Giorgio: The Shootings Are Not Random

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Paul Giorgio, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

If you read the daily newspaper and the right wing TEA Party bloggers lately, you might think that Worcester has become unsafe and that hordes of kids are running around with guns. They are doing this to serve their political interests; much like FOX does on a national level.

Worcester is a Safe Place to Live

Worcester is still a safe place to live and raise a family. We, like all urban centers, do have a problem with a proliferation of guns on our streets. Kids are getting a hold of guns and it is causing problems in some neighborhoods. Gone are the days of settling an argument with a fist fight. That escalated a few years ago when young people decided to settle quarrels with knives. Today knives are passé and guns are the way you settle a beef. It’s back to the days of the Wild West.

Guns are easy to get thanks to the NRA and their supporters who think everyone should have guns, including people with mental illness. I am of course talking about the shooter in Lafayette LA last week, who had a history of mental illness, yet was able to buy a gun in a pawn shop without a background check and then drive to Louisianan and kill two women in a movie theater before killing himself.

When is enough, enough?

I am tired of the argument that these are not legal gun owners and if we arm everyone, no one will be killed. The guns being used in Worcester were once legal guns somewhere.

People Need to Read Between the Lines

Much is being said about violence in Worcester. Yes there is violence, but read between the lines. None of this is random. It is drug and gang related. We need to clean up the gang problem. Police Chief, Gary Gemme said they know who is causing the problems. Unfortunately, knowing and having enough evidence to arrest and convict someone are two different things.

We need an active engaged community to work with the police and solve the problem. We need to end the culture of no snitching. It’s not snitching, if you are hoping to save someone’s life.

If you were born into the violent video game culture, you have become immune to the actual ramification of shooting a gun. That is part of the problem.

If You Think You Have Nothing to Lose

If you think you have nothing to lose, then you have nothing to lose. If a gang is your frame of reference and not a job, you have nothing to lose. If you dropped out of school, then you have nothing to lose. We have to change this, but that takes time.

I am a progressive, so I constantly struggle internally with how we should handle the problem of guns on the streets. We need an active and engaged police department and we have one. But the real problem is that police maybe gun shy because of all the negative publicity nationwide involving police.

Lives Matter

If we really believe that black Lives matter and they do, then we need to engage the faith based community, the nonprofit community, neighborhood centers, and neighborhood crime watches in this fight, because it is black lives and brown lives and white lives that are being lost.

Worcester is a relatively safe city. W need to make it safer. We need to support programs for at risk youth. We need to beef up our anti gang prevention programs. But most of all we need to get guns away from children.