides by cars, people, whatever. No one can move anywhere.
6. Chicago and Illinois may be lovely in some ways, but the quality of governance here is hysterically, abysmally bad. Just today I LOST IT – a bit – in a public place complaining about local governance, and two young kids were laughing. I thought they were laughing at me, but it turns out they agreed with me. One kid has a dad who is a cop and all the kids think the place is screwed up.
We oughta run on a “throw the bums out party,” I mutter darkly. Seriously, a whole new crop of people has to run because the regular crew – big-gov CV credentialist careerists versus clueless local hippies, cannot govern.
AAAARGHHHH
Okay. I feel better now :)
– Madhu
I’m sorry, I must vent just a bit more. It’s a “chick” thing.
Even in my little urban-ish lalaland surroundings, people are wising up. Letters to the local paper include the following points:
1. Parents, grow a pair and discipline your kids!
2. Forensic audit, now!
3. You spent HOW MUCH on WHAT?
4. We need another new police station and it needs to be stationed on X street (crime-riddled, naturally.)
Seriously, I cannot believe the stuff I am reading. It’s like Shannon Love and the rest of the Chicago Boyz transported to the letters pages. Needless to say, those sorts of attitudes shock given my surroundings and the general political zeitgeist. I guess you CAN go to far….
– Madhu
You speak as if the criminal class of Chicago was not, in the main, readily identifiable.
@Michael Kennedy — Two shots with a .22 pressed up against the skull will do anybody’s business. The slug has enough m*v to go through once, but not twice. It ricochets around inside, bouncing off the skull and making three or four trips through the tissue before coming to rest. Much more destructive than the 9 mm the current generation of thugs favor. Oddly enough, there is less mess because there is no exit wound. The second shot is just a belt-and-suspenders thing.
It’d doesn’t rattle, it’s mushrooms on the other side, unless the brain has been removed.
Vanderleun,
You speak as if the criminal class of Chicago was not, in the main, readily identifiable.
Well, the one’s that hang around city hall are.
I shot a mac10 a few times. My proposal is to issue them to all gang members.
— even an expert, even a distinguished shooter, cannot keep the shots from one on a 9-ft berm at 50 yards. As guns they are like incontinent puppies.
— it takes forever to stuff the magazines.
— it costs a bunch to buy all that 9mm ammo
So you’d get a bunch of scrotes having to get good jobs to pay for the ammo, spending night after night in front of the TV having their brains obtunded while they loaded mags, putting a thumbprint on each shell, and then sluicing the upper stories of buildings above the heads of their would-be victims.
Madhu – “The schools are awful” – this is where it all begins, and explains the rest of your comment. The kids literally have no chance from day one with a dysfunctional family unit, then a dysfunctional school system that really doesn’t give a crap if they succeed, are punished, or make anything of themselves later in life.
Oddly, this extremely low bar may in part be to blame for the poor marksmanship of the thugs – if you never strive for excellence in anything, why would being a great thug be any different?
I wonder if all these shooters were actually aiming for a center of mass, or if they had something else in mind?
Shooting people in the kneecaps is a favorite method of debt collection and score settling for many gangsters. ISTR that the Crips got that name because of their penchant for crippling people.
it is just amazing -during last few years we can watch growth of violence all over usa… i am very sorry for all victums of this accident
Shannon, that was hilarious (and macabre).
Mitch – thank you, I learned new expression today!
Arion@Israel,
it is just amazing -during last few years we can watch growth of violence all over usa…
Actually, violent crime has been decreasing in the US overall over the last 20 years. In areas like Texas where the fundamental human right to self-defense is culturally and politically well respected, violent crime has decreased significantly.
For the last 40 years, murders have been overwhelmingly geographically concentrated in the dense urban cores almost all governed by leftists political machines. Chicago is a “good” example. Detroit is an even “better” example. New York city is a good example of what happens when left wing machine’s grip is broken (at least in law enforcement.) At present, New York is safer than London.
i am very sorry for all victums of this accident
This death and suffering isn’t the result of “accident”. It’s not as if dozens of guns loaded themselves, disengaged their own safeties and then where knocked around by brownian motion until they strangely and mysteriously went off.
