The DC mentality never fails to impress.
In response to a drive by shooting of nine people earlier this year, some of the families of the victims want to ensure that no one else in DC has the means to protect themselves from the rampant violence. Their means is to lobby congress to prevent the pro-gun bill that gets attached annually to the DC voting rights bill from ever seeing the light of day again.
These people no doubt just want the violence to stop, so I don't cast any stones at their end result, only the means.
At the first link, notice how all three of the men who carried out the shooting had extensive criminal histories. This happens again and again and again all throughout America: some scumbags that have made a career out of hurting people decide to elevate their crimes to murder, and the first thing the community and bureaucrats do is try to make things safer by taking away weapons from everybody, instead of focusing on the real problem of keeping these scumbags locked up in the first place. Or, sometimes when the bureaucrats go at it alone, without the help of grieving families, you end up with efforts to ban Go-Go joints, or pizza shops, or dead end streets, or high school football; anything but an attempt to strike the root of the issue.
The opportunity to prevent violence like this drive-by in question occurred years ago, but sadly was lost by the same people who are now trying to stop it by trampling the rights of everyone else. Again, I don't question the heart of these families, or the politicians who are listening to them, but I have to say that if they are not looking at fixing the revolving door policy of DCs criminal justice system, than they are only helping the next murderous teenager in carrying out his crime.
It's not the guns; it's the criminals. When the criminals show a pattern of violence, then put them away for good and you will have your remedy. Why aren't the outraged families screaming about the violent criminal history of the three scumbags? There will never be any shortage of weapons for criminals, but there can definitely be a shortage of scumbags if they are kept in a cage.
Feel good legislation will only take an opportunity away from the good citizens, and aid the DC scumbag in achieving their crimes.
2 comments:
Good analysis, but I think you missed one important aspect:
The REASON that the families of "victims" of this type of violence don't endorse the only real action that will work...i.e. locking up the violent criminals and keeping them out of the society they are so obviously unfit for.
The reason these families cannot and will not advocate such things becomes clear when you look at who the majority of the "victims" of these types of incidents are.
This incident was not a case of hardened criminals wantonly killing innocents.
As in the vast majority of murders in this country, this was a simple case of criminals killing criminals.
For the families to place the blame where it really belongs, they would have to admit the dismal job that they did raising their kids and admit the equal culpability of the "victims" in their own deaths.
It is much more emotionally acceptable for them to blame "access to guns" rather than the violent criminals that they themselves raised.
If they advocated keeping the violent criminals in prison, they'd basically be advocating for sending their own children away and keeping them there.
That would force them to admit that their "little angels" are somewhat less blameless than they would like to believe and, therefore, is not a viable option.
Although the need to find a culprit following a tragedy is understandable and natural, in this case, blaming "access to guns" is nothing more than a defense mechanism and a cop-out...a way to avoid facing their own culpability and responsibility in the way their kids' lives turned out.
Until they find a way to fix the inner city "thug" culture, nothing will have the slightest impact on these things; and fixing their culture is something that has to be done from within, not without.
Considering that they refuse to even admit or face that there is a problem with their culture, I don't have a lot of hope for change any time soon.
Good point.
Like you, I don't have any hope for the future of that city. The general population could benefit from the restoration of their rights, but I doubt they have the potential to make the change.
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