The Logic of Boston
There’s been yet another shooting in Boston, Dorchester to be specific. A young woman visiting from Kentucky was shot and killed as she left a party early in the morning, around 4:00am. Judging by the woman’s history, as reported in the Boston Globe, she was probably an innocent bystander or she pissed off the wrong people sometime during the party, neither of which justify or excuse what happened. So what was the reaction of Mayor Mumbles?
Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed yesterday to end after-hours house parties. “It’s crazy. It’s nuts,” he said. “We know all those parties bring bad events in our city. They always end up in some kind of violence.”
That’s good thinking, Mumbles…it’s the parties that are causing all the violence in the city. By that logic, we should ban ice hockey because the sport must be the root cause of parents beating up kids. Or maybe we should ban fast food because people are fat and lazy, or perhaps we should outlaw liquor because people die of cirrhosis of the liver (because prohibition worked so well the first time around), or perhaps we should outlaw career politicians because of government corruption? I actually like the last idea, but its about as feasible and logical as the others. The root cause of gun crime is not late night parties, nor is it the guns themselves (they’re inanimate objects, people), but rather the root of gun crime is the root of all crime.
Say someone gets a wish and they wish that all firearms on this earth disappear and can never come back. There’s no more guns anywhere. Neither law-abiding citizens nor criminals can get their hands on guns. Is crime gone too? No. Crime existed long before firearms or gunpowder were ever invented. Criminals will use whatever they can get their hands on to commit crimes, be it swords, knives, sticks or rocks. What Mayor Mumbles proposes, a ban on late-night parties, only addresses a loud and outwardly visible symptom of a larger problem.
It also stamps all over the rights of the individual. If I want to have a party in my house (or apartment in my case) and have a bunch of friends over all night into the early morning, that’s my right. If I’m a considerate neighbor, I involve and invite my neighbors and give them a way to contact me in case the party is too loud or raucous, as I don’t want to disturb them. However, the neighbors also have the right to call the police when a party is too loud and its bothering them. The police also have the right to break up parties that are breaking existing laws (disturbing the peace, etc.) Outright banning of “late-night” parties does nothing but tell people that the Mayor of Boston believes he knows what’s right for you to be doing in the privacy of your own home and will enforce his will despite your own ability, as a tax-paying grown-up, to choose how you want to entertain.
Does the Mayor really believe that by banning these parties, gun violence will magically cease? Does he really believe that the cause of the tragic shooting over this weekend was the party and not individuals acting in a criminal manner? When will the Mayor stop his bumbling, backwards attempts to stop violence by addressing the symptoms and start digging for the root causes? When will we start realizing that an army of police on the streets, while a good way to manage initial lawlessness, is not a solution but only a bandaid? We should be spending that money on schools, on community improvement, on after-school programs, on business expansion for jobs.
We should also focus on the family because however you define family (and I’m pretty open to interpretation), learning good citizenship, a respect for law and a work ethic all starts at home. The Mayor, despite his best efforts, cannot be everyone’s father. We need the real mothers and fathers to get involved. These senseless shootings and this horrible loss of life needs to stop, but the problem is greater than parties and police.
For the parents of Chiara Levin, I’m terribly sorry that this happened to your daughter. It’s not right and there’s nothing I can say or Mayor Menino can do to address your loss. We’ve got a hell of a fight on our hands up here in Boston and it’s time we stopped letting innocents pay the price of that battle. Mayor Menino: please stop swatting at the symptoms of this problem; it’s a waste of energy and tax dollars that would be better spent educating and saving the next generation of kids growing up in danger zones.
March 25th, 2007 16:29
If we got the wish that you talk about with all guns on earth magically disappearing I agree with you that crime would not disappear, however, this young beautiful woman would still be alive. Guns are inherently different than any other kind of weapon. It is nearly impossible for someone to be accidentally killed by any other type of weapon. There is no such thing as being caught in the crossfire of a knife fight.
If this criminal did not have access to a gun this crime would not have been committed.
March 25th, 2007 18:39
Your comment misses the thrust of my argument - the fact is that violent crime (be it gun or other) cannot be stopped by banning late night parties OR guns. I focused more on firearms in my post than I should have, considering the point I was trying to make (it’s a hot-button issue for me), so I’m not surprised to get a comment like this.
I had a whole, long response drafted but let me just pare it down to its core and hopefully to return focus to my main argument: It’s not the firearm that killed, though the bullet was the cause of death. It was the cold heart of the person who pulled the trigger. That’s what we need to get at and fix…the root causes that made that person willing and able to pull the trigger in cold blood. Banning parties or outlawing firearms will not fix this problem, we have to start looking at the hard and tough solutions…nothing will be solved by throwing a few quick-fix, easy-to-implement policies in place. As I said: the genie’s out of the bottle and there are no quick fixes, so let’s buckle down and dig deep to find solutions, not sound bites.
March 25th, 2007 23:22
I understand your blog’s direction and have no negative comments on your point but I do need to let you and all your readers know that Chiara Levin NEVER “pissed off the wrong people” in her entire short but full life. She, as many of the articles infer, was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. I am merely the father of Arielle Myers, perhaps Chiara’s dearest friend, but I can tell you all that she wowed everyone who’s path she crossed. No easy feat for a 22 yr old. She was destined for greatnes. It was her total unprejudiced acceptance of mankind that allowed her be in one of Boston’s worst neighborhoods at an ungodly hour. She was full of life, so much so that she will continue forever in all of ours.
March 26th, 2007 00:09
Hi Dan - I certainly understand what you’re saying. The only reason I mentioned the possibility of her “pissing off the wrong people” is because we don’t yet know what happened (and may never). I was only theorizing and not intending to insult her memory.
My guess is that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, as you say. However, with the kind of people who could do this type of thing, it’s hard to tell what would set them off. In the city where I live (North of Boston) a 14 year old kid shot and killed a 21 year old at a party because of a perceived insult from an earlier argument. Turns out the person he shot wasn’t even involved in the argument, but that wasn’t enough reason to stop this young killer.
Ms. Levin could have said something completely innocuous, but someone could still have taken her words the wrong way (again, purely theorizing here). It’s just difficult to tell what sets off a sociopath. That’s all I meant by my statement. Regardless, the last thing I would do is lay any kind of blame on the victim. Whatever the reasons behind what happened, it was utterly tragic and needless.