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Thursday, May 26, 2011

Apparently the Summer shooting season is starting early

Apparently it's beginning the Thursday BEFORE Memorial Weekend. 

First there was this:

Man shot during carjacking
I was hoping, when I read the headline, that I'd find that the person attempting the carjacking was the one shot but, unfortunately, it wasn't to be.

And that lead me to this, the next one:

One killed in shooting near 29th and Highland in KC

I hope Mayor James has some good plan up his sleeve like getting together with community, church and civic leaders all across the city so we can hopefully reduce the number of these ignorant, pointless shootings this year.  I kept hoping the last mayor would do that but no, it apparently made too much sense.

4 comments:

locomotivebreath1901 said...

I'm always perplexed when some outraged citizen demands that politician XYZ do something about rampant murders in a given area.

Can politician XYZ legislate morality? Deploy hundreds of heavily armed officers to neighborhood streets? Suspend the 2nd amendment? Do search and seizure ops on profiled groups?
Build more prisons?

What do you suggest the mayor of a major metropolitan area do when faced with a significant population determined to behave in an immoral, undisciplined and violent manner toward their fellow citizens?

Just curious.

Mo Rage said...

In answer to your question, I've written about this before: What the mayor should do is call together a meeting of all church, civic, community and city leaders and both ask for input and emphasize that we, together, as a community, can't afford to let people go on shooting each other and not calling the out on it. Call in "snitching", whatever. It has to be stated. We have to call everyone on it.

No, you can't legislate morality and your question is empty, at least, if not just an exercise in mockery, because we all know you can't do that.

More prisons? Again, no, that won't work. We've seen that.

The one thing we can do in this situation is get together and make it clear that we will not and cannot tolerate indiscriminate shootings, killings and/or woundings. That hasn't happened, I don't think, on the East side--or anywhere else.

It's all we've got. I also think that I'm not being unrealistic or "pollyanna" but that it could have a positive effect.

And understand, I'm not "outraged". Disgusted, yes, outraged, no.

ERnest Evans said...

Dear Mr. Kevin: Thanks for your post on the city's crime situation. May is turning out to be a very dadly month--ten dead as of May 27--with several in the hospital in critical condition. The average for homicides in the first four months of this year was six a month--if May's increase in homicide totals is indicative of a trend we could be facing a terrible summer in KCMO. Take care--I always enjoy reading your blog. Sincerely, Respectfully and In Christ, Ernest Evans

Mo Rage said...

Dr. Evans,

Happy to do it.

I just keep coming back to the idea that the mayor--whoever it is--should pull together civic, church, community and city hall people together to show we can't and won't tolerate this nonsense any longer. Someone in the crowd should also have ideas, I'd think, of things we could and should also do. You, of course, would have to be there.