Shooting victim's grandma decries city violence

Seven-year-old Ashlee Poole was enjoying her Easter jelly beans on her front porch with her cousin and her mother when bullets started flying.

She scrambled for safety behind her mom, who was holding open a glass door shattered by the gunfire that erupted on South Hermitage Avenue in front of her home.

"Her cousin fell on top of her trying to get inside," said Ashlee's grandmother, Bessie Long. "Her mother dragged Ashlee inside and was screaming more than the child was. Ashlee said, 'Grandma, I've been shot.' She began to pray. She was asking God to take care of her."

Monday, Chicago police were hunting for suspects in Sunday afternoon's shooting in the Englewood neighborhood. Twenty-one shell casings were found on the street outside Ashlee's home in the 6000 block of South Hermitage, police spokesman Thomas Donegan said.

She was taken to the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she was treated for a bullet wound that damaged her kidney and her colon, and nicked her spine, Long said. Ashlee underwent surgery to repair her colon and was expected to receive a CT scan to see whether she suffered permanent damage to her spine, her grandmother said.

Sergio Moyett, 34, has been charged with the April 16 killing of 14-year-old Jeryme Brown, whom Moyett mistakenly suspected of throwing rocks at his van in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, prosecutors said.

Julio Martha, 17, and Juan Hernandez, 22, have been charged with wounding a 10-year-old girl April 15.

The girl, whom police did not identify, was hit by a stray bullet in a gang shooting, police said.

Long held a news conference Monday to denounce the violence. She pointed out that a bullet shattered a rear window in the same home last Father's Day.

"You can't sit on your porch, and your children can't even play in the backyard anymore," Long said. "This is absolutely uncalled for."

Ashlee had accompanied her mother, Brenda Jordan, and her grandmother to church services Sunday. Later in the day, Ashlee, a first-grader at nearby Earle Elementary, finished a book report due Monday at school.

"She asked her mother if she and her cousin, Pierre, could sit on the porch after she finished her homework," Long said. "I gave them some plastic eggs filled with jelly beans."

The 7-year-old cousins and Ashlee's mother were on the porch when shots rang out about 4:45 p.m. Sunday.

Police said they suspect the shooting stemmed from an argument earlier in the day when a man was visiting a girlfriend on the block. Another young man confronted him and snatched a gold chain from his neck, police said.

The man whose chain was pulled from his neck returned in a 1992 Chevrolet Astro van that was stolen earlier in the day, police said.

The man--and perhaps an accomplice--opened fire on the group involved in the earlier confrontation, police said.

Area 1 detectives were interviewing witnesses Monday to confirm the identity of the man whose gold chain was taken.

"The incident has left the family in a state of emotional shock and fear," community activist Derrick Mosley said, adding that he has sent letters to African-American churches urging them to assume more responsibility in preventing such shootings. "This is black-on-black crime. We must address this."

I didn't say anything about more gun control for responsible people, I said do more to get illegal weapons of the street.

At the heart of gun control is declaring more and more guns "illegal guns" and trying to get them "off the street." It's about making the responsible people get fingerprinted and licensed and registered, which the criminals don't and won't bother with. In Chicago, all guns are "illegal guns" because guns are banned there. What do you propose to do? Search people in the streets who are carrying? If they are carrying, they will automatically have "illegal guns" because there is no legal ability for your alleged responsible people to carry them.

And Britian may have increases in crime but that is a trend, they still have an amazingly low homocide rate compared to the U.S.

... and this has always been true for the last 100-150 years, during most of which time guns weren't regulated in either place. Hence, it isn't easy to pin murder rates on gun ownership levels - or gun laws - as the gun grabbers tend to do, and as you are doing.

I don't think gun control is the answer,

Then don't support it! Let responsible people carry guns or at least own them in their homes, and the crime rates will take care of themselves. Your solution, getting more "illegal guns" off the streets, sounds just like the DEA efforts to get drugs off the streets. Billions of dollars and dozens of lost individual liberties later (even for us responsible types) and drugs are purer, cheaper, and more available than when they were legal. Your solution is to step up the War On Guns. Why?

I mean how many people rob a store or get into a street showdown with a rival gang using guns they bought at Wal-mart? Get these illegal guns off the street.

Would a few billion dollars directly to the ATF do it for you? Random searches of people and houses? Clothes-penetrating submillimeter wave radar? Gun-sniffing dogs? Roadblocks? What is your plan? And how does that plan differ from Sarah Brady's plan? Guns are already banned there - there is already zero population of people buying guns at Wal-Mart. Yet gang members manage to have guns, just like they manage to have drugs.

Yes gang members manage to have guns. How do they get them?

Because they're let out of jail, those who should be in jail. As for the rest of them, how do they get drugs? Drugs are totally illegal, and not for sale at Wal-Mart. Yet somehow, they manage.

