It's time to look beyond guns and see where responsibility lies

Jody Weis, the new Chicago Police superintendent, is still a mystery man to a lot of us. He's not from here, has never been a beat cop, is a former G-man and looks pretty strange in that big police hat he sometimes wears with his dress uniform.

Now we know that he must also be clairvoyant, a social seer and fortune teller. Or maybe he just has great sources in the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington.

Superintendent Weis, well before the Supreme Court issued a surprise ruling that re-opens the way for legal handgun possession in Chicago and several suburbs, said something that foretold the landmark legal decision.

Guns don't kill … parents do. Or he said something close to that.

Days before the court's gun decision last week, Weis was speaking off the cuff about the wounding of an 8-year-old boy from the Humboldt Park neighborhood. The second-grader, Josue Torres, was hit by two bullets fired from a passing vehicle in what detectives believe was a street gang ambush aimed at the second-grader's stepfather, who is a suspected gang member.

"I hate to say it," said Weis anyway, "but the parents are to blame for that 8-year-old boy being shot."

The parents are to blame, said Weis, because they basically planted the kid in the line of fire by being involved in the ruthless world of Chicago street gangs.

The parents are to blame, he said.

Not the gun.

Not the guy firing the gun.

Not the guy who provided the gun to the shooter.

Or the neighbor from whom he took the bullets.

It wasn't the gunman's second-grade teacher who taught him reading who was to blame.

Or the Burger King boss who fired the shooter for showing up late.

Government budget cuts weren't to blame, or Blagojevich, Bush or Jon Burge the accused police torturer.

"The parents are to blame for that 8-year-old boy being shot," said Weis.

He said what a lot of people think but are usually too scared to say. When a man with a lengthy arrest record for alleged gang crimes gets out of a van and is immediately shot at by an assassin in a passing car, maybe there is a connection, d'ya think?

Of course as soon as Weis blamed the parents for what happened, the threats hit the fan at City Hall. The victim's mother demanded a retraction and apology. The 30-year old stepfather, Carlos Feliciano, denied being a gang member. The family's lawyer threatened a lawsuit.

Mayor Daley, who hired Weis, wasn't exactly a stand-up guy for his new police boss.

"We have to find out who it was" who did the shooting, said Mr. Daley. "Someone driving down and stopping the car and intentionally shoot in -- there has to be more to that accident."

Accident? Hardly.

Random? Unlikely.

Mistaken identity? Yeah, sure.

Parents are to blame? According to Weis, they are.

Maybe he should have just said the stepfather was to blame instead of using the word "parents" because the 8-year-old's mother apparently isn't a gang member.

But she certainly knows her current's husband's background. Carlos Feliciano has a deep reputation for gang activities in Humboldt Park. His police file lists assaults, burglaries and dope charges. Currently he is on parole for arson.

So, at the very least, his mother is to blame for using poor judgment selecting a stepfather/role model for her son.

Last week, as the heat was still on Weis for blaming the parents, the Supreme Court gun decision came down. The ruling, overturning Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban, was certain to ricochet toward Chicago's similar ban. Second Amendment advocates have already filed suit here.

The staunchest backer of Chicago's ordinance prohibiting handgun ownership within the city limits is Mayor Daley.

Daley's police superintendent seemed much stronger in blaming parents for out-of-control violence than he was willing to blame an overturned gun control law.

"If the result of this [Supreme Court] ruling is more guns on the streets" said Weis, "it'll make it more challenging for law enforcement."

That much is obvious. It won't be a good thing for anyone if more illegal guns end up on the streets. At the same time, it wouldn't be a bad thing if more responsible, law abiding gun owners, were able to protect themselves.

But there is another, more important part of the gun violence equation and Superintendent Weis seems to get it.

Parents should have more to do with keeping their own children safe than the police, their teachers, the Department of Children and Family Services, the justices of the United States Supreme Court or Smith & Wesson.

"I hate to say it" said Weis "but the parents are to blame for that 8-year-old boy being shot."

In other words, the boy wasn't wounded because somebody shot a gun in his direction.

If his parents hadn't put him there, the bullet would never have hit him.