Target

First, the good news: Police in Oakland have not been dispatched over the past week to deal with protests, march or riots connected to the Occupy Movement. This is good news because those resources will be needed to deal with the bad news: Police searched for multiple suspects Tuesday after a gunbattle in a parking lot where a rap music video was being filmed left seven people wounded, including a one-year-old boy who was shot in the head.
I live in Oakland, so the phrases "multiple suspects" and "gun battle" don't make me flinch anymore. The one that stuck with me was "one-year-old boy." Up until recently, the definition of "innocent bystander" was the three-year-old boy who was killed in a drive-by shooting last August. Now we have a new standard.
Blame the parents who took their child to a rap video set? Blame rap music? Blame the tiny brain that sent the message to the trigger finger?
I wonder how a gangster consoles himself with the knowledge that he managed to kill a small child, a baby. Does that mind have abstract notions like "collateral damage" in it? Firing indiscriminately into a crowd does not constitute accidental shooting. The gun wasn't wandering through the parking lot by itself when it tripped on a pothole and went off. The idea of a "stray bullet" conjured up the image of a wandering pack of shells that roamed that particular neighborhood, and one of them just happened to find itself lodged in the head of a one-year-old. That's one more kid who'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool, as the poet said.
One-year-old.