Opuscula What changed?

WHEN I WAS A TEEN in junior high school and high school in south Florida we rarely had a fist fight on campus, and only a few off campus.

But even Miami wasn’t New York, Chicago, LA, or their environs. Blackboard Jungle and West Side Story may have been “real life” up north, and while there were gangs in south Florida (e.g., the Little River Rats), .aside from hearing about their presence, I never saw evidence of the gangs.

We knew about zip guns and stilettos and switchblades, but very little of that knowledge was used in “combat.” My friends and I went everywhere in Dade (Miami) and Broward (Fort Lauderdale) counties with no concern about gangs.

THE BIGGEST “DUST UP” was after the Miami High vs. Edison High Thanksgiving football game. Post game sock hops were notorious for ending up in brawls, but most injuries were minor and caused by fists, not knives and certainly not guns.

Today it seems that grabbing a firearm is a first response to a real or imagined insult.

What changed?

One thing that HAS changed is population density.

It once was suggested to me that when a certain density is reached, the population becomes ungovernable.

Metropolitan New York density: 56,012 per square mile
Los Angeles density: 23,887
Miami density: 20,267.
Figures are from 2010 census.¹

The most recent mass shooting (Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida) can be blamed on an inattentive or lazy government.

The shooter, if media reports are true, .never should have been allowed to own a firearm. Florida law prohibits certain people – felons, those who deemed mentally unstable, those dishonorably discharged from the military as examples –from legally acquiring and keeping firearms.

A number of agencies have admitted they failed to prevent the shooter from possessing firearms.

You also have to wonder how the alleged shooter managed to conceal a rifle as he entered the school. AR-15s and AK-47s are hardly “pocket guns.”

When I was a pre-teen and teenager, we had more horse operas than cop shows. Despite someone being “killed” on almost every episode of Gunsmoke, the “grab a gun to settle things” culture was well into the future. “Paladin” (Richard Boone in Have Gun Will Travel²) at least was an erudite gun slinger who often went a full half-hour without shooting anyone. (I confess I’m still a fan of Have Gun, not so much of Gunsmoke.) Even the cop shows I watched – Dragnet, Badge 714, and Adam-12 – rarely had shootouts.

Times have changed.

It seems that almost every day someone is murdered in Dade County, most frequently by an illegally obtained gun. There are too many “accidental” shootings with guns that should have been locked in a gun safe. Child on child shootings are the real tragedy.

When I was about six years old I learned about gun safety. I am not an NRA member, but I do have a concealed carry license. I mention the NRA because, despite liberals’ condemnation of the organization, I understand no NRA member has ever been charged with a mass shooting.

Back in the day we wasted our change on pin ball – and then Pacman came on the scene. Violent video games were only in the minds of the creators.

Today, if it’s not violent games and tv shows (who can afford movies?), its violence on the news. The bloodier the better for the tv “journalists.” To be fair, that seems to be what “sells.”

Because so many people have guns – most often illegally obtained guns – cops are now more inclined to shoot suspects who either reach for something or have something in their hand, even if that “something” later turns out to be a cell phone. (Truth in blogging: My first born is a cop.) The best, perhaps only way, to avoid being shot by a cop is to comply with the cop’s orders – sort it out later in court. Cops are not always right, but they always are cops.

I am not a sociologist and – although I have my “suspicions” – I wonder what has changed from the 1950s and even 1960s to turn us into a nation whose youngsters immediately turn to deadly weapons to settle disputes once settled – worst case – by fists.

Until law enforcement and social agencies can keep up with people know to have mental issues, the murder rates will continue to climb -- one by one or one by 58³.

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Sources

1. http://tinyurl.com/y8ygznfz

2. http://purehistory.org/have-gun-will-travel/

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

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