Another Kid With A Gun

Another example of the proliferation of guns and kids...These were children and another tragedy of a kid, admittedly a gang member whose school records indicate a messed up soul.

After a career dealing with "at risk" youth (I coached and taught at the Jr. High right next to Grant), I know what the "mean streets are". I also know that the perpetrator of this act was lost, shuffled from home to home, and a mess.  He was crying out for help and the system didn't or couldn't listen.  

Everyday we throw away young people in a system that puts materialism first and people way last. Everyday we read about yet another tragedy in a gun culture out of control.

And eveyday we hear about the sancity the   2nd Amendment which must be preserved ; which originated as a tool to put down slave rebellions. That's right a little known fact...the 2nd Amendment was intended to allow states to raise armed militias to put down people.

It is being used for that again!

Actually, in a sense, that is what happened in the Grant area; one more African American was gunned down by a deranged person; the gun culture represses African Americans again. You see the more violence African American demonstrate,  the more the white supremacists can say, "Look, they are animals, keep the guns coming". I remember kids talking about "popping people", of the willingness to use violence, "whoopings", to solve everything. And of course violence just leads to more violence in a cycle of revenge and lunacy.

The gangs rule the streets and their primary tool is violence. And the enforcer is the gun.  

I always was depressed by the place; by the hopelessness of it; of the violence. That is why we left; a young man mad at the Vice Principal barged into the press booth at Grant High's stadium and fired blanks at the Vice Principal as a warning that next time it would be the real thing. My wife was in the booth (three months pregnant) , I was coaching, and we decided that more peaceful grounds were best for our family.

So we left after two years; and we left a lot of good friends, including Mike Albergeni.

We ran home and wound up at a school that was every bit as socio-economically repressed, but White , poor and Native American. But the violence was not so centered on guns (barely).

Montgomery Creek was one area that saw senseless shootings all the time. And I took a couple guns off kids who were showing them off to friends.

Always guns, always damn guns and kids who are too immature or too screwed up to have them.

And this is not a public health issue? And the damned 2nd Amendment, that was absolutely passed by slave owners as a method to put down slave revolts, continues as some kind of god head....sacred?

And it is used by politicians to continue the system of white supremacy that is destroying this country.