My wife noticed that my mood has been affected by the most recent homicide in our town. Or neighborhood. Riding past those candles and balloons and persistent reminders of the loss of one more young life. At this same time, the Oakland Police Department has begun a crackdown on local gangs in hopes of eliminating the meaningless deaths of innocent bystanders. Innocent like three-year-old Carlos Nava, who was caught in a crossfire in the middle of the day on a busy thoroughfare. His crime? Standing outside his father's taco truck. The old saw about "wrong place, wrong time" just doesn't cut here. It is the opinion of city officials that the proliferation of illegal guns on Oakland's streets. Legal or illegal, it seems like the bullets are an even more pressing problem.
There are so many bullets in Oakland that bad guys feel no particular compunction about where they spray them. It is the gift of automatic weapons, legal or illegal, that they can send projectiles at such a furious pace that picking a specific target is not an issue. The bad guys don't have to be skilled marksmen. The number of innocents killed by their random acts of sloppy gunplay is staggering. The number of poorly placed bullets is tragic.
I have a suggestion to limit the tragedy: Set up a district for rival gangs to go and settle their differences. Think of it as Hunger Games for the thug set. Only this setup won't be for the preservation of some larger national order, it would be for the preservation of innocent life. Think of it as Laser Tag with hollow points. If these idjits want to shoot at one another, let's let them have at it. "Kill them all and let God sort them out," right? Except that phrase is nearly eight hundred years old. Young men have been killing one another over scraps of land for even longer than that. Some of those scraps of land not much larger than the corner of the East Bay that the Oakland Police Department is trying to defend. Clear the place out for a week, and invite gangs to come on down and have at it. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot. Happiness is a warm gun. I don't know if we will ever convince young men that killing one another is a bad idea, but if they are committed to doing that, let's give them a safe place to do it. And the rest of us can have a safe place to do everything else.
That is some real out-of-the-box thinking there.
ReplyDeleteWe could leave all the weapons on the war game range, and have a security check-out for when they would re-ente the city.
And on 4th of July, people could go the zone to set off fireworks.