Yes, it can happen here.
Well, I wish I could say I was surprised that it happened here. But I have grown cynical. And impatient.
In case you missed it, the city I’ve lived in for nearly twenty four years made the national, if not international, news last week when a celebration of a victorious football team turned into mayhem and panic when two squabbling teenagers started firing. Apparently high caliber weapons.
Not that it matters, but for the record, I have no interest in professional sports – and that goes double for football. I was not at the parade and rally for said football team, but several of my friends and acquaintances were. One just barely managed to stay upright and thus avoid being knocked down and trampled in the ensuing stampede as people raced to safety.
In case you were wondering, yes, you read correctly: one person is dead, at least twenty one were injured (I’ve heard twenty two and even twenty three); an entire city has been left anxious if not traumatized…why? Because two kids apparently had some kind of dispute going on with each other. And now their lives are pretty much ruined too, let’s not forget.
Like everybody else, this writer is still trying to capture the words to sum up and process the events. But the conclusion I have definitely came to – came to a long time ago, in fact – is that we need to send a better class of people to Jefferson City to do our business. To echo one sentiment read just today: people that will put people’s right and desire to live and be secure as they go about their life ABOVE people’s desire to have a gun with them at all times. We need the ability to set local ordinances and restrictions as we work on the second part of the equation. This we cannot do. In the state with some of the loosest gun laws, we do not even have local control of our police department. Our mayor is but one voice on the police board that is more or less appointed by the governor with the blessing of the state senate.
The second part of the equation that I mentioned? We have teenagers, youth, minors, young folk; and they won’t stay young folk forever, that have no idea, none, zero absolutely no ability whatsoever on,how.to.manage.a.conflict.
How the hell did that happen? What are they learning or not learning on how to handle it when somebody says something that upsets them? Where the hell are the adults that are supposed to be modeling this life skill and what behavior are they modeling for an example? Where did we, the adults go wrong?
I want to be positive. I want to believe that things will get better. But to echo another statement that I read earlier: if the murder of children at Sandy Hook all those years ago didn’t change a whole lot, then a shootout involving football fans won’t either.
If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.
WE’VE GOT TO CHANGE
