guardian.co.uk - 700 views 
Over the last year, 42 young people have been killed in Chicago, all within a short drive of Barack Obama's home
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I've been reading stories about this for the last year or so. When I first started reading them, in the Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune, to be honest I dismissed them as being "normal city life" stuff. If you bring together enough people in one place, sometimes they kill eachother.
But they keep coming. Story after story. And now there's this one, with some heat-breaking anecdotes, but also with a lot of numbers about youth violence on the South Side. 605 kids is a lots of kids getting shot. That's 33 kids a month, like shooting up a whole classroom of kids.
If that did happen, if someone in Chicago blew away a whole classroom of kids, people would be up in arms over it. But that's essentially what's happening in Chicago every month.
Instead they largely ignore the issue.
Whet over at the Reader comments: http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/08/11/whos-the-man-an...
i think it's odd that it takes a report by the guardian for people to pay attention to the highly-localized gang war that's going on in the city. anywhere north of grand and east of pulaski is generally pretty safe, but neighborhoods like north lawndale and chatham have shootings almost daily.
the guardian article is shocking, as it's from a british perspective...a country where any murder is national news. what is it that separates our society so much from theirs? guns are certainly available (whether legally or not) in europe and canada but the murder rate is nearly nonexistant in most big cities. why do we accept it?
How many of the 605 shootings are actually children vs. teenage gang bangers? I know there are legitimately small children who are being shot, but many of these studies are highly misleading in that they use terms like "children" and "kids" to generate their stats without reference to the makeup. There's a big difference between "17 year old drug dealer" and "7 year old innocent bystander".
a 17 year old drug dealer is first and foremost, a 17 year old human being. there have been 605 shootings where the victim was under 18, hundreds more with adult victims. it has to stop, period.
If you don't think there's a distinction, why distinguish children from adults then? Everyone will agree there's a murder problem in Chicago, but let's understand the reality, not just hype. When the oldest "child" is 18 - which is actually an adult, last I checked - then stats are being used to mislead.
we're splitting hairs, but lots of 18 year olds are still in high school, which makes them kids as far as i'm concerned. it's still far too young for any life to end.
Aaron, I totally agree with the overall sentiment of the question you're posing. It IS slightly dishonest to not separate those deaths that are truly innocents from those that are involved in gangs. However, I also thought that the Guardian piece did a good job of explaining that there's a systemic problem causing all this and that's the proliferation of the gangs and the drug dealing which then leads to there being a "lost generation" the way they put it (of course it's probably more than one generation unfortunately).
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility and responsible parenting and all that good stuff. But the truth is a lot of these kids don't have good parents, they have near useless schools, no positive role models, etc. The article said they may start banging as early as 12 years old. Can we honestly expect a 12 year old with no support system to make all the right choices about how they should lead their lives? Think of yourself at 12. Even a kid in an affluent family, with all the support in the world, will make bad choices sometimes so what can we expect from a kid who lives in a ghetto?
I'm not sure what the solution to all this is. But I don't think dismissing kids who have made the wrong turns in life figures into it.