Let's hear it for guns!
It's really getting dangerous in Los Angeles. The last two weeks we've seen so many random shootings I'm starting to lose track. I would say it's beginning to feel like Baghdad only that wouldn't be quite fair. The U.S. troop surge has really tamped down the violence in Iraq's carefree, cosmopolitan capital. Oh, except for this week's double suicide bombing, which killed more than 50 people and wounded more than 120 others. But that was a fluke, right?
But, truly, the gunfire in our sunny, palm-tree-lined streets is getting a bit much. A week ago one of my writing students, a high-school English teacher in South LA, walked into class practically shaking. That afternoon his students had just left school when a gunman started shooting at a bus stop down the street. His kids sprinted back to class. None of them got hit, but five children from a nearby middle school did. The last I heard, the 12-year-old girl who was struck in the chest was still in critical condition. I'm sure she'll pull through!
Sadly, that's not the case for Jamiel Shaw, who was shot multiple times last Sunday night by a couple of strangers three doors from home. Oh, if only the 17-year-old had been armed! I'm sure he could have got off a few rounds at his young male killers before falling to the pavement. Even though it was dark and he might have accidentally sprayed some other teen walking home.
Oh, well!
Instead the high-school football star who was headed for college died. And Jamiel's little brother Thomas was said to ask their father, "Dad, are they going to kill me, too?"
I think Thomas's dad should consider buying him a gun. I've heard that Glocks are light, fit nicely in the palm. That way the nine-year-old can protect himself if a kerfuffle breaks out during recess. That's what happened to my son. When he was nine, an eight-year-old boy in his class threatened to shoot him after my son called him "out" in handball. Thank goodness the kid was shipped off to another school!
Speaking of boys, did I mention the six-year-old who's now on life support? He was riding in his family's SUV when a hail of bullets from another car shattered the back window. One struck him in the head. The first grader is in critical condition.
Oh, and I almost forgot Lawrence King. Though, technically, the eighth grader was not from Los Angeles but Oxnard, California, a blue-collar community up the coast. Two days before Valentine's Day, and oddly, just as the traumatized students at Northern Illinois University were bracing to return after their own massacre, the 15-year-old was shot in the head during English class by a 14-year-old boy. He apparently took issue with Lawrence's "effeminate dress," as one local story put it, and has been charged with first degree murder with the special allegation of a hate crime.
I told you there were a lot of shootings.
What to do? Maybe what we need in response to all this gun carnage and mayhem and violence is more guns! That's what lawmakers in about 15 states are proposing. They want college students to be able to pack concealed weapons so they can defend themselves. No matter that law enforcement isn't crazy about the idea. Or that police and others actually skilled at gun play hit their targets a mere 20 percent of the time.
A few enterprising lawmakers, like State Senator Karen S. Johnson of Arizona, would have guns in elementary schools too. As Johnson, the sponsor of a firearms bill that recently passed the Arizona senate, told the New York Times: "I feel like our kindergartners are just sitting ducks."
That part of Johnson's bill didn't fly. But can't you just picture it? Instead of duck, duck goose, teachers could do target practice on the yard. Shoot, shoot Britney!
Despite the horrific school shootings of late and the rush to solutions, there are a few politicians whose voices have been silent on the issue.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
I wonder what their views are on gun control?
But I guess in Texas and Ohio, and Wyoming, and Pennsylvania, they don't have these kinds of problems.