Free Republic

Long before Gakirah Barnes was murdered in a hail of bullets on the South Side, her mother had heard the unsettling, persistent rumors about her. Her 17-year-old daughter — the same 5-foot-3, 128 pound girl once seen as shy at school — was known for something almost unheard of on the streets of Chicago. There are teenage girls who are accomplices in gang murders. There are girls who hide gang guns for their boyfriends. But Barnes was believed to be a “hitta” — a female assassin for a faction of the Gangster Disciples, law enforcement sources say.

Can we please stop holding the country hostage to crazy people? Every year a tiny number of mentally ill people go on horrific killing sprees. It just happened in California. I won't name the person because I think the media attention lavished on these horror shows encourages some of these young men -- and they are almost all young men -- to seek fame or validation through bloodshed. In an entirely human response, we get spun up into a frenzy of finger-pointing. In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, many of the country's leading journalists and politicians suggested the...

Chicago, aka Chi-town or The Chi. Or Chiraq. That latest nickname might not be as popular as the others, but it caught on in pockets here and across the nation as the city’s killings and shootings made headlines. Blame it partially on the pundits: They’ve long suggested, often erroneously, that Chicago’s violence is similar to that found in Iraq during the war. And to those who use the word, it embodies the attitudes that have created a Chicago where shots fired are commonplace and shooting deaths are expected to climb as the weather warms up. But some people are ready...

It's good to know that the shooting of a 10-year-old girl on a Milwaukee playground still has the ability to shock and motivate people to action. Sierra Guyton was gravely wounded near N. 28th and W. Clarke streets May 21 in a shooting that alarmed residents across the city. The first news reports alone were enough to make anyone with any sense of what makes a civilization function question how this could happen. A little girl playing outside her home with her sister gets trapped in a rain of gunfire more suitable for a Hollywood action movie than a residential...

Chicago has many law-abiding gun owners who handle their weapons safely and responsibly. The ordinance proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to regulate gun sales in the city is not about them. It's about Chicago's other gun owners: violent thugs who kill innocents as well as each other while terrorizing countless citizens with the ever-present threat of death by bullet. Those are the people who have given this city a murder rate far higher than that of other big cities, including New York and Los Angeles. The measures Emanuel requests won't incapacitate all or most of them. But they would make...

The city of Chicago doesn’t want gun shops, within its borders but a federal judge says that’s unconstitutional. So how does the city respond? With an ordinance that allows for shops but signals that strong resistance by imposing smart restrictions on gun shop owners. In other words, the mayor’s office looks to have gotten its ordinance right. Too bad the ordinance, introduced in City Council on Wednesday, will have absolutely no impact on Chicago’s real gun problem: the unceasing flow of illegal weapons into the city. The ordinance monitors gun sales in the city, but almost all illegal weapons recovered...

Everyone should be concerned when an 18-year-old is being held in connection with a shootout on a school playground that left a 10-year-old fighting for her life. Sylvester A. Lewis is expected to be charged Wednesday. He has been arrested 15 times since the age of 12 and was on probation at the time of the Clarke Street Elementary School shooting on May 21. Police are looking for a second suspect, and three other people were taken into custody for aiding a felon. This cannot be the end of the narrative. We have seen this repeated too many times in...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is proposing a far-reaching ordinance that would keep gun stores out of most parts of the city and require them to videotape every sale to deter customers from buying firearms for crooks. The ordinance is a response to a federal judge’s ruling in January that Chicago’s longtime ban on gun stores was unconstitutional. Emanuel chose not to fight the decision, and the court gave the city six months to approve store restrictions short of a ban. The deadline is July 14. Under the proposed ordinance, special-use zoning would keep gun stores out of 99.5 percent of Chicago,...

In a case that may continue to refine Wisconsin gun law, an appeals court panel on Tuesday is set to hear a Milwaukee man's claim for the return of his gun, which police say was used in a crime, though no one was convicted. Judges may consider both the limits of so-called open carry and the court procedures by which hundreds of gun owners each year seek return of weapons confiscated under a variety of scenarios. Briefs filed in the case explain the situation: Aaron Ols, 37, was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct while armed, but prosecutors amended...

"Enough is enough. She's innocent. She didn't bother nobody." That was Onjuan Guyton's plea as his 10-year-old daughter Sierra Guyton struggled for life after being caught in a crossfire Wednesday evening on the playground of Clarke Street Elementary School. Think about that: A 10-year-old shot on her school playground. What kind of world allows that to happen? We hope Onjuan Guyton's plea of "enough" resonates in the neighborhoods around Sierra's school, and stirs parents, community leaders and young black men to stand up against the violence around them, as columnist James E. Causey urged in his column Friday morning. Without...

Before the 14-year-old girl allegedly fired the shot that killed Endia Martin, the .38-caliber revolver had touched many hands. A south suburban gun shop known for selling weapons later used in crimes in Chicago. A Hyde Park man whose mother did not want the gun in their home. A former Atlanta man now living on the South Side who would appear to be a middleman of sorts in the gun's journey. The paralyzed uncle of the 14-year-old girl who, prosecutors charged, rode a bus to give the gun to his niece before the fatal confrontation. Someone at the 14-year-old's side...

You don't have to do racial profiling to use the "broken windows" style of policing, and if too many black youths are being locked up for non-violent crimes, then we need to address that. If an officer stops a young black male for a tail light out and all he finds is a small bag of weed, let it

After keeping his mouth shut on that growing Veterans Affairs scandal for weeks, President Barack Obama finally acted. Not with deeds. But with words. The scandal involves reports of secret admissions lists, falsified data and some 40 veterans dying while waiting for treatment. JOHN So Obama did what he does best. He talked. He didn't fire Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. Firing Shinseki would suggest he was actually taking responsibility, rather than just talking about taking responsibility. So instead Obama did his thing with words. He's a talker, this President Windsock from Chicago, first leaning this way, then that, considering...

Milwaukee Ald. Ashanti Hamilton got to the heart of the matter at a community meeting on the north side Monday when he said, "We all have a role to play in the condition of the city. Ninety percent of the work doesn't cost money. It's a change in the mind-set of the people who live right here." Of course, a few more police on the streets also can help. Hamilton spoke at a meeting of the Black Male Achievement Advisory Committee, but that meeting — with more than 100 people in attendance — turned into a community forum on violence...

When L.C. Stevenson Sr. heard police would by paying money for firearms on Saturday, he figured it was time to finally get rid of the small handgun he had inherited many years ago from his mother. "It's a hand-me-down gun," Stevenson said. "Never used it. Never shot it. I don't need a gun in my house anyway." Stevenson took the gun to Tabernacle Community Baptist Chuch on Milwaukee's north side, where police, who had set up a gun buyback station in the parking lot, gave him a check card worth $100. Stevenson was among scores of people who showed up...

Chicago Police found two guns and more than 160 rounds of live ammunition hidden in a Gresham neighborhood garbage can Tuesday on the South Side. Tactical officers patrolling the Gresham District were flagged down by a person who told them the firearms were stashed in a trash can in a nearby alleyway, according to a police statement. The officers found a rifle, shotgun, scope and the rounds of ammunition inside a plastic trash bag, police said. “This is an important example of how members of the commu

Madison — In a pingpong match of court orders this week, a federal judge halted an investigation into conservative groups' political activities, an appeals court immediately blocked that ruling and the judge then reinstated his injunction blocking the probe. They were the latest twists and turns in the complex litigation surrounding the secret John Doe probe looking into fundraising and spending during the attempts to recall Gov. Scott Walker and state senators. Here's a look at how the situation got to this point and where it could go next. Q. Who launched the investigation? A. Milwaukee County District Attorney John...

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a halt to the "John Doe" investigation targeting groups including Americans for Prosperity, here seen holding a pro-Scott Walker rally in Madison in 2011. The challenge brought in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee was filed by Wisconsin Club for Growth. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa on Tuesday ordered a halt to the John Doe investigation that targeted the recall campaign of Gov. Scott Walker and “all or nearly all right-of-center groups and individuals in Wisconsin who have engaged in issue advocacy from 2010 to the present.” In issuing his preliminary injunction, Randa sided with...

Second Amendment absolutists complain that gun control advocates are an out-of-touch elite seeking to destroy the way of life of real men who pack heat. At the National Rifle Association's convention in Indianapolis last weekend, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre warned his members that their lifestyle was under assault. "I have never seen it on edge the way it is now," he said. "If it's going to be saved, it's in our hands. It's in your hands." There's no better venue than this gathering to experience the pain and joy of gun owners. To those not steeped in guns, the...

Jeremy Gorner, Steve Schmadeke and Steve Mills Tribune reporters Before the 14-year-old girl allegedly fired the shot that killed Endia Martin, the .38-caliber revolver had touched many hands. A south suburban gun shop known for selling weapons later used in crimes in Chicago. A Hyde Park man whose mother did not want the gun in their home. A former Atlanta man now living on the South Side who would appear to be a middleman of sorts in the gun's journey. The paralyzed uncle of the 14-year-old girl who, prosecutors charged, rode a bus to give the gun to his niece...