what gives?

Has Seattle suddenly morphed into the nation's murder capitol?

By my count, eight in the city have been killed in the past week, starting when Justin Ferrari got shot on Cherry Street last Thursday while he was driving home from the airport with his parents and two kids in the car.

The next evening there was a fatal shooting at the Folk Life festival, which is an annual event at the Seattle Center -- the old world's fairgrounds.

Mostly there were yesterday's six fatalities, at least five of whom were shot by Lee Stawicki, who was also one of the dead.

All of this killing was done with handguns, which is what a bunch of suspected gangsters used to spray four south Seattle houses with bullets this past Saturday morning. Nobody got hit in that incident, but that was the same day a guy walking near the Space Needle got hit in the leg with a stray bullet.

I suppose I could suggest we adopt the intuitive solution to the problem of handgun violence in America, but what good would it do?