NONE SAFER THAN SODERBERG

Thor Soderberg may have been the least likely person to be shot to death on Chicago's mean streets, but he was.

The eleven year Police veteran was a superb trainer of police recruits, armed, and exiting his police training facility when a local Englewood resident strolled up, disarmed and shot Soderberg three times with his own service revolver, ending his life.

Soderberg's inexplicable death should give pause to every Chicago resident cheering the Supreme Court ruling restoring their right to possess a hand gun in their home, much less those same folks now lobbying for "conceal and carry". Possessing a hand gun, either in their home or their pants, may give the guntoter a sense of power and security unattainable without packing heat. But in a society of unimaginable mental instability and violence, the cold, stark reality is that the same gun that grants such peace of mind, can end its owner's life in a heartbeat...their last one.

The next time one of those gun advocates boasts about their new found right, he should conger up the image of Thor Soderberg, lying dead in a police parking lot, and ask himself: "Could I have done better?".

Originally published in Chicago Sun Times, July 13, 2010