The Boston TenPoint Coalition chose Thanksgiving Day and a Roxbury convenience store where a mother of four was shot and killed last month to launch its 4th annual Season of Peace antiviolence campaign.
The nonprofit group aims to quell violence in Boston, where 70 people had been slain on city streets through Nov. 21 this year, compared with 45 for the same period last year. Gunfire had accounted for 55 of this year’s homicides, according to Boston police crime data.
This is in Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts has "may issue" gun licensing. Mandatory registration of any firearm purchased. Approved Handgun Roster. Assault Weapons Ban. A firearms license is required to own even a single piece of ammunition, yet the number of murders by firearms is on the rise. Mumbles may bloviate about the "easy" availability of guns outside of MA (overlooking the fact that it's a federal felony to provide a firearm to an ineligible person), but the simple fact is that this is not a gun issue - it's a criminal issue. Guns are tightly regulated, yet gang members have no problem getting their hands on all sorts of weaponry with which to perpetrate this violence.
What groups like TenPoint do is actually a lot closer to what we need to happen. They're getting the word out in the communities that violence is out of control; they're asking folks to talk to their kids about the violence in the street; they're raising awareness that this is a crime issue, rather than calling a press conference and blaming guns. They're doing something rather than gun control, which is what politicians do instead of something.
What jumped out at me was this:
“This year, there are a number of people who have been [killed] who are truly innocent victims,’’ Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said, speaking at the late-morning news conference called to announce the Season of Peace campaign. “She was [at the store] at the wrong time.’’This doesn't sound an alarm for anyone? This means that the gangs are getting more brazen - they're caring less and less about who gets hurt or killed in the crossfire. The gangs know that gang-on-gang violence doesn't get the same level of scrutiny as indiscriminate slaying; that if they only kill each other the police presence will differ from when bystanders get killed. Innocent victims get tearful press conferences; gangbangers do not. So what does this tell us? Obviously they're not afraid of getting caught and/or punished. And they know that there's precious little chance anyone's going to shoot back at them.
It's time we started making the criminals lives considerably more difficult, with a combination of policing the areas, putting the criminals in jail, and fighting back.
That is all.
3 comments:
I hate to go all Snake Plisken, but why not just build a wall around the inner cities. Hell, I donn't go to Boston unless I absolutely have to and then, NEVER at night.
Mrs. W. and I took Little Man to that city for a day at the New England Aquarium; overnight stay nearby, fine meals in restaurants better than any around these parts...a big reward for us for making it through a very tough year and getting (more or less) back on our feet.
Of course I did not go unarmed, but I did so 100% legally. It struck me on the way out of town how easy it is for me - and why, why, why so difficult for the law-abiding who actually live there? I have to drive quite some distance to be in view of Faneuil Hall, see the views of Washington/Hancock/Knox et. al., or the monument on Bunker Hill, and I can enjoy more freedoms there than can the folks who actually LIVE there? I am no more American than they; I hope their latest efforts do not go to yet more restriction.
More freedom would result in more security for the individual. It is not supposed to be - and will not work - the other way around.
“She was [at the store] at the wrong time.’’"
Ummm, no, she was where she was supposed to be, at the grocery store. It was the cretin who shot her who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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