Find that out and put a stop to it.

Like the present spectacular failure of shutting down the drug trade?

What would you rather have, an all out battle royal in the street with inoccent victims getting blasted on a daily basis? All out anarchy and fire and destruction on the streets of Chicago?

1. Innocent victims getting blasted on the streets is already what is happening with the present gun controls. See the title article. 2. There is no case in history where allowing concealed carry to peaceable citizens has resulted in the all-out battle or anarchy that you describe. In light of these two facts, would you care to modify your position?

You're missing my point which is to find out how they are getting them and stop that

And you're missing my point which is that guns are totally banned under all circumstances ... but nevertheless are everywhere. The model of prohibition, especially to a select group of people who are already disinclined to comply with laws will be difficult. May I say impossible.

..it isn't even a conventional gun control issue, I didn't say take guns away from average people with searches.

How will you find out which bad guys are carrying or possessing, without searching a few innocents? In any case, guns are already essentially banned in Chicago, so anyone whether peaceable or not is "criminal" if they have a gun. Hence, the present laws fail to distinguish pistol-packing gang criminals from pistol-packing single women living alone and in fear of their lives.

What should be done is seek out whoever is distributing these weapons find all of them, and deal with that element.

Same as drug dealers? Could you please provide any evidence that this approach you suggest actually works?

Make it impossible for a 15-year-old gang member to get a gun for $30 bucks in the school washrooom.

And how do you do that? There are already laws against guns in schools, and metal detectors in schools, and laws against criminal gang members having guns, and laws against minors owning handguns, and laws against paperless transfers, and laws against people owning handguns generally in Chicago. Unless you post full-time police informants in school bathrooms, and install even more metal detectors, etc, you won't get what you seek ... but you will oppress the non-criminals even more by forcing them through the detectors, and invading their privacy by having cops watch them when they pee.

And I don't have the answer of how to do that, I am not a cop, and I have never even thought about a way to tackle this before this morning.

No, I can see that you don't and you haven't.

But I'll keep you posted if I think of something. I just thin the idea of arming everyone and saying "shoot to kill" will end up with more inoccent deaths and the beasts will end up on top. The answer to a violence problem isn't always "MORE GUNS!"

I never said "arm everyone" - that's a straw man argument. But to the extent that citizens accomplish the task of shooting back when criminals shoot at them, isn't that simply the enormous (citizen) police presence that you struggle to identify, without however passing a single law or increasing the cost of government one dime? Before you answer this with comments about anarchy and blood in the streets, please remember that there has been no example ever in which this feared outcome has come to pass - even though the gun grabbers take out radio ads in each new state that decides to go for a shall-issue bill. And, it's notably absent in Vermont where citizens don't even need permits of any kind to carry concealed weapons. Where is the blood on the streets in that state?

Okay I did some research and found out...that 40% of handguns used in violent crime are sold legally meaning 60% are illegal.

For Chicago? Please cite your source.

ANd most of the illegal weapons were purchased through rogue gun store employees who care nothing of public saftey. Not through street dealers as I first thought.

Again for Chicago? Source?

SO now we can stop comparing them to drug dealers.

On the contrary most guns used in crimes in Chicago are handguns, and handguns are banned there. So the comparison is not only reasonable, it's spot on.

You spoke of Britain's crime rate vrs gun control (saying that I was wrong in comparing gun control to homocide rates which is exactly what you were doing). So I looked at other countries.

How does what other countries do impact a discussion of Britian's recent experience with banning guns and watching crime skyrocket almost immediatlely afterwards?

Canada for example, has plenty of guns too, but it is much harder to get a handgun there...consequently they have 15.3% less (per capita) homocides involving guns.

You're a bit too quick on the draw with the "consequently" statement there; you are implying that one thing causes another. It's hard to buy handguns in Canada and therefore gun homicides are lower there. (And, why this fascination with gun homicides? Are people killed by other means somehow less dead?) I have already told you that you don't even need a permit in Vermont to carry a concealed handgun, let alone to buy a handgun, and violent crime rates in that state (including gun murder rates) are lower in that state than nearly any other in the US. If you want to draw a "consequently" from your Canadian comparison, then I will draw a "Vermont recognizes the right of self-defense of its citizens and consequently has low violent crime rates." So there.

And by the way, you forgot to discuss the positive influence of gun control/prohibition laws in countries like Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico where guns are banned and violent crime, including gun homicides, occur at a rate far higher than in America.

And since gun control (which I oppose but came across this info) has taken affect there the crime rate has dropped to the lowest rate in 20 years.

At least they didn't ban guns there... look at Australia as well as England. (By the way, if you don't support gun control then why do you use all of their arguments, such as separating out gun homicides as if they were special?)

And the city of Vancouver British Columbia, has the poorest postal code between Canada and the U.S. along with the largest open drug market. But their violent crime rate is remarkably low compared to that of U.S. cities with the same problems.

You got this argument straight from the gun grabbers. Vancouver is lacking in a particular demographic that is abundant in Seattle, with which Vancouver was famously compared by gun grabbers, for a gun-grabbing purpose. If you look at the crime rates among European-Americans in Seattle and Vancouver, you will find that the violent crime rates are actually lower in Seattle than in Vancouver, despite the "easy availability of guns" in the former location.

As for Vermont, Vermont and Chicago are two completly different places, with different social problems and populations and laws. So comparing them is useless.

And yet you compare Canada with America, for which the same criticism applies. Your double standards are showing. I originally compared just one country: Britain before banning guns, with Britain after banning guns. Why do you reject that comparison but then advance similar ones?

Compare Detroit and Chicago, Detroit, with no handgun ban has a much higher rate of violent crime.

It also has a devastated economy from car manufacturing moving overseas. Again your double standards are showing. If you want to control for ethnic, cultural, economic, and demographic variables, you wouldn't cherry-pick states or locations as you do - instead you would study all of them together, especially watching crime rates as the gun laws in those states have changed. This study, by the way, has been done, by one John Lott. He started out as a gun grabber, incidentally, but changed his mind after looking at the results of his own study. (Also incidentally, several vocal pro-gun academics used to be gun grabbers, but changed their minds when they realized the facts. But there are zero examples of academics who started out as gun rights advocates who are now gun grabbers after scholarly research. FYI. These people include Gary Kleck, David Mustard, and David Kopel, as well as John Lott.)

But I also found cities with no ban and much lower crime rates.

And so what you draw from this is ... ?

Oddly enough though I found that Windsor Ont, Canada 1000 meters from Detroit had only 4 gun murders last year while in Detroit there were 354. If you work that out to population density Detroit would have a rate 18 times higher than Windsor.

And the ethnic breakdowns in the two places are? And the economic health of the two places are ? And the reason you restrict yourself to analysis of gun murders is ?

In Canada, it is hard to buy an illegal gun becasue the dealers are watched closely making it hard for them to sell to a dangerous person.

That is the case in this country as well. Permission from the federal government is required for any gun dealer to sell to any individual.

So maybe a crackdown on dealers without a care for the saftey of others is in order.

Yes, bring in the storm troopers and crack down on dealers! And you say you don't support gun control.

That way regular people can keep their guns and it is the dealers who will take the heat. And if they are selling illegaly I don't care if they do.

Even though these are the people allegely arming criminals? Now, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

And although I didn't look it up I am sure you can take a look at countries such as Zambia, SOuth Africa...etc that like the whole idea of an armed population and see how that has worked out for them. Because it hasn't worked well at all. There, now instead of just picking apart everything I said why don't you show me some stats to support your argument. Not just more "guns guns guns" talk

I have difficulty presenting my own arguments because you flog me with discredited "studies" from the gun grabbers (such as the Vancouver result), or reject a comparison I offer, and then make one of your own that is subject to the same criticism.

But here is my argument: Criminals don't obey laws and won't not murder someone just because a gun is illegal. But peaceable citizens do obey laws - and they are disarmed by gun control. Places such as Chicago that ban guns create a defenseless population that makes for easy pickings by the criminal class. The result of that is that crime flourishes. As is presently the case. In the nice areas of Chicago there are plainclothes officers on every block, and people "feel" safe and crime is indeed fairly low. But in the bad areas, it's a war zone and crime is high. Where did the story at the start of this thread occur? I'm willing to bet in the latter. More gun control, stricter crackdowns on so-called "illegal" guns, etc, won't fix the problem. It might take a few of today's criminals off the streets, but others will fill there places as surely as other ants swarm over dropped food, even after some ants are stepped on.

If you want the crime to drop, you have to present a siginificant deterrent to crime in the minds of those who would be criminals. Unfortunately, these people don't understand subtle concepts like how much more investment would come to their neighborhood, and how much better things would then become, if only crime rates were lower, which is why they shouldn't hold someone up right now. Instead, they only understand simple things like "this person has money and I don't and I'm stronger" or other similarly basic thoughts. With uniformly disarmed non-criminals, not much else matters.

Without even "arming everyone" as you say, but merely allowing those who wish to be armed to be so, the cost of sticking people up, or engaging in random acts of violence, the cost of crime from the criminal's standpoint, rises sharply. Even if 1 in 10 people were armed, that's still a 10% chance of dying on this particular holdup. Would you stick someone up for $50 or $100 if you had a 10% chance of being killed? It values your life at only $500 or $1000 - and even the street thugs can discern that their life may be worth more than that.

I appreciate your replies to my posts, by the way.

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