• Homies tend to band together – whoda thunk it
Well this is an admission with implications liberals will chafe at. Reading this AP article in the Dispatch-Argus Small Cities struggle with teen gun violence we took in the usual references to liberal organizations’ analysis of what they refer to as “gun violence as a public health epidemic” among youth. The article’s focus is on Wilmington DE, thought of as a small US city, and as an area previously thought to be exempt from big city strife. But liberal policies, seeing their eclipse in the Obamanation, know no bounds. From the print edition:
Mayor Mike Purzycki said some of the blame can be laid on a “fractured education system” that sends children on buses to schools in rival neighborhoods. Many fathers are either in prison or have past convictions that make it difficult for them to find good jobs.
So busing kids outside of their neighborhood, away from nearby schools, where they play and reticulate and have preexisting bonds, might cause kids to “crew” with similarly stressed kids. Whoda guessed it.
The “fractured educational system” we feel is rightfully blamed because we are talking about high school age perps. The education bureaucracies have myriad analysis and excuses for closing local schools. The basic reason is of course cost factors. But the genator for that is personnel costs more than building upkeep. Costs are driven in no small part by teacher unions who also drive up turnover and job dissatisfaction, that must be compensated of course, because of discipline problems their experimental education policies exacerbate. In our humble opinion of course. The online edition adds this:
Unlike larger, more organized criminal enterprises such as the Crips, the Bloods or the Mexican Mafia, feuds among teenage gangs in Wilmington don’t revolve around drugs, or territory, or even money. It’s about respect.
In the internet age, bad blood can spring up and spread instantly online with the double tap of a thumb on a smartphone screen or a hastily tapped-out Tweet. Teenagers in Wilmington don’t sport gang colors or uniforms, but identify themselves with emojis and hashtags.
“Technology’s evolution has made it easier for criminals to get guns,” said Deputy Attorney General Joseph Grubb. “It also has made it easier for young people to get offended by something, causing them to go grab a gun and shoot up a block as opposed to, ‘Meet me in the school yard and let’s fist fight.'”
Another quote from the online edition:
“A juvenile with a gun is a heck of a lot more dangerous than a 24- or 25-year-old with a gun,” said James Durham, the acting U.S. attorney based in Savannah.
True that. But the gun availability part has nothing to do with the problem. Guns have been readily available on mantels in homes in small towns for generations. Degradation of family, especially, by liberal policies, and glorification of violence in music and games, the resentment-building ethos of the education curricula, and the no-fault-for minors judicial system brings it out. The lengthy online article also has this:
Robert Tracy, Wilmington’s new police chief, says the city needs to do more of this — identifying those committing crimes and getting them off the street. It’s a strategy employed in other cities.
“There’s a small percentage of individuals that are going back and forth causing this violence in the city,” Tracy, Chicago’s former top crime strategist, said earlier this year during a vigil for a 6-year-old boy who had been shot. “And all the good people are tired of it, and they’re outraged.”
We suspect that is the core of the problem . . .a small percentage of individuals. Getting the punks off the street is good . . . but the other “small percentage of individuals” to get off the street is the liberal educational /political establishment.
R Mall
