Travels through America

Headlines on my travels last week--from L.A. to St. Louis to Chicago and back to L.A.--to visit Mom and go to my cousin's wedding.

How can anyone who reads a newspaper not become furious about our gun laws?--and about the 12,000 deaths each year? Twelve Thousand. Neighborhood by neighborhood and family by family.

And anyone who thinks it can't happen in their neighborhood or to their family, well... I hope you get lucky.

I agree it's hard to get passionate about any of the proposed measures to control who can acquire a gun--none of which promises to make a significant difference. So let's get passionate about the only measure that will--which is to not have 263 million guns flying around.

Los Angeles:

Toddler slain, uncle wounded in South L.A. attack
Son charged in father's gun death
Shooting suspect nabbed through parking ticket
Suspect may have been shot
Man, woman shot in drive-by
Loughner rulled unfit for trial
Campus lockdown [at San Pedro HS after shots fired]
Two found dead in Huntington Beach

St. Louis:

Four dead in Affton after domestic argument
Plea deal breaks down in Indiana school shooting
Man who murdered two in NJ church get life terms
Honolulu freeway shooting leaves 1 dead, 2 injured
Man pleads guilty to battery in shooting death
Teen accused in NJ cop's death charged with murder
Cab driver shot, killed in Mount Vernon
One gunshot victim dead, two hospitalized

Chicago:

Boy, 16, charged with murder in police shooting
Gunshots ring out after Des Moines street brawl
NW Indiana coroner: deaths look to be murder-suicide
Chicago man sentenced in nephew's shooting death
Jailed man charged in 2010 slayings of 3 men on Southwest Side
Kalamazoo officer's killer was drinking

Back to Los Angeles:

53 guns found in home where 2-year-old fatally shot 6-year-old
Four dead in possible murder-suicide in Chula Vista
73-year-old Arizona gunman kills 5, then self
(Homicide Report blog reports 10 deaths this past week that didn't make headlines)

NY Times (since I was reading it daily)

Bronx woman fatally shot, still clutching 2-year-old son
14-year-old boy fatally shot in Brooklyn [by 18-year-old]
Shooting in a Sheepshead Bay courtyard [2 dead]