It is the result of one human being making the conscious choice to (attempt to) use lethal force against another human being. It is utterly intentional. It is the very opposite of accidental. Worse, the human’s choose to kill others for often trivial reasons most often related to minor criminal enterprises. Disturbingly often (20%+), its just killings over status conflicts between criminals.
The very idea that this mayhem results from impersonal, natural forces is the fundamental cause of the inability of the local polities to address the problem and prevent deaths. As Confucius said, good government begins with honest naming. You can solve a problem if you’re not honestly describing it in the first place. Calling the conscious decision of individual human beings to kill others an “accident” is a fundamental violation of honesty.
@MItch, The movie, well worth watching again, did show an exit wound with dribbling blood. A .22 actually has more penetrating power than a 9 mm, just not as much total energy at impact because of the weight differences. The Army is starting to go back to the .45 because of the poor stopping power of the 9 mm.
Bullets into the head have lots of odd paths inside the skull. I have even seen one hit obliquely on the skull and travel around the head under the skin with no serious injury. My old professor used to teach us about the vagaries of bullet paths with an incident from the Boer War which he swore was true. A running soldier was hit in one heel with the bullet traveling up the leg, ricocheting on the pelvis and traveling down the other leg and exiting the other heel.
I once operated on a fellow who had an entry wound on one side of his abdomen and a bullet visible on the opposite side near the kidney. Drawing a line from entry to exit left the impression of a major injury. We rushed him to surgery and had a negative exploration. The peritoneum was not even penetrated suggesting the entry wound was also the exit wound of a very superficial injury. We saw no hemorrhage and, contrary to WEB Griffin novels, nobody makes an effort to find bullets if it is not easy. When he woke up, he was asked and told us that the bullet was from when he was shot last year. There was no scar from a previous exploration so he may not have even gone to the ER the first time. He had forgotten all about it.
The visibility, of course, was on x-ray.
Don’t judge me bro seems to be one of the ideas of our time and one with which I do not agree. I am a fan of making judgments. It leads to people acting responsible. When my children misbehaved, they received judgment and they are both fine men.
Parents take no responsibility for their children and if they are called on it, they play the don’t judge me card. Sex has been divorced from responsibility and if individuals are called on it, they play the don’t judge me card. Drugs lay waste to our young people and if anyone speaks up, the don’t judge me card is played. Immorality has economic consequences (inner cities seem to bear the brunt of this) and if anyone points it out, the don’t judge me card is played.
I am a fan of judgment and my response when I am told I am judgmental, my response is a hearty Amen.
Some of the shooting is bad aim. Some of the shooting is to humiliate and not to kill. The vast majority of the shooters and shootees are on probation , supervised release or parole. A great many of the shootees relate that they “heard shots and felt pain.” This is the extent of their cooperation in an investigation.
Praying for a pause in the disaster.
Majormarginal,
A great many of the shootees relate that they “heard shots and felt pain.” This is the extent of their cooperation in an investigation.
Doesn’t say much for their situational awareness. Maybe we should randomly shoot school kids with paintballs to teach them to pay attention to their surrounds. I mean, if we’re going to consign them to life in a war zone you have an obligation to prepare them for it.
“heard shots, felt pain” is a refusal to cooperate in an investigation and prosecution it is not a lack of situational awareness. Some shootings occur in the presence of uniformed police. In some of these incidents the officers and those involved know one another. It truly is a different way of looking at the world.
Most of the people in my personal protection classes are there because they are thinking of getting a concealed carry license. I tell them time and again that they are becoming warriors, they have to have a warrior’s awareness. They still find it hard to get the idea of scanning their immediate area. Every time. And as for getting the earbuds out – it’s proverbial tooth-pulling.
It goes a long way back. Shakespeare – the poet “gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” Hemingway – “Isn’t it pretty to think so.” It goes a long way back, but it’s more common than it ever has been, now. The MSM on the intentions of Muslims. The Krugmans on deficit spending and expanding government programs. Obama – Instead of Exxon, we’ll get James Cameron to help solve the BP leak. You can say what you like about post modern reality definition via linguistic structures, you can indicate in a million ways your uninterest in reality, but reality is interested in you. Some of these people will be saying, “An engineer. An engineer! My kingdom for an engineer.” And will discover they don’t know a single one, or the one they know is not interested in working with them.
Not “a modest proposal”?
Nick