Murder in Minneapolis - A

A shootout between gangbangers in Minneapolis has left a 12-year-old girl dead.

The Strib's headline this morning? "Stray Bullet Kills 12-Year-Old". Powerline notes the media's soft-focus coverage of this tragedy - and, like many local critics, notices that the bullet didn't motivate itself. It was fired by "couple of Minneapolis's finest gangbangers", as Big Trunk of Powerline calls them, busily blasting themselves - no, blasting everythign around them into infinity, whilst leaving their own worthless carcasses untouched.

So what will (Minnapolis state rep) Wes Skoglund be talking about in re this crime, when the concealed-carry debate restarts? The bags of human scum that fired the shots? Or the fact that they had guns - without distinguishing their most-likely-illegally-obtained pistols from those of the law-abiding citizens he so constantly decries?

By the way, a Minneapolis police sergeant told me in 1986 - when gang shootings were still a bit of a novelty in Minneapolis - that the safest place to be when the bangers start shooting is...their target. The most dangerous place is 45 degrees off the line of fire, in a second floor living room, minding your own business. He was being facetious - the kind of facetious that comes from having to deal with this kind of crap for a living. This was right after an eight-year-old boy was paralyzed from the waist down by a stray bullet from a gang fight two blocks away. The bangers - firing at each other from across the street - all escaped unharmed, if memory serves.