Reports like this are as steady as the rain:
Police are investigating the shooting death of a man in the Cobbs Creek section of the city.
Police were called to the 100 block of 62nd Street shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday for reports of gunshots.
When they arrived, they found a 25-year-old man on the sidewalk. Investigators say he had been shot several times in the face and upper body. He was pronounced dead by medics at the scene.
Investigators say there are no surveillance cameras in the area and no witnesses have come forward. They continue to investigate.
The victim is nameless. The witnesses don’t come forward. There is really nothing to investigate.
Why did this young man die? We’ll probably never know.
So it goes.
Don’t know where Cobbs Creek is or even what city it’s in, but the same report could have come from any number of neighborhoods on the South and West sides of Chicago. Routine. On a warm weekend maybe 50 shootings and a dozen dead.
It’s in Philly, basically the western edge of the city before Delaware County.
And he died for any number of reasons common to west philly. You can tell it was deliberate by the number of shots and where they were targeted. So it was probably a beef of some sort, maybe an insult, a grievance over a girl, or the drug trade.
The witnesses, if there were any, won’t come forward because the cops won’t protect them, and then there would be retribution for snitching. And anyway, the cops in Philly are brutal and many are corrupt: I’m as white as can be and I avoid dealing with the cops. If I was black or Latino, I would give them even wider berth.
Thank you. My point was Philly, Chicago, L.A., New York, DC, wherever, it is a common plague. Depressing.
As of 6 hrs. ago here in Chicagoland 5 dead and 13 wounded by guns. Think CNN would show up if any of these victims parents held a news conference?
Ues, shan. It is a horror that it is so commonplace that we are no longer horrified. It has become a routine part of the morning news along with the traffic report. “55 minutes, from O’Hare to the Loop. In other news, five persons were killed on the South Side last night, in apparently gang related incidents.”
It’s not easy to kill a person without a gun. It takes more time, and is more likely to leave evidence that will catch the murderer.
Guns make it all so much easier.
It’s nothing that more good guys with guns couldn’t have prevented. /snark
Another victim of our ammo-sexual gun culture.
Nothing to see here.
Move along…
Shoot ’em. Bomb ’em. The default reaction so pure in its reflex it doesn’t even need a question or a jury to set itself in motion.
Who are we that we have allowed the NRA to flourish and the victims to lay lifeless?
I started a reply to this heartfelt comment. It grew. Now a standalone post.
Memorabilia Day. An Idea Whose Time Has Come.
AG
The Vonnegut allusion seems perfectly apt here.