“Chicago’s public school officials have been busing students to Springfield to act as ‘grief’ machines to advocate passage of stronger gun control measures by the Illinois legislature. Using children as props to score political points is shameless, not to mention pointless, as even some of the students themselves recognize. Chicago has some of the strongest gun ban measures on the books in any city in the United States, yet guns are still on the streets in the hands of gang members and the teenage death toll mounts. This is not unusual — gun violence is on the rise in cities across the country where stringent gun control laws are in place.” (04/15/08)