Is no place safe anymore?

Yesterday, as I was reading msnbc.com, I came across this article Federal guard, gunman die in Vegas shootout  . Although the news didn’t surprise me given all the violence these past months, I was saddened by the loss of the federal guard’s life and the impact on his family. Shortly thereafter, I had to go to the Post Office to drop off some stuff and buy stamps. When I got to the lot, I saw four police cars surrounding the place. Not about to take any chances, considering the article I just read and what’s been happening in my neighborhood for the past few years, I backed out of the lot and returned home.

All the while, I kept thinking: is no place safe anymore? Early in December at the supermarket where I shop, a man left the store about 10 pm with his groceries. He got two feet away from the door when a nineteen-year-old male (according to news reports) came out of the shadows, put a gun to the man’s head and shot him. The perp didn’t rob the victim, he didn’t say anything, there was no altercation before he fired. According to press reports, the two didn’t even know each other. The victim had just moved to the area two weeks before. The next day he was supposed to start a new job at an area hotel. But for some reason, a stranger took his life because he thought he had the right.

During the Thanksgiving 2008 holiday shopping rush, in a suburb not too far from where I live, scores of parents and their children were at a Toys R Us shopping for the holidays. Two men had an altercation. They each pulled out a handgun and started shooting at each other inside the store. Parents ran outside with their kids. We learned later that the gunmen had killed each other. Why? According to reports, because the women with them had gotten into a verbal tiff over something and the men decided to be macho and end it with bullets, because they thought they had the right.

Now, just in case you’re thinking I live in a bad neighborhood, I don’t. It’s middle-class. Yet, the violence has been growing these last couple of years. It’s truly like the Wild West where you don’t know what to expect from minute to minute.

Some might say that’s what happens when you have a high-density population where no one knows their neighbors and few care about anyone but themselves. If that’s true, then one can only shudder at what the next generation will be like if they’re being raised by narcissists who believe the world owes them everything and will pay if they’re not treated the way they want. Scary, scary thought.

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