Who Should They Target?
Toronto has been through a spate of gun violence lately. 31 gun-related deaths have been among the 45 homicides recorded so far this year and the big topic of discussion has become how to curb this violence. On Wednesday, Toronto City Councillor Michael Thompson was quoted as saying that police should be allowed to target young black men at random as part of their crackdown on guns. He says that since a large number of the guns used and a large number of the people killed are in the black community, the police need to pay special attention to them. It should be noted that Thompson himself is black.
August 18th's news came with the report of a chorus of protest against Thompson's idea. Ontario Premier McGunity and Federal Defence Minister Bill Graham each issued separate statements condemning Thompson's idea.
After the backlash began swirling around him, the great thinker saw the need to issue a clarification of his original statement. Says Thompson, he was only trying to stimulate some discussion about a serious problem. What a mental midget.
There is no one group that needs to be targeted. Society as a whole should be the target. The issue of violence in schools; the issue of violence in families; the issue of violence in "entertainment" - games, song videos and lyrics, movies and TV - all of these need to be addressed and there is not one of them that is the sole domain of any particular group. We are all involved in the problem and we all need to be involved in the solution.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will return to the issue of violence in schools for just a moment, because I have been on the front lines there. I have been in situations where young teens have been caught in the middle of instances ranging from graphic threats of violence to actual commission thereof. They have been excused outright because "boys will be boys" and "they're just kids" or else had the consequences toned down for them, in order to avoid the creation of "bad rep" for the school, and/or the principal directly involved, and even to avoid having some parent in protesting the punishment meted out to their misunderstood little angel. As long as this state of affairs continues, it bespeaks a societal approach that is all-pervasive at the roots of the whole tangled-up mess.
I don't know how we'll ever solve the problem. Sometimes, I lose hope entirely that it is even possible to do so.
August 18th's news came with the report of a chorus of protest against Thompson's idea. Ontario Premier McGunity and Federal Defence Minister Bill Graham each issued separate statements condemning Thompson's idea.
After the backlash began swirling around him, the great thinker saw the need to issue a clarification of his original statement. Says Thompson, he was only trying to stimulate some discussion about a serious problem. What a mental midget.
There is no one group that needs to be targeted. Society as a whole should be the target. The issue of violence in schools; the issue of violence in families; the issue of violence in "entertainment" - games, song videos and lyrics, movies and TV - all of these need to be addressed and there is not one of them that is the sole domain of any particular group. We are all involved in the problem and we all need to be involved in the solution.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will return to the issue of violence in schools for just a moment, because I have been on the front lines there. I have been in situations where young teens have been caught in the middle of instances ranging from graphic threats of violence to actual commission thereof. They have been excused outright because "boys will be boys" and "they're just kids" or else had the consequences toned down for them, in order to avoid the creation of "bad rep" for the school, and/or the principal directly involved, and even to avoid having some parent in protesting the punishment meted out to their misunderstood little angel. As long as this state of affairs continues, it bespeaks a societal approach that is all-pervasive at the roots of the whole tangled-up mess.
I don't know how we'll ever solve the problem. Sometimes, I lose hope entirely that it is even possible to do so.
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