When I was in boot camp, way back when, we had a single day of liberty. We had two choices, a museum in Chicago, or Six Flags Great America. The museum sounded interesting, but it was a couple of hours at the museum and then back to the grind. The theme park, however, was all day.
And there would be girls there.
It was a no-brainer.
However, that place that served as a respite from the hard life of boot camp is now the site of several people being shot.
Three people were shot in the parking lot of Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, prompting a heavy police presence.
According to a police source, the injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening. No one is in custody.
The amusement park, which closes at 8 p.m., was evacuated.
A Six Flags spokesperson confirmed the shooting, issuing the following statement:
Three people were injured this evening when shots were fired from a single vehicle in the parking lot. The vehicle immediately drove away. Park security personnel and officers from the on-site Gurnee Police Department Substation responded immediately. Emergency services responded, transporting two persons to the hospital for evaluation. A third person declined treatment.
The park closed early with guests and team members departing under direction of the Gurnee Police Department. Law enforcement is investigating.
Now, this is being classified by some as a mass shooting.
Well, it’s not. It sounds more like a drive-by to me. Someone knew someone else was going to be at Six Flags and decided to try and take them out there, possibly to make an example of them for some idiotic reason.
I mean, Six Flags Great America is just outside of Chicago.
Thankfully, no one was killed in this shooting. I mean, one of the shooting victims was good enough to go that they could decline treatment. It doesn’t sound like any of the other two will have any significant difficulties in recovering, either.
Yet this is in Illinois, a notoriously anti-gun state with a requirement to have a special ID in order to buy or own a firearm, among other things. How could this have possibly happened?
Well, maybe because gun control doesn’t work and never has?
Criminals get guns. They’re going to get guns just like they get drugs or whatever else they want. Then they decide to settle scores by shooting up a whole area. That often results in innocent people being hurt, yes, but the answer to that is not to make it more difficult for law-abiding folks to get firearms. It’s to go after the bad guys before they can hurt people.
After all, if you look at homicides, most are people involved with gangs–they’re either in them or have somehow insulted gang members from the outside. So focus there and you stop things like this Six Flags shooting before they can even happen.
Then again, if you did that, you’d likely be accused of being racist and then you wouldn’t win re-election in Chicago. Folks there don’t want solutions, they want scapegoats.