Month: August 2025

While the pathologys of the kind of gun violence that happened a few blocks away from me two nights in a row. The handgun urban grudge shooting. And the psycho driven schools/church/workplace mass shootings. Are very different. And different strategies are required to end them. The root cause of both is the way many Americans see their right to “bear arms” and our almost insane failure to pass and enforce responsible gun laws. There is no “one policy fits all”… even countries with even easier to get guns don’t have the horrible tendencies to “pull the trigger to solve the problem” like our country does. I work with gun offenders and gun victims all the time. I don’t have all the answers but I know that this is rooted in the fact that we lie. We lie about what America is… and we lie about the fact that most of what made America was not “freedom for all”… but freedom for those who had the power to use violence to take it. It is simply easier for an American to pull the trigger to solve their problems than any people on earth. It has become a part of this country’s DNA..l am past giving a damn if you don’t agree

There is a big difference in what it takes out of you to talk to a large group of people about what they can do to get guns away from our children. Saying the right words to get them to see parenting differently. Creating a sense of urgency. Getting over the feeling of invading their child’s privacy. ..a lot of other stuff. But the one on one of talking to a young person who is convinced that that weapon they went out and got is the only way to deal with what they see in the moment as a problem, sometimes with triggers that have been at work inside them for a long time.. takes an entirely different skill set and also seems to suck something out of you when you have to do the same thing just a few days later. You go home and look at pictures of your middle aged children. You just want every Black parent to be blessed enough to be able to do that. It’s not like when I was in SNCC or the Black Panther Party… even though in the Panthers I did some times serve “the people” one family at a time. Most of the time we dealt in “broad strokes”..This is something “primal”…I just get to see too many people put their children in a box…in the ground. Ok …. l’m gonna go pull up weeds in the yard, then cut up some cucumbers to make pickles…l just kinda need to think on paper sometimes…… just an old head talking.