Murder, 101: How to stop the killings.

Another dead body, just another day in Chicago. And the world. Eh, all I have to do is turn the page and it's gone. Oops, there's another story of a promising young kid gunned down in broad daylight for no reason. Take a sip of coffee, skip ahead a couple of pages. There, all better. Oops again! Islamic Militants killing UN workers for...insulting their God? Nope. Practicing another religion? Infidels!! Nope again. For trying to help the sick? To quote Col. Hans Landa from Quentin Terantino's brilliant Inglorious Bastards, "That's a bingo!" Where did it all begin? And where will it all end? I don't know about the crap on the other side of the world, but here at home, I have an idea.

I have given up on trying to figure out what exactly won't piss off Islamic Militants these days. You draw a bad cartoon, somebody dies. You make a bad movie, somebody dies. You tell one that their mother wore combat boots, someone dies, despite the fact that she probably really did wear combat boots. Most likely during inception, but I digress. So it was with a shrug of the shoulder and a weak, "eh," that I took in today's news that a police officer protecting a group of U.N. workers in Pakistan was killed by motorcycle riding attackers straight out of a James Bond movie. Their crime? Attempting to vaccinate the local kids from polio. The reasoning? The attackers believed the workers were spies attempting to sterilize their Muslim children. Well, as sick as it is, at least they have a cause. Lunatics who choose to kill in the name of their God are just that. Lunatics.

But, at least raving, rifle waving, Islamic militants have a cause. Completely unlike the rampant youth lobbying volleys of lead at innocent crowds of kids that had somehow not been sucked into the very life that would ultimately be their demise. Today was just another day, but within a few miles of the house I was working in yesterday, at the very time I was bending pipe and pulling wire, a couple of punks without a soul stole the lives of two innocent people, causing immeasurable grief to two family's, whose lives now will never be the same. The first story is all too common. Fifteen year old, promising student at a college prep school, described as a "walking angel", mom was on the verge of moving to the burbs, killed in a park blocks from her home. I've heard it too many times before.

The second story is even more heartbreaking. Mother loses second son to gunfire, twenty seven year old father of five, killed a block from home in the area of the exact same store his younger brother was killed in less than 2 years ago, trying to get a certification for an honest job. And, I swear I am not making this up, this pales in comparison to the murder last week of what was the fourth, the fourth of four children to die in the same family. How can one human being be expected to deal with that kind of tragedy and heartbreak? Could you actually go on, losing all four of your kids? But all of this is not new. This kind of shit goes on 24/7, in all corners of the globe. So why the long lament? Because I think I have a solution.

Saw a bumper sticker the other day, and old marine saying. Kill 'em all, let God sort it out it read. Nice, right? But there is some method in that madness. Remember the old series of tough guy movies from the seventies? Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and so on. Always, in the end, they would sort of go all vigilante on society. The bad guys would be dead, and sure, they would get yelled at by their Captain. But in the end, the world was a little safer. Okay, bad analogy I know, but here's the rub. In Pakistan, or Algeria, or Iraq, or wherever there is this pervasive lawlessness and militants kill at will at the drop of a hat, it's a faceless enemy. But here, back home, in Chicago, these kids, these fatherless monsters, these gangbanging losers with no life, no future, and no soul, they have a face. Somebody out there knows them. Somebody knows who killed Hadiya Pendelton and Devin Common yesterday. And they choose to do nothing.

What if they made a phone call? What if they told a priest? What if they joined forces with other like minded members of their community and drove the bad guys out? But what if they got a gun and put a hole in the forehead of the piece of shit that just ruined a family forever? Would anyone care? Or would they applaud?