Those who prosper from murders are the companies that make bullets, guns and holsters, ambulance providers and funeral directors. In some cases, when the lives of victims hang in the balance, medical workers and hospitals may benefit financially as well.
But in our free society, the life of every person has infinite value. This fact becomes clear in war and in the lives of police and first responders. The point is that every official in every jurisdiction in the United States should be willing to spend scarce resources to create preventions for several categories of single and mass murders.
Consider this: Have any of us seen or heard of statistics collected by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel that defined the ages of shooters and their victims? Why weren’t these men/boys in school or working? What is their family status; do they live with their mothers? Do some of these men and boys even know who their father is/was?
When males are born into welfare homes, their future may be in their synthetic man-made DNA. All they need to do is what their older brothers or neighboring youth do and they end up stealing apples, then purses; the natural progression is gang membership complete with pistol, knife and death or prison.
There have been about 4 million births annually over the past 20 years in the U.S. Of that number, about 1.6 million births or about 40% are in single parent households. The percentage of births to single parents in 2013 was as follows: 36% to Caucasians; 71% to African Americans. (The number of legal abortions have been cut in half to about 730,000 recently from 1.4 million in 1990.)
Can anyone find a possible connection here? A significant contribution to lives that start with single parents, progress to teachers charged with being parents by proxy, skipping school, advancing to drugs, sex and gang membership.
With no job seeking requirements, young men have plenty of time to initiate careers of shoplifting, purse snatching and looting followed by crimes with firearms and other weapons of choice or availability.
Working Black men have lower incomes and higher unemployment. Many of these young boys and girls in the inner cities of Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans and Oakland don’t have the benefit of two parents and live in the shadows of moral and physical decay.
Has any government agency been able to expose a link between children of single parents, children from broken homes, children who don’t know who their father is? How about finding a relationship between drugs and crime? How about determining the culture and causes of girls being impregnated on their journey through puberty?
By now we have all heard about orders from the White House about sensitivity training for police. That is a smart move, training cops how to handle good folks and bad guys. How about some training for parents, grandparents and children? How about people like Mr. Obama, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton explaining that mutual respect is a foundation principle of developing strong, diverse relationships, that work commands dignity and respect?
Those who deny divisiveness in this country are conjuring thoughts behind rose-tinted glasses. There is the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, the student vote, white men, union members, women, welfare practitioners, LGBT, Native Americans, Jews, Social Security recipients; the list is endless.
Every voting ‘block’ or ‘segment’ must understand that they cannot get everything they desire. Every candidate for office must understand they can’t please everybody. It might even be reasonable for voters to realize that candidates who promise to bring down one group and elevate another are liars and unfit for office.
Our President thinks that his words cure all evil. ‘Take the guns away’ is a mantra of an immature man who is in over his head and preaching that ‘if only those opponents (Republicans) would listen to me.’ Since they won’t listen, we do nothing. How arrogantly mindless! We are a society that is willing to sacrifice human potential for elite political gain. In this, the world’s most racially diverse nation, our government grasps for superficial solutions for votes rather than permanent resolutions for problems.