Random Acts of Violence, not kindness

(GunNews) – The residents of Champaign County are once again witnessing the aftermath of a particularly vicious and senseless act of random violence in their community.

Four teenage boys, just ‘children’ in the minds of some in our society when it comes to criminal violence involving guns, allegedly beat a homeless man to death with their hands, feet and rocks.

The victim of the attack, Robert Nash, 55, did not deserve to be brutally attacked and beaten.  He begged for the teens to stop beating him.  Instead of stopping, they began stoning him and kicking him.  He pleaded for them to stop.  One 16-year-old then strangled him.

As if that was not evil enough, the youths bragged about the attack to other people.

These teens deserve the harshest of punishments.  Sign them up for a Department of Corrections ‘Prison Bitch 101’ course.

These kids are the product of incompetent parents.  If these parents had taught their children right from wrong and taught them to respect those older than them…

But they didn’t and they are not alone.  Many other parents have not taught their children right from wrong either.

This is why we have random acts of senseless violence.

You don’t have to engage in risky or illegal behavior to be at risk of being attacked for no reason.  You can be a homeless man minding your own business walking down the street or Jane Citizen walking in her Urbana neighborhood.  “Jane” was a 42-year-old woman beaten and raped just this week by another teen.

This is why we need a real “permit-to-carry” in the state of Illinois.

By allowing qualified and trained card-carrying good guys the right to choose whether or not to carry the means to defend themselves, their families and other innocent people around them, we can make Illinois a safer place to live.

How many more women need to be raped, innocent people murdered and average citizens beaten before people like Dannel McCollum, candidate for Illinois State Senate, quit “not feeling that unsafe” and decide to support this proven, common sense measure?

Permit to carry is proven, scientifically, to reduce homicides by 8.5%, sexual assaults by over 5%, and assaults by over 7%.

Maybe McCollum thinks that a few thousand Illinois women being raped and a few hundred residents being killed is an acceptable price to pay so those irrationally afraid of guns can feel “safe.”

This originally ran in the October 2002 issue of GunNews and remains as true today as it was then!