ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250036
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
A FISTFIGHT breaks out. A shot is fired. Suddenly, five people pull out guns and start blasting away.
This is insane.
It is the sort of insanity that larger cities have grown inured to, but that Roanoke can still find shocking - should still find shocking.
Roanokers must continue to be shocked by such violence, because to accept it as inevitable, even routine - as just another fact of modern living to which citizens must resign themselves - would be to lower the norms that we set by our response to assaults on safety and civilization.
People who may feel protected in comfortable neighborhoods should look on this event, and others like it, not as background news virtually indistinguishable from shoot-'em-up TV shows, but as an affront to their community. People in the immediate vicinity should renew with neighbors their commitment to a collective and aggressive policy of zero tolerance.
Thankfully, no one was killed in Tuesday's shoot-out, though three people involved in the fight were shot. Thankfully, too, no innocent bystanders were hurt as a result of the malignant stupidity.
But bullets flew. Only pure chance kept the violence, arising after a fight between two women the night before, from turning into multiple killings.
If a child had happened to find himself or herself in the way of one of those bullets so carelessly fired, what outrage there would be. What outrage there should be now - before tragedy strikes - both in the community at large and among nearby residents imperiled by punks' potentially lethal indifference to life, their own or others'.
The outrage should be directed in part at a polity seemingly eager to combine, in a culture of violence, the spread of social pathologies with the proliferation of guns. But most of all it should be directed at those prepared to fire deadly weapons in response to wounded pride, wrongs large or slight, or the mere perception of possible danger. "It's ridiculous," said Kenya Reynolds, one of the women whose fight the night before precipitated Tuesday's confrontation.
"Ridiculous" hardly covers it. When this kind of violence rips a hole in the peace, police can rush to try to close the wound. (Their quick and professional response in this case restored order, and should remind the public of the dangers to which they daily expose themselves for our safety.) Emergency workers can try to repair damage done to both the guilty and, too often, the innocent. Social workers can try to reinforce the social fabric to strengthen it against further tears.
But tragedy over trivialities will occur as long as kids grow up without knowledge of their unique gifts, without dreams beyond what might happen next week - and with little thought or care for others.
These are lessons taught in nurturing families or, where families fail, by adults playing crucial roles in the lives of children. It's hard to see how we can even begin to reconstruct such lessons if we can't muster grief and outrage in the face of behavior as casual as it is terrible.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB