Stabbings and Rotten Teeth

[bacchuswino]

So a large number of teenagers got into a brawl with weapons in the parking lot where I worked today.  Kid got stabbed and everyone ran off.

Gang bangers in Santa Barbara are sad pathetic things.

There are socio-economic considerations to be made, but honestly the bangers in this town kind of disgust me.  They're all so young too, most of them are in

Comments

[bacchuswino]

The phrase "real reasons" makes me feel a little silly. I mean, we have some theories according to studies (some of them dating back to Chicago in the 20's) regarding why teenagers join gangs. Mutual protection and respect being really high on the list.

But obviously none of these reasons are good, right? Simply because we can understand the reasons behind why people do these things, just because we can feel a bit of shame about how shitty our culture is and how many of these little monsters it creates doesn't mean that we should ever forget the fact that these kids are violent criminals.

Violent criminals are bad.

I can sympathize with this sense of oppression and destitution to a certain extent. The feeling that the world ignores your tiny little pocket of the universe, that all the people you care for have been abandoned by society.

But it's quite a leap of logic to use that feeling of cultural abandonment to justify the murder of a number of other people just as fucked by America as you.

Not only that, but I'm not entirely sure that we should ever forget that. I'm all for keeping an open mind, but at the end of the day murderous violence should never be tolerated or justified.

[demosthanes]

You're right, my referring to it as "real reasons" was a poorly chosen use of words. There are people who join gangs, and gangs that join from understandable reasons; in some cases, its just survival, which I can fully understand as a reason, and by and large I think is a pretty damn good reason.

That there might be understandable or possibly even good reasons why people form or join gangs in no way justifies murderous and violent behavior. There are very few things that justify violence, and there's almost nothing I can think of that justifies outright murder.