The right to bear arms Chicago or at least it's suburbs has twice recently headlined the world's news with tragic events. At a Lane Bryant store in an ordinary out of town mall called Brookside Marketplace five women were killed on February 2nd. The killer has not been captured. Then yesterday a 27-year old ex-student went back to his college, Northern Illinois University and shot dead five students and injured fifteen others before turning the gun on himself in a lecture room.

Tinley Park is from what I know a nice area, about 30 miles south-west of downtown Chicago. It is thought that the suspect planned to rob the Lane Bryant store, but got scared took six people hostage killing five of them, four of whom were customers enjoying a leisurely Sunday shop and one a part-time store employee.

Meanwhile Stephen Kazmierczak, apparently fitting the "quiet, white skinny guy" image had no motive nor previous criminal record. However he claimed infamousy around the world yesterday when he woke up in the morning and decided to do what he did. NIU is about an hours drive north-west of Chicago.

Yesterday's shooting was the fourth such incident on an American school campus in the past week. On February 8th, a woman shot two fellow students before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College, in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tennessee, a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student during a high school gym class on Monday and a 15-year died in a junior high school in Oxnard, California after being shot.

This sure can be a crazy country to live in. Remember a student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech last year. However not once in my time in Chicago have I felt even slightly threatened living in the city. Innocent young people probably thought the same until recently. As Chicagoan's try to consign these tragic events to the television news, life in Chicago goes on, BUT so does American's "right to bear arms." Sick.  ¶ 20:28