Cornell West On Sandy Hook: ‘We Can’t Just Shed Tears For Those On The Vanilla Side Of Town’

[Honeycombe8]

70. No...he said you guys don't pay attention unless it's "the vanilla side" of town. Pretty racist.

What if a leading professor said the media doesn't pay attention to elections unless too many from "the chocolate side" vote?

Really helpful.

But he's wrong. What this incident was about was that it was a mass murder - the largest in history in our country at a school. The shooter used a semi.

What he's talking about are guys in their own neighborhood doing drive bys or belonging to gangs, using regular pistols. An ongoing crime thing that happens in primarily large cities in the country, TO WHICH CITIES have tried to tackle.

Those are different sorts of incidents probably caused by different things. Here's what happened when Chicago banned guns, in an effort to deal with teh violence:

On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld a challenge to Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban, which ultimately signals the end of the ban on handguns in Chicago and Oak Park. As gun rights were extended throughout the country by SCOTUS, Chicago was recovering from another violent weekend that left at least 29 shot and three dead.

Even with the gun ban in place, shootings in Chicago have been rampant. Last weekend, at least 52 were shot and ten killed in just three days, and this weekend the gunfire continued. According to CBS, shots were fired into a group of about 30 people Sunday night--likely a crowd gathering in Uptown after the Gay Pride Parade. Two men were wounded in the incident, at least one suffered serious injuries.

When the Supreme Court ruled Monday (read the entire decision here), they did take these violent weekends into account. From the Supreme Court decision:

Chicago Police Department statistics, we are told, reveal that the City's handgun murder rate has actually increased since the ban was enacted and that Chicago residents now face one of the highest murder rates in the country and rates of other violent crimes that exceed the average in comparable cities.

The lawsuit against the City was brought by Otis McDonald, with several other neighbors, a 76 year old Af. American, who wanted to buy a handgun for protection.

That case was covered by the media....a big gun control battle resulting in a S.Ct. case that defined how the 2nd Amendment applied to states/cities banning or regulating guns.