Here We Go Again
Another shooting in Boston last night. Another kid clinging to life. And, yes, another Massachusetts gun control success story.
The irony here is that if our politicians, prosecutors, and judges were serious about fighting crime in the Commonwealth, instead of showing up in front