By the end of March 2008, I spent the day with a 17-year-old Black men, who together with me the reason why he is now a weapon and led in the past. He lives in a city. His parents are upper middle class. It is a brilliant student. But it is the fasting in America is always more statistics - it has firearms, he was killed by a bullet, he moved to other people, he was arrested, and it is now back in prison - all young people aged 17 years.
I have asked him: "Why is y’all weapons?" It was a rhetorical question, since we both grew up and live in the same zone. But I did not want to know how my contemporaries-ALLS in the social development. I wanted to hear directly from someone every day lives. I went on: "You know what I say? You know what I say."
I will answer him and not interrupt. It was a rare time in the social sector, development of youth, I wanted to enjoy. The first rule: If the young people speak to the adults remain silent! So he went to tell me why he and his friends, acquaintances, members of the gangs in a series of blood, to bear arms.
At the beginning it is just something you do because the whole world does. It is like the wearing of clothing or sports shoes. Then you will be addictive. Tragend, a gun is a drug addiction. They feel a new sense of power and performance. If you have a firearm, do you continue - invincible. It is a high like a drug. You start, which means that in some other dudes you normally would not say that. And you can start that things like bullying, because you know that you are a "burner". The girls know that you have a weapon, and you will see an example of urban celebrity. You start to say to other girls and the word moves, and you receive immediately after success. Dudes really do not want to you. "The girls want to have sex with you. My boys want to help" REP with you. "It’s a wonderful feeling of time and place you do not want to do, but that the firearms.
Well, this young black male was in the past and has several years to the crime of probation assistance. It was in and out of prison during the past three years, while holders of arms and be shot.
His answer to the next transportation of weapon:
It is flamboyant in its infancy. Then go in prison, "you see all the other guys the bonnet, it is" crazy time "for the shooting of weapons makers and other dudes, do you find that it’s true! Transportierend fire a weapon is not a joke. If They are in prison, do you find that there is a deadlock life. It is not like anywhere where, but how the world - the ‘hood is so inconsistent that you know when you back on the block, you need to ensure that the firearms in order to survive. Other people, normal people do not understand - they will never understand. But where we come from a weapon is not an option, it is in your daily life. "Yo. Dudes on the weapons, as in sports shoes. It is part of our cities machines! And to the politicians, police, teachers, people with money and the big wigs top dudes look into the" real chances of success cover, transport, a firearm and what we do better! "
When he spoke, I could hear the pain in his voice, the distribution of feelings, from the moral imagination. I worked with the same demographic youth since 1985 and her life is a feeling deep in the mortality. In 1992 I worked as a technician for a field of cooperation for the formation of services in Hamden, Connecticut. The people I have made about 80 + Black young men 15 to 19 years. The vast majority of violent crimes had numerous violations of firearms. I remember that one of the members of the administrative (Second responsible) has asked myself: "Why in the hell of some body, may be a weapon?" Well, it was 1992, the amount of American drug trafficking "- why not everyone with a weapon?
I am a representative of law enforcement work in the urban area of more than 12 years. I have over six years as a Bull on a foot beat in the most dangerous areas of the city. I went with a partner and I have market for itself alone. I lived in the city, and my whole life yet. I worked with the young people of the city centre for over 20 years. I have worked with some of the socially, economically and in the educational system the young people in New England. And all I have deduced that there is no answer to the question "Why our children with weapons?" However, there are also social and economic systems, where they find more, can a firearm.
How does a brief statement, the young people in America do not feel safe. You do not feel safe at home because of violence in the family. You do not feel safe in school, because the education system is not to build the self-awareness for most young people. You do not feel safe on the streets - many feel that the officials of the police in hunting wild animals, more than conglomeration of urban development, the gangs on the street. You do not feel safe, with their spirituality, because the morale was through securitisation and religion with capitalism. You do not feel safe because they are still sexually murdered, kidnapped, raped, shooting, died of hunger, poor, neglected and - more than any other population of people on the face of the earth. And do not think these facts are reality.
What is interesting on social development is the chip that people tend to a statistical approach to the solution of problems. However, the solutions are often symptomatic of all systems of inequality. Our children are in America, given the social, economic, medical and education. I am not speaking on grounds of a state race. I speak the fact that the needs of our children will always rest. According to the health and education, most states in the vicinity of the expenditure is important for the detention. And I can tell you that the detention of rehabilitation not - this is the social frustration. Why, in 2008, we are not more money on the prevention of violence among young people and social development? violence by rifle is the most common cause of death in the United States among our young people. firearm violence by the murder is the most common cause of death among black men in America. Where is the insult? Where is the new policy? Thousands of young people who I have spoken to say that "nobody cares!"
The medical facilities are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to the sickle cell anemia research for the Afro-Americans. But each year hundreds of black men are in their state-of-the-art trauma center remission State gunshot wounds. No hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, to know why. Just one community to die. So why our children with weapons? The educational institutions flooded, the realization of stress and to standardize the theatre. The students are for the financial year butter knives, lighters and nail, all the files on the name of safety at school. " But many of our young urban see no security in their education. For most young people in cities, their chances rather than to take, with a weapon, the better their chances of secondary. Your chances, do not take leave to another shot urban men are more important than the possibility of their search for a job with medical benefits. Your chances can not take the weapons and the sale of medicines are the best are able to live in a better area where they benefit from the "American Dream".
This is partly why our children with weapons. For them, the end justifies the means!
