* Long story short: Our friend, who had recently been released from prison, having completed his sentence, was having a sexual friendship with the victim, who had posted sexually explicit photographs online–as one does–and then refused to take them down as requested by the defendant. So he got a gun and killed him, regardless of the fact that as a felon, he was not allowed to have a gun.
Depressing as it is, the majority of murders are somewhat similar and involve young men of whatever race who have grown up completely unsocialized–mostly killing each other, although sometimes the violence does spill over into the noncriminal population.
They were invariably accidental babies who avoided abortion, born to acopic mothers and absent fathers of low inherited intelligence, raised in “the projects” or foster homes, failed abysmally in school where they presented behavioral problems right from the start leading to school exclusion, and fell in along the way with other delinquents.
This is a the problem that has to be addressed if we want to reduce the number of murders. Finding a way to get rid of the favelas of the United States.
* Gun control might be a dead issue for a generation.
* I think that in the US there is much less of a sense of local community outrage when someone does something that is completely beyond the pale.
I remember once, many years ago, seeing a British female TV reality show host appearing as a guest on a US TV reality show. It might have been Jerry Springer or Maury Povich, but I forget.
Anyway the remark she made that stuck in my memory was that she said to one of the participants something like “the people in your town must have the most extraordinary idea of what is normal to have allowed this to happen”, and it struck me that no American would have made this comment, because in America there is relatively little concept of place. You don’t have people on the Jerry Springer show saying things like “Is that how people behave in Idaho?”. In fact where people come from is never even mentioned.
In the UK, and perhaps other countries, people have (or used to have) much more of a sense of place and community, and would not want to bring shame on their family, home town, or county for fear of being held up as an example. There are more people in the US who don’t give a fuck.
* I guess this explains the massive outpouring of demonstrations, near riots, massive police action and punitive prison terms that followed the Rotherham revelation in the UK. You do remember that, don’t you old boy? How the British people rose up and roared like a lion, and the British elites responded with swift and sure punishment for all the grooming gangs? Because of that sense of community?
* In other city news, that racist Central Park dog lady has got her dog back because the police refused to take it. Good for her. It’s some small consolation for having your life destroyed by the Twitter mob.
* I never wanted to be a cop. I dealt with enough low lifes in construction that I knew I didn’t want to be involved in enforcing the law on them. So, people say, “You don’t know what it is like to be a cop, to deal with what they have to deal with daily.” And that is true. But right now, the governors and majors of the big cities racked by violence and, yes destruction, are paying the price for not letting cops be cops. A little late to back up and start over with enforcement after so much property damage. Problem is , we rolled over and let the governors and mayors control our lives with “Rules” during the pandemic. They loved that taste of power and now, when they should be enforcing “Laws” they are still proposing “Rules”, a curfew, a “soft touch”. It is going to be extremely hard going forward now with law enforcement.
