http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/0...ref=videosearch

Very sad. One time that I actually believe the kid wasn't involved in a gang himself. He had offers to go to Stanford, and his mom was serving in Iraq when her 17 year old was killed.

LA is the gang capital of the western hemisphere. i heard a boys and girls club director in long beach say theres a few murders every weekend. after 911 police had to turn from working gangs to anti terrorism investigations even now. since then theres been a gang resurgence in a lot of areas. comparing the number of deaths, loss to the economy, and other criminal activity due to gang related issues versus terrorism in america would be interesting

sad. that father especially got to me

yeah, same here. He had a lot of ambitions for his son. I can tell he worked hard to keep his sons straight.

this is why i approve of limited vigilante justice...... gangs want a war? let the normal civilians take that war to them.

when I think about this story I touch myself

i bet you don't want...anybody else?

If protecting us from terrorism means a bunch of worthless gangbangers killing each other than so be it.

You know that a lot of innocent people are caught in the crossfire of these gang battles, right?

It's really not something to just overlook.

i dont think he read the article - which is just one example of many incidents of innocent people being targeted by gangs. not to mention how gangs in a section of town instantly turn it into a dangerous ghetto (suburbs including)

agreed.


i would support gang on gang violence completely if there wasn't any innocents involved

Hmmm.

A few people vs. 3000 people .... 30,000 people ... 300,000 people ... hell, maybe even 3,000,000 people...?

I'll take a few.

Hmmm, didn't know America was so dumb-fucked in the head that both areas of crime couldn't be prevented/investigated. I guess you can only focus on one, right?
Ah well. *shrug*

If the "focus" on the latter requires that less resources be allocated to the prior, then yes, I will support the latter any day of the week.

Should there ben a dire need for focus and resources allocated to dealing with the prior, then I suggest paying cops more money to make it worth their while and hiring more of them, as well as support from the public in these localities to fund this should they deem this important to them.

Ultimatley, as cold and harsh as this sounds, I look at this in a similar aspect to somone getting in a traffic accident, except the odds of dying because of gang related violence is probably astronomically lower than getting in a car wreck and dying.

Think about it. How likley are you to be killed by a gang member when you're innocent? Probably one HELL of a lot less likley than you are to be killed in a car wreck on your way to work every day .

So does this mean we need to cause mass upheaval and demand from this point on there will be no one killed in a car wreck every again through battle-proofing all vehicles, making every road an 8-lane highway, etc, at the cost of eleventy-billion dollars?

No.

Like I said, it sounds cold and harsh, but stastically speaking, if it's true that preventing terrorism takes resources from preventing gang violence, I'd say prevent terrorism. A few hundred thousand people getting killed vs. a few is a risk I'm sure virtually every american would be willing to take if it all came down to the wire.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/ylocalnews...894&lang=en

the terrorism vs. gang violence debate:

how many americans have been hurt as a result of gang activity versus terrorism? i am willing to bet gang activity. so if that is the greater problem then the resources should be kept here in the country working to fix that problem. like some of you have said, the greater the risk/problem/number of deaths is where the money needs to go

and im not about to believe dogmeat was referring to global populations when he was talking about 300,000 people or whatever because i cant imagine he cares (ala he has routinely posted about turning the middle east into glass).

whats the phrase, something like gangs are the american terrorists on american soil or whatever