Teenager who performed at Obama's Inaugaration cut down by gunfire this week

[Questionable]

Less than two weeks ago, Hadiya Pendleton was leading her classmates in the King College Prep School Marching Band down Pennsylvania Avenue on the afternoon of President Obama’s second inauguration. It would be an opportunity of a lifetime for any 15 year old, but for Pendleton, it was her last. On Tuesday, she was gunned down in a park a few blocks from school on the South Side of Chicago, less than a mile from the first family’s home.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Pendleton and another classmate, a 16 year old boy, were both caught in the middle of a gang war. The boy was still in serious condition on Tuesday evening, but Pendleton did not survive:
Friends of the slain girl said King was dismissed early today because of exams, and students went to the park on Oakenwald–something they don’t usually do.
Friends said the girl was a majorette and a volleyball player, a friendly and sweet presence at King, one of the top 10 CPS selective enrollment schools. Pendleton performed with other King College students at President Barack Obama’s inaugural events.
In the last year, Chicago has endured a surge of gun-related murders, more than quadruple the number of homicides in New York City and 58 percent more than the number of U.S. soldiers shot and killed in Afghanistan. During the recent debate over gun control, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has sought to place his city at the front of the push for reform, instructing the city’s pension funds to divest from any gun manufacturer and supporting more gun buyback programs.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/30/1514321/teenager-who-performed-at-obamas-inauguration-ceremony-is-the-latest-victim-of-chicago-gun-violence/?mobile=nc

Absolutely tragic.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Not the fault of the guns, though.

This sort of shit fuckin' breaks my heart, whoever the victim. And then I get angry, because inevitably people want to pretend that, you know, if guns weren't so widely proliferated this shit wouldn't happen. :angry:

[Ostrinski]

Okay is it just me or has this type of shit been going down like every single day here in the States. What the fuck

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah this crap happens every day. I just watched "Bloods and Crips: Made in America", and what happened in south central LA during the 1990's makes the entire Northern Ireland conflict look peaceful by comparison.

Violence has generally declined since then, though.

[Narcissus]

Tragic. How many people are accidentally stabbed? How many innocents does it take?

[Tenka]

Tragic. How many people are accidentally stabbed? How many innocents does it take?

Hey, man, back off with that Liberaltalk. We Leftists love our guns. How are we gonna overthrow the bourgeois state without our shitty handguns? Our AK47's?! Oh right you Democrat Party Houseslaves want to ban AK47's and disarm the revolution!!![/horrible sarcasm, sorry]

I wonder if this really was a "gang war" though, or some warped fantastical idea of something approximating a political assassination. :(

[Os Cangaceiros]

I wonder if this really was a "gang war" though, or some warped fantastical idea of something approximating a political assassination. :(

I highly doubt it. She was shot on Chicago's south side. Use Occam's razor.

[staperman]

:(:(:(

[Narcissus]

I always thought that we would never even need AK47s. I plan to smash the capitalists to death with a blunt instrument. As I understand it, AKs are easier to come by than venereal diseases, so when the time comes there shouldn't be many problems finding the neccessary 'persuasive devices'.

I think we cannot overpower government militaries with rifles. Possibly with explosives, but we won't even need them them. The proletariat shall march, and inevitably conquer any opposition on account of sheer numbers, a beautiful and just ideology, and the occasional sharp object to the head.

When it comes down to it, our enemies will be massively over-stretched and arms shall be easy to seize (if they are necessary at all). Bury an AK under the floorboards if you must. Is there any other need for them besides revolution (that couldn't be solved with a better lock on your door)? Please note that there is no hostility in this post - I would hate for it to be misconstrued as such :)

[o well this is ok I guess]

Hey, man, back off with that Liberaltalk. We Leftists love our guns. How are we gonna overthrow the bourgeois state without our shitty handguns? Our AK47's?! Oh right you Democrat Party Houseslaves want to ban AK47's and disarm the revolution!!![/horrible sarcasm, sorry] Don't you have a cpusa central committee meeting to be at or something

god
damn

[Tenka]

Don't you have a cpusa central committee meeting to be at or something

god
damn

You don't have anything better than that? No, I have no affiliation with the CPUSA and am personally offended at your suggesting what you suggested. Nor do I approve of bourgeois gun legislation; I just don't care about it, because I'm not one of those silly gun-fetishists or people who just likes shootin' shit.

Let's not make this thread about gun control, which would do nothing to disarm gangs anyway. I was merely mocking some general sentiment on here regarding these issues, since someone had brought up a trigger and I knew something was coming.

[Luís Henrique]

Mkay, no guns in this thread, please, or someone will evidently be hurt.

Let me guess, the victim was Black, wasn't she?

Luís Henrique

[RedSonRising]

This is the great irony of having a black president, and the streets being filled with black bodies.

A survivor on a lifeboat of privilege and power floating atop an ocean of class & race-based oppression does not erase the masses drowning beneath him.

[o well this is ok I guess]

You don't have anything better than that? No, I have no affiliation with the CPUSA and am personally offended at your suggesting what you suggested. Nor do I approve of bourgeois gun legislation; I just don't care about it, because I'm not one of those silly gun-fetishists or people who just likes shootin' shit.

Let's not make this thread about gun control, which would do nothing to disarm gangs anyway. I was merely mocking some general sentiment on here regarding these issues, since someone had brought up a trigger and I knew something was coming. Oh man you're belittling pro gun members of this site while saying you don't care about bougie legislation on it

[Luís Henrique]

Let me guess, the victim was Black, wasn't she?

To note, a Black American is at 5.8 times the risk of being murdered than a White American. An American Black man is at 7.1 times the risk of being murdered than an American White man.

A Black American is at 7.7 times the risk of being murdered by a firearm than a White American. An American Black man is at 9.5 times the risk of being murdered by a firearm than an American White man.

In other words, it has nothing to do with race.

(PDF here (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf))

Luís Henrique

[Lucretia]

The media is definitely exploiting this one. Let's guess why.

[Jimmie Higgins]

:(:(:(Hi and welcome - because of the subject matter, the emoticons are fine - but in the future, please don't make posts with only emoticons because we'd like to encourage exchange on the forum and try and discourage one-liners and such (not always successfully). A few years ago there would be threads where people would just respond with "+1", or thumbs up or down, or just meme-imgages and so that's the reason for the policy.

[Let's Get Free]

Yea, this is tragic. Unfortunately, this is not that rare in Chicago's South Side.

[Questionable]

Why are we falling into the some trap that bourgeois ideological camps fall into?

Gun legislation (Or lack thereof) can certainly affect the issue, of that I have no doubt. However, what really needs to be done is that things that throw youths out into the streets such as the corporate school reforms need to be stopped.

I'm not one of those leftists who is going to ignore the system, personally I'm in favor of some kind of gun regulation, but we mustn't forget what the real problems are here.