Gangs and gun violence
By Jim Killebrew

[September 05, 2014]  When talking about taking away the guns from citizens of America the President stands up in front of America surrounded by a bunch of children and declares he is doing all he can to save the children of America. Each time we experience a random shooting or a teen-ager on a rampage in a school, the loudest cry is for controlling the guns and thwarting the Constitutional Second Amendment by taking the guns; one has to question his sincerity. When he makes comments like, "If we can save even one child, we should take that step...", we need to check his credibility. He rarely ever talks about the enormous statistics surrounding gang violence in his own city of Chicago.

When I read in the paper or watch on the news the mayhem of murder and destruction at the hands of those wielding guns to take others' lives in movie theaters, public places, schools, drive-bys, back alleys and sometimes just for initiation to join some street gang, it appears there is a war in the streets of America. I read about five hundred murders in the city of Chicago where some of the toughest gun restriction laws in the nation exist. Most of that violence perpetrated by gangs is Black on Black, yet we never see Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton or the President rushing to the scene in South Chicago to call for a ban on the gang's weapons. Yet, the discussions of what to do about it seem always to be centered around better background checks for people who buy the guns, more time in jail or greater fines for those who fail to report their guns being stolen, or a ban on the amount of rounds that can be put into a magazine clip. None of those "solutions" are aimed directly at the problem.

I wonder why the focus of the discussions of the problem of violence by firearms always seem to gyrate toward the group of people who use the gun for hunting, recreation or protection, and not toward the person who uses the gun to rob, kill people, intimidate others or belong to a gang?

In cities like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and every other larger cities in America, there are police forces with divisions that focus on murder, gangs, robbery, rape and kidnapping. Those police departments have detectives that are infused into the population with their informants and "inside" people in the gangs and cells of violence. Gang violence is legendary, having been glamorized in movies and television, even social scientists write about "a sense of belonging" and a person's identification and self-worth being enhanced by joining and remaining a member of a gang.

One of the complaints we have heard from the people who talked about the Ferguson, Missouri reaction to the shooting involving the death of the 18 year-old Michael Brown was the "militarization" of the police in responding to the persons who demonstrated and looted stores. When the police used military equipment left over from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan that consisted of armored vehicles, many said the presence of the "military-like" equipment provoked the crowd into a state of being out of control causing them to loot and burn property. Yet, when hundreds of murders occur in communities in and around cities like Chicago are being terrorized by gangs with gang members shooting it out in their turf wars catching innocents in the crossfire, why is it not appropriate for the police to have every advantage to fight those gang wars with adequate or superior weapons?

Why not "militarize" those "special forces" within the police departments and focus on hitting hard those people who use guns for violence, those people who are members of street gangs that create violence and enforce the laws that are already on the books. Keep hitting them hard week after week until the gang's will is broken and they learn it is not to their advantage to continue with the intimidation and violence.

Perhaps once the law enforcement agencies get the gangs of the cities cleaned up the murder rates and gun violence of other forms will decrease.

[By JIM KILLEBREW]