Free Republic

A man who was attending a memorial for victims of gun violence was fatally shot at a Brooklyn park early Sunday, authorities and witnesses said. Daquan Spencer, 30, was at the event inside Scarangella Park near Stillwell Ave. and Avenue V when someone started shooting around 1:30 a.m.

The refrain is heard almost as often as the fatal gunshots: The way to reduce Chicago’s gun violence is tougher prison sentences for repeat gun offenders, keeping them off the streets and decreasing the city’s mounting death toll. That idea, pushed by the mayor, police superintendent and others, shifts pressure from patrol officers of the city’s West and South sides to the Capitol, where legislators will consider how to balance law and order with finding alternatives to imprisoning young blacks and other minorities.In that building, in the same Senate seat where Barack Obama launched his political career and focused on...

The gunshots that rang out just after midnight last September sent youths in the neighborhood running scared. One 22-year-old man was killed. Three others, just passing by at the time of the altercation, were injured by the gunfire. Sound familiar? It's not a scene from Chicago. This shooting, stemming from a "spilled drink," happened near the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus.

Congressman Danny Davis is a Democrat representing Illinois's 7th District, which includes some Chicago neighborhoods hardest hit by gun violence. His own grandson was shot and killed last November. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We hear now from Congressman Danny Davis. He's represented the 7th Congressional District since 1996, but gun violence is not just an abstract concept to him. His 15-year-old grandson Javon was killed in a dispute over borrowed clothing last November, and Congressman Davis delivered the eulogy. He was kind enough to host us in his offices on Capitol Hill. Congressman, thank you so much for speaking with us...

— A national holiday celebrating nonviolence and Martin Luther King Jr. erupted into mayhem when eight people were shot at a park named after the slain civil rights leader.

**SNIP** The man had been shot in the head. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later. He was identified as Hakizimana Scott, of the 800 block of North Laramie Avenue, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Hours earlier, a 20-year-old man was slain in the 7800 block of South Lowe Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood about 8:55 p.m., police said. Officers responded to a calls of a person shot and found the 20-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his chest in the basement of a building, police said....

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Jefferson City Police have made six arrests in what they're calling a drive-by shooting Monday afternoon. Jefferson City Police Captain Doug Shoemaker confirmed to ABC 17 two men were shot at around 2:40 p.m. near School Street and Lafayette Street. The police department arrested Tavion R. Jones, D'Angelo R. Harris, Rasheem M. Wallace-Jackson, all 18, Lashone V. Gates, 19, Antonio R. Carpenter, 17 and a 16-year-old suspect. A department news release on the arrests said all six suspects live in Columbia. The two victims sustained non-life threatening injuries and were taken to Capital Region Hospital. Both...

Two of the plaintiffs in court cases against Sen. Barack Obama, the president-elect, are working to move their cases forward before his presidential inauguration. Philip J. Berg, the attorney who filed suit against Mr. Obama challenging him to produce his original birth certificate to prove he meets the constitutional requirements to serve as U.S. president. Mr. Berg filed a Writ of Certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court late in October, in an effort to force Mr. Obama to produce the document. Accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that Mr. Obama, the DNC and all co-defendants are to respond to...