Gun violence: An American Dilemma

It is useless to quote Shakespeare from his play The Tempest. “The past is prologue” is an overused cliche but useful for my rant on the runaway gun violence in certain areas of the country and our great city. Moaning about Chicago styled weekends in this southern Mecca does not move us to a different and peaceful neighborhood future. Past is prologue suggests that future choices will determine the quality of life going forward. I know that we have been told that Atlanta is the black Mecca and Washington D.C. is the chocolate Mecca. H Town has almost one and three fourths’ times as many black people than New Orleans and Atlanta combined and a stronger economy. This is true before and after Hurricane Katrina.  In Washington, D.C. a mini billboard signs read, “IF BLACK LIVES MATTER, WHY ARE BLACK PEOPLE STILL KILLING EACH OTHER. “I do not mean to suggest that this problem is solely a black problem, it is an American Dilemma. A few weeks ago, a young black man was sentenced in the murder of Delindsey Mack. Mack, affectionately known as “Poppie,” was a young Lamar student that was the victim of a gangster styled execution a few blocks from the school. As I and a legion of social workers were trying to redirect and refocus his life, street life caught up with him and all the kings’ horses could not prevent his murder. This past Monday night and early Tuesday morning witnessed six shootings in six hours in H- Town. As of the writing of this article, all the victims are recovering. It is truly disgraceful that in this technological superpower and moral dwarf (USA), 90 Americans are killed every day by handguns. It is equally disgraceful that nine kids are accidentally killed by guns every day in America. This is not griping about spilled milk. This is a quest for solutions that work and last. When David Dinkins was the Mayor of NYC around 2000, NYC had 2,000 murders a year. When Rudy Giuliani and his police commissioner instituted COMSTAT, murders were driven down to a level that enabled New York to boast that it was the safest big city in the […]

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