More on guns

We shouldn’t have to train students the way we train Marines.

Jay Sargeant, principal of Cary-Grove High School, said in an email to parents that students will participate in a “code red” drill on Wednesday. It will include somebody shooting blanks from a gun in the hallway “in an effort to provide our teachers and students some familiarity with the sound of gunfire.”

In other gun news:

A 15-year-old Chicago honor student who participated in inaugural events celebrating President Obama’s re-election was fatally shot Tuesday just blocks from her school.

Hadiya Pendleton was among approximately a dozen teens taking cover from the rain in a local park at 2:30 p.m. when a gunman jumped a fence and opened fire, according to reports. Pendleton and other King College Prep students had been dismissed from school early due to exams. She was with other members of the school’s volleyball team, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.

The gunshots sent the entire group running out of the park in a panic, authorities say. Pendleton and a 16-year-old boy were both hit and collapsed about one block away.Pendleton was shot once in the back and later died at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital. The wounded boy was in serious condition Tuesday night, according to the Tribune.

and another tragedy, also attributable to the fact that literally anyone in this country can get their hands on a gun, regardless of their fitness to possess a lethal weapon:

Around 3:30 p.m., a man identified by neighbors as 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes allegedly boarded a Dale County school bus as it made a stop on Private Road 1539 in Midland City and shot [driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66,] before leaving with a 5- or 6-year-old child.

Witnesses and neighbors said Dykes fled into a homemade bunker located on his property. […]

Neighbors said [Dykes] didn’t appear to know the child he took from the bus and has no children of his own.

“I talked to a girl that was riding the bus, and she told me that he came on the bus and said, ‘I need two kids between the ages of 6 and 8,’” Creel said. “The driver told him, ‘I can’t do that.’ (The driver) tried to get away from the guy.”

Dykes was scheduled to be in court Wednesday for a bench trial on a menacing charge.

James Edward Davis Jr., who lives near Dykes on Private Road 1539, told the Dothan Eagle that Dykes pulled a gun on him and his daughter on Dec. 10 after Dykes believed Davis had driven in Dykes’ yard. Davis said he reported Dykes to the Dale County Sheriff’s Department. Dykes was arrested Dec. 22 and charged with menacing.

Meanwhile, NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that universal background checks for gun sales make no sense “in the real world.”

LaPierre did not reveal his source inside the real world.