This situation with Thursday's Western Addition shooting is just sad, sad, sad, and not just because a lot of people got hurt (seven, according to the news outlets who actually have time to investigate these things). It's becoming pretty clear that it is, yet again and as always, the result of a bunch of people making very poor choices indeed.

The comments lit up on our last post -- whose fault is the recurring violence? What's to be done? Why do some people make such poor choices (namely, getting in fights over nothing, participating in risky enterprises, and protecting the very people who are killing them)? Does public housing just contain people, instead of teaching them to take care of themselves? And even if you to teach folks how to make better choices, would they care? What's to be done with the people who are, for reasons that are not entirely logical, satisfied with the present situation?

The answers to every single one of these questions is "who knows?" Which is itself a question, and therefore very unsatisfying.

In debating whether to post our pictures from the scene (many of which revealed the identities of victims and eyewitnesses), one SFist staffer lamented, "Anyway, we don't necessarily need to post again on this shooting ... The next one will probably be coming up soon. Seriously." Please, somebody, anybody, prove us wrong.

tried