Paralyzed uncle took bus to deliver gun to girl who shot friend

[SecularMotion]

An uncle who was paralyzed after being shot in 2010 took a bus to deliver a loaded revolver to his 14-year-old niece just before a fatal confrontation fueled by comments made on social media, Cook County prosecutors said Wednesday.

The uncle knew his niece planned to use the .38 Special to confront the onetime friend over a feud about a boy, prosecutors said. Endia Martin, 14, was fatally shot as she tried to run back inside her cousin’s home Monday afternoon in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Prosecutors revealed that a witness to the shooting had captured the entire incident on video with a cell phone and that the evidence was now in the hands of authorities.

The suspect’s uncle, Donnell Flora, 25, appeared in court Wednesday in a wheelchair, wiping his face with his hand as a judge told him he was being charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder. He was ordered held on $3 million bail after prosecutors said he knew the niece planned to take the gun to a fight.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-30/news/chi-endia-martin-murder-charges-20140429_1_16-year-old-girl-14-year-old-girl-gun

[djean111]

1. Awwww, the family that murders together, stays together. In jail.

[BrotherIvan]

2. It's not the gun's fault

That girl could have beat the other one to death! Good thing it was so easy for her to get one to settle that incredibly important dispute!



I'm glad to see the uncle charge for supplying the gun. But I do wonder if anything could have been done to prevent a totally "irresponsible" person from getting both of their hands on a deadly weapon and take the other girl's life.

[gejohnston]

3. with a baseball bat maybe

or use a kitchen knife.
Illinois has a gun licensing scheme dating back to the 1960s. Chicago has a defacto ban on ownership. He could not have legally went to another state to buy it in a gun store or gun show, both would be violating the 1968 Gun Control Act. Even if he could, I doubt he would pass the background check anyway. Most likley he bought it from his drug connection. If they ran the gun's make, model, and serial number chances are it will come up as being reported stolen about 10-15 years ago.
Australian police still haven't figured out how to keep never registered pistols and home made sub machine guns out of the hands of biker gangs and drug dealers.

BTW, how can an inanimate object be the blame for anything? That would imply it has a soul or the ability to reason. Some religions believe might believe that, but they are a small minority in the US.

[BrotherIvan]

5. A gun is a deadly weapn

It is designed to kill. Beyond simulating killing (target practice) it has no other use. A gun in any situation ups the chance of injury or fatality exponentially. If there had not been a gun, there may have been a big girl fight as I have seen some brutal ones in my day. There may have even been injury or broken bones. But there would not have been a shooting.

[gejohnston]

6. there wouldn't have been a shooting,

that doesn't mean there wouldn't have been a homicide or grave bodily injury. About 900 people are murdered with bare hands each year in the US, roughly 3-4 times the number killed with all rifles and shotguns (which "assault weapons" are a subset of) Just because firearms are used in most US homicides does not mean that is the case anywhere else. Only one third of Canadian murders are (one third edged weapons, one third blunt objects (like baseball bats and lock chains) and bare hands. Guns are used in less than 20 percent of Mexican and UK murders.

In this case, both were armed with some type of weapon. Had the shooter did not manage to get the revolver, she would have showed up with something else.

[BrotherIvan]

7. I notice you "massaged" the number of gun deaths to fit your fantasy

Yes, rifles and shotguns aren't the big killers. It's handguns but you knew that.

According to the CDC 2010 report http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

Total number of homicides 16,259

Total number of firearm homicides 11,078

Please, proceed.

[gejohnston]

8. Actually that wasn't massaging

I simply compared the number of bare hands and feet with what I openly said was a type of firearm. Massaging is using the 30K gun deaths per year meme but forgetting to mention most of them are suicides.

[BrotherIvan]

9. I guess the words total homicides vs firearm homicides whooshed on by

But keep whistling past the graveyard of corpses, then people might lose all ability to see the facts.

[The Straight Story]

10. Out of how many people in the US?

Now your argument might well be that since most homicides used a gun if we took them from all citizens and only allowed police, the wealthy, and people in power to have them then we would have less homicides overall.

Ok, I will grant that as a logical conclusion. So.....Now what? Remove guns from over fifty million+ people who own them because of the very very few overall that do? Naw, we don't want to go down that path. It leads bad places when you apply the same ideals/values across the board.

Make new laws? Ok, which ones would have prevented people from doing something illegal already (using a gun in the commission of a crime for one of many they probably didn't adhere to).

When you make an object the problem there aren't a lot of solutions.

So a person might take a look at where those crimes were, try to get some background on them etc.

You might find gangs, alcohol, drugs, and such as being big factors. You might want to look at why many areas with high gun ownership rates have less gun involved crime than others in an effort to find a solution to add to things.

All that is, of course, assuming you want real answers to the core problems and not just a knee jerk emotional response that makes people feel good.

Why do the very few out of the many who own guns do what they do? For some, yes, having a gun made it easier. But that goes back to the fault of the person because a lot of people could have taken an easy way out/violent/etc of a situation who also own guns - but didn't. So do you, because of those few, try to impact the rights of the many or do you look beyond what they used and their access to what is actually going on?

It depends on what your personal biases and goals are.

[sarisataka]

4. Beat to death...

Not too far off from what was going on

Flora’s niece pointed the gun at the aunt of a 16-year-old girl in Endia’s group who pushed the gun away, Santini said. The 16-year-old girl then swung a lock on a chain at the 14-year-old girl’s head but missed.

If you actually read the article you would find this was the second encounter between two groups backing their respective fighters. I wonder if there is anything to be done to teach teens to not have mass brawls over Facebook comments.

Gun or no gun, someone was going to be seriously injured or killed.

[ileus]

11. Don't we normally approve of taking a bus?