Take a Deadly Tour with Me: Tinley Park, Kirkwood & De Kalb

On February 02, 2008, a killer herded six woman in a Tinley Park Lane Bryant store into a room, blindfolded them, and proceeded to execute them with a bullet to the brain one at a time. Robbery was the supposed motive, but there are doubts on this being the case. He fled the scene and has not been caught. One woman survived and is in protective custody. America's Most Wanted has covered the story.

This store is only about 10 miles from where I live. I've driven past it any number of times.

It's close to home.

On February 07, 2008, a man entered a council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri, and killed three members of the city council and two police officers. He was killed by responding police.

It's close to home too. Or close to where I go. Oddly, I found myself in that small suburb outside St. Louis this week. I drove past the police station, where I had driven any number of times before. There was a huge memorial of flowers and balloons and stuffed animals. The burials were ongoing.

On February 15, 2008, on the campus of Northern Illinois University, a 27 year old graduate student appeared on a stage dressed entirely in black and proceeded to kill six people, a teacher and students. He wounded many others. He then killed himself. He was "off his meds" and had been behaving strangely.

Yes, this is close to home too. I don't go on campus at Northern Illinois University, but I go to De Kalb, Illinois every so often.

If I were marketing this tour, I would include it under the "Most Deadly Places to Visit" heading.

Think about it. We have suffered in a week more causalities than in Afghanistan or Iraq. Our fellow citizens are under attack. You can argue about the whys and the how comes, but you can't deny it.

What's more, is you have no protection. You could very easily be the next victim. I can be too.

These killings are way too close to home. And they are random. Go to the grocery store, end up dead. Visit the library and you are shot through the heart. Walk to your car and you are sprayed with rounds from an automatic weapon. These are not killings done by gang bangers in certain neighborhoods. These killings, mass killings, are happening too close to your home. They are being committed by people who look like you and me.

There is only one solution..

The media and politicians would have you believe that the solution is taking guns away. That's the usual bromide. However, taking the guns away has made mass killing easier. In the city of Chicago, some 150 away from me, no good citizen can legally carry a firearm. In the state of Illinois, where I live, and where two out of three of these massacres happened, no citizen can carry a concealed weapon. That's the law. Break it, and you are in big trouble.

The law, however, is making any tour that you take on any day an extreme risk to your life.

I don't walk out my door with a firearm.

But I'm starting to wonder if the law is going to get me killed.

The solution is simply more guns, less crime.

Despite what many think, the Old West was a very polite place. You didn't want to mouth off to the next guy, because you could see his six shooter. And thugs didn't pounce on woman to rape them as they no doubt had a small Derringer hidden away in those mounds of clothing that women used to wear.

It's high noon here in the Midwest.

It's deadly, and it's close to home.

Too close.