A . . . cartoonist (?) explains why it's OK for Pfleger to call for the "snuffing out" of people

The list of people trying to exploit a brave young man's death as justification for the passage of more draconian gun laws keeps getting longer. This time, it's cartoonist Martha Rosenberg.

It's been a month since 16-year-old Blair Holt, son of a Chicago Police gang investigator and a Chicago fire captain, was shot and killed riding the bus home from high school.

Like Bill Cosby's son, Michael Jordan's father, Serena and Venus Williams' sister, and Chicago-area Congressman Bobby Rush's son, family proved no hedge against gun violence for Holt.

I'm not sure why anyone would have expected a person's family to render him bulletproof, but thanks for clearing that up, Martha. I might point out that Chicago's draconian gun laws also "proved no hedge against 'gun violence.'"

But do the 21 Chicago students killed by guns since September -- two from Blair Holt's school -- mean Chicago's gun ban doesn't work as gun lovers contend?

(And since it doesn't work, should we be allowed to buy 18 guns at once to protect ourselves? Including automatic weapons? And weapons from unlicensed dealers to avoiding background checks?)

Well, since you ask, yes, yes, yes (although you do realize that very little effort is currently being made to lift the extreme restrictions on fully automatic weapons, don't you?), and yes.

Or does it mean that suburban gun shops are arming the city from its borders and stoking and profiteering off the violence?

Gun shops sell guns--the proprietors have neither the ability or the responsibility to read the customers' minds about their intentions, or to divine the future about how a gun will be used.

Father Michael Pfleger, the outspoken pastor of Chicago's St. Sabina Church, known for defacing tobacco and alcohol billboards in his church's neighborhood, believes the latter.

True, he is a known vandal--a criminal in other words--does that lend him some kind of authority that us non-vandals lack?

Pfleger is not alone in seeing the bodies pile up while the gun lobby croons about the Second Amendment.

I have never known gun rights activists to "croon." We do mobilize to defend our rights. There was a time--not so long ago--when standing up for rights was a respected tradition in this country.

The Mayor himself has gotten nowhere with gun legislation thanks to suburban and downstate politicians in thrall to the gun lobby.

The downstate legislators who vote against Daley's efforts to impose Chicago-style "gun control" over the entire state are "in thrall" to their constituents, just as they should be.

Pfleger got few Valentines for his trouble. In fact he got swift boated. The Illinois State Rifle Association issued a press release trumpeting, "Chicago Priest Calls for Murder of Gun Shop Owner" (murder as in "snuff") and launched a media event.

The truth hurts, I suppose. If Pfleger wishes not to be accused of trying to incite murder, he should probably refrain from publicly exhorting mobs to "snuff out" businessmen and legislators.

But unfortunately the tactic does work. Recently, Pfleger's superior, Cardinal Francis George, felt compelled to share his nonsupport for the priest by telling Chicago newspapers that "Publicly delivering a threat against anyone's life betrays the civil order and is morally outrageous, especially if this threat came from a priest."

So the Cardinal is wrong, for (rather mildly) rebuking a priest for making public threats of violence?

Is the world's most powerful religious organization bowing to the gun lobby? Like the world's most powerful legislative body has?

World's most powerful legislative body? Is that what we have? I'm pretty sure that's not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

It could be that the Second Amendment will be needed for its true purpose sooner, rather than later.