Gun violence has become a big issue lately. With multiple school shootings, rampages, and all sorts of other armed crime, it’s no wonder. In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm. And the largest portion of this comes from gang violence.
Anyway, I’m not here to talk about whether stricter gun control should be implemented. Personally I think the 2nd Amendment is important, it just doesn’t seem that way until you need it one day. I don’t think the problem is the guns, it’s the people who commit the act. And the society that caused them to go down the road they are on. (this includes you and me.) But that’s a discussion for another day.
What I want to talk about is the escalated use of gun violence in gangs. Its common knowledge, but here is a study by the “Violence Policy Center” on Gun Violence in California, which discusses the prevalence of gun violence, or lack thereof, in the earlier parts of the 20th Century. http://www.vpc.org/studies/CAgang.pdf
The causes for this escalation are above my pay grade, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Are guns easier to get (legally or illegally)? Do we have a more violent culture today? Is it just a matter of competition? Let me know.
If you ask the old timers, they’ll tell you that back in their day, if you had a problem with somebody, you handled it with your fists. Now it’s not like there wasn’t weapons used back then, but their may be some truth to it. Gangs weren’t always trying to kill each other, they were just asserting dominance or protecting their territory. Today you get shot up just walking down the wrong street.
To me, this just seems cowardly. Before you jump down my throat about not knowing this world, I get that its kill or be killed. I spent my early childhood growing up in a Jacksonville project, my grandma running a convenient store out of our home. My dad was a crack dealer, and I have at least ten brothers and sisters I’ve never even met.
I just have a high opinion of the idea of honor, and think it has fallen away from our culture to some degree. Jumping a guy with five of your friends isn’t honorable. Really settling your problems with violence just shows a lack of intellectual capability, but I’m not going to bark up that tree.
In my mind, if you’ve got a problem with someone, it should be between you, and them. And if you need to settle it like a warrior, do it like men, not boys. No weapons and no backup. Just two men, and who wins, wins.
I know this is probably seen as naive, or idealistic. But if you want respect, try being respectable first.
What do you think? Am I just being unrealistic or out of touch? Can an “honorable” gang make it today? For that matter, could an “honorable” gang member make it?
Musings of Gleip 
“Are guns easier to get (legally or illegally)?”
Don’t think they are easier to get today that before. When I was a kid in the 1950s you could buy a WWII surplus battle rifle with a box of ammo (and a bayonet if you wanted) by mail order from an ad in the back of a comic book. At 16 I could buy a .22 rifle in a hardware store without anyone asking my parents if it was ok (it was ok).
“Do we have a more violent culture today?”
Back in the 1950s the out-of-wedlock birth rate for blacks was about the same (or maybe slightly less – see writings by Dr. Thomas Sowell) than whites. Most black and white kids grew up in families with a father present in the family. So what do you have today, hip-hop culture that glorifies violence and drugs? I see that as an outsider to that culture, but I am not blind (yet).
According to FBI statistics for 2011 for homicide where the race of the offender was known it was black 52.4% of the time although blacks are less than 14% of the population. And the victim is most often black too.
Liberal policies starting roughly in the 1960s have largely destroyed the black family in the inner city. Add a War on Drugs and you see what you have today. Yet blacks still vote for Demoncrats at over 90%? Maybe they deserve what they get from them?
It is sad. But facts are facts and if you keep voting for politicians with fixes that destroy your culture, or create a culture of violence, then who’s fault is that?
lwk
free2beinamerica2.wordpress.com
Thank you for the educated response. Our tendency to vote for those who have a blatant track record of doing us wrong is one of the greatest tragedies I know.
Sadly, with the continuing pressure to consolidate media (we’re down to six companies now, right?) The pond of information is getting more and more “quality controlled”.
Thankfully we still have the internet, though you must sort through the garbage, and if you can’t already tell that what’s on the TV is garbage… what hope is there?
Again, thank you for your response, I’m happy to hear from someone…. more advanced in experience than I, on this matter. =)