A knife fight broke out at the Faith Baptist Community Center in Lafayette, injuring five. The incident is notable for the location – the community center of a church and for the number of injuries. The discussion from last night was quick to focus on the fact that numerous outsiders use the community center; though it’s not entirely clear yet that those involved were, in fact, outsiders. Other themes showing up are the notion that Lafayette’s going to hell because of gang activity imported from Chicago and that this incident would have had a better result if more citizens were armed.
The Gangs of Chicago theme caught my eye since I was having a discussion on Monday where a fellow lawyer was talking about reports that some of the Section 8, HUD housing eligible apartment complexes are advertising in Chicago where wait times for such housing are much longer. There is some concern generally in Lafayette that we are bringing big city problems into our smallish community. How well founded these concerns are, I do not know.
The more guns theme seems to crop up anytime there is an outbreak of violence. Columbine? Need more guns. Virginia Tech? More guns. Touch of the flu? More guns. I’m not anti-gun; I think they serve a useful purpose in terms of checking potential tyrants — and, useful or not, the rights are enshrined in the Constitution. However, I have serious doubts about whether more guns would be useful in this situation. One response in the comments was that instead of the headline, “knife fight ensues, 5 injured” we’d have a headline “gun fight ensues, 5 dead.” Is there evidence that more guns floating around a community deters violence, or is this just speculation?
It may be that the phrase “potential tyrants” has applications lower than at the national level. One might view gangs as “tyrants” in a certain fashion.
For that, I’d suggest maybe Iraq is a case study. There is apparently no shortage of guns or weapons and, yet, the presence of those weapons seems not to be a deterrent to violence.
I don’t think anywhere in the Mideast to be culturally comparable, instead I’d prefer we remain within our own experience.
But, that is really beside the point. The point being that I think you’re probably right in that having more guns doesn’t necessarily equate to more security.
More important would be how the justice system treats gang activity. I would posit that the system fails to deter gang crime because it makes incorrect assumptions about causality, motivation and reformatory potentialities.
The problem seems to be that there is no safe way to both have guns and limit their access to those who would do harm.Kids and adults kill themsleves, or are killed, by loaded guns left on kitchen tables.Im not sure how many times this has happened,but there are lots of kitchen-table-like places to leave a gun.
There must be a position somewhere between sensible gun control and gun confiscation, but serious advocates on either side seem unwilling to go the because of the dreaded ‘slippery slope’ theory.
And, no, I don’t see any solution: individual gun possession is constitutional,but guns do kill an awful lot of innocent people who just got in the way,or didnt know what they were doing.
Over the years, I had two different H.S students,one a sophomore and one a freshmen who carried guns to school(both without incident),one was loaded as he carried it in his book bag,which he laid on the floor under his seat in my class.Not sure about other circumstance. How do we protect against this real danger without becoming a literal police state?
I’m not sure you do. It’s a dangerous world out there, and life’ll kill you.
And the theme that we’re importing the problems of Gary / Chicago to us is not just conjecture. Speak to the Mayor or the police of either city and they’ll point it out. I’ve seen the same thing in the schools, albeit to a lesser extent on the West Side (not elitist, we just have less lower income housing available partially due to the students sucking it up.) Due to the housing glut here, the waits for subsidized housing is weeks, compared to over a year in the Lake County/ Chicago nexus.
My understanding is that even judges in that part of the state are exporting their problems by telling those clients that housing is easier to find down here. I have also heard the same about Danville IL.
can’t be allowed to happen without a resulting change in the community!
Lake County’s cities are blaming a lot of their violence on Sec. 8 people from Chicago. Gary, in particular. Hammond too.
A significant portion of Lake County’s white community are “refugees” from Chicago’s southern suburbs, i.e. “white flight”. These people blame the changes in their former communities on Sec. 8.
So you guys are not alone in thinking that the worst of Chicago are in your community.
Is perception reality? I honestly would not know how to even begin to figure this out. Could you do a background check on the people injured in the fight, and see where they’ve lived in the last few years?
Regarding guns, the “more guns, less crime” thesis is based on LEGAL guns, i.e. conceal carry.
You think any of those gang members would go to the trouble of getting a conceal carry permit? “Law abiding” and “gang member” don’t generally go together.
More illegal guns don’t make a community safer. In fact, prosecuting illegal gun holders to the fullest extent of the law is a very important crime fighting tool, one that is often overlooked by law enforcement and prosecuters.
A knife fight in church.
That is just all kinds of awesome.
I remember when I lived in the Twin Cities in the early ’90’s, the police chief of Minneapolis said that they didn’t have a gang problem. Ha! That was a joke that cost him his job. (The murder rate doubled that year alone). Come to find out that most of the activity was from people moving up there from Gary and Chicago. I even had a patient (when I was doing my hospital chaplaincy) who was originally from Gary, and told me that gang-bangers were moving to the Twin Cities for fear for their lives; and then bringing their problems with them. So that could very well be the instance in Lafayette.
It’s my vague impression that most medium-sized cities had some degree of gang activity when crack was really big several years ago. Towns like Richmond or Muncie would be stopping points for Chicago gangs plying their wares, and there would be occasional turf battles between out-of-town gangs at the intersecting peripheries of their territories.
I’m wondering if the move to home-cooked meth has eliminated some of the gang penetration. I mean, it’s seems noteworthy that some of the gang activity we’re hearing about now is a side-effect of their search for, of all things, cheap housing.
I mean, it’s seems noteworthy that some of the gang activity we’re hearing about now is a side-effect of their search for, of all things, cheap housing.
You’d understand if you’ve seen what they’ve done in Chicago. The scale of the public housing demolition is staggering. And they’ve literally done nothing to replace it.
People have to live somewhere. You can’t expect the rental market to absorb the loss of 100,000 units without some wicked unintended consequences, one of which is gangs moving to other areas in the midwest.
The theory makes sense to me, I’d just like to see someone prove it before we accept the theory as fact. Seems like a little investigative reporting would go a long way. What is the background of the 5 knifefighters?