Guns, Bay View, and Barrett

It's summer in Milwaukee -- City of Festivals. Every weekend is a celebration.

One of the oldest Milwaukee summer festivals is the South Shore Water Frolics, a weekend of fun, including a parade, craft fair, food, music, and spectacular fireworks.

This annual event takes place in Bay View, a unique lakefront neighborhood with a proud history and proud residents committed to their community's future.

Read about Historic Bay View.

Read about Bay View: Today.

Now, read about what happened in Bay View on Memorial Day.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Two people were killed and three others injured when a man opened fire on picnickers in a crowded Bay View park Monday evening, capping off what police called one of Milwaukee's most violent Memorial Day weekends in recent memory.

...Peter Quinones was sitting under a tree on a hill nearby, and he heard at least six shots but said the gunfire didn't catch his attention until the second or third shot.

Quinones said he turned to see a man wearing a white shirt and armed with a handgun methodically circling the tables where a group of about 10 people had been seated.

"At point-blank range, he was shooting," Quinones said. "We stayed for about five or six shots, and we got out of there."

Quinones said the man looked determined to cause damage.

Quinones said, "He was so concentrated on that table, it looked like he wanted to wipe out that whole group of people."

Quinones' brother-in-law Eduardo Perez saw one of the shooting victims fall down only to have the assailant fire at him again as he lay on the ground.

"He shot the guy when he was down. He wanted to make sure he was dead. This is wrong," Perez said.

...Monday's shooting raised the number of weekend shootings to 28, [Anne E. Schwartz, Milwaukee Police Department spokeswoman] said, four of them fatal.

Someone at South Shore Park at the time of the shootings described the scene, "This is a massacre here. It is a massacre."

But according to Schwartz, not to worry.

She basically told Bay View residents that there's no problem.

"We have a good idea who we're looking for, so the people in this neighborhood can rest easy," she said.

The shooting wasn't random.

So what?

Five people shot at a park, two of them murdered, shouldn't be reassuring to anyone.

I doubt that Bay View residents, people who've invested a great deal of money and effort into maintaining their homes and reviving businesses in their community, will take comfort in the fact that the victims of the shootings were targeted.

My guess is the Bay View Neighborhood Association, a group that "exists to maximize the quality of life for individuals and families, and to promote economic development in Bay View through activities that facilitate an attractive, safe and diverse neighborhood," won't be satisfied with Schwartz's reassurances.

Random or not, shootings in a crowded park cannot be tolerated by anyone under any circumstances.

"Don't worry, citizens. You're safe. Bring your children to the park to play."

That's insane.

Accepting Monday's violence, failing to respond with dramatic measures, is akin to condoning it.

That is how a neighborhood dies. And when neighborhoods die, the city dies.

When the NRA held its convention in Milwaukee ten days ago, Mayor Tom Barrett, Governor Jim Doyle, and The Journal Sentinel editorial board were sharply critical of the group.

Tom Barrett's icy "welcome" to the 60,000 visitors to his city included a letter to NRA President Sandra Froman and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

Barrett wrote:

"Parents should not have to worry about their children being hit by stray bullets while policy-makers and interest groups argue over ideology. It's time to have some fruitful discussions that will lead to safer streets and saved lives."

Guess what?

Law-abiding citizens did not commit the 28 shootings in Milwaukee over the long weekend.

Members of the NRA are not the problem, nor are they responsible for crime and murder.

It's so convenient for Barrett, Doyle, and lib editorialists to blame law-abiding gun owners for the gun violence. It's also completely fruitless.

They aren't the problem.

Barrett is right when he says that "[p]arents should not have to worry about their children being hit by stray bullets."

The reality is that parents do have to worry about that; not because there are guns, but because there are people who want to use them to kill other people.

He's the mayor of a city where children are not safe playing in a park at the lakefront.

What's he going to do about it?

Write a letter to the NRA?
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Update from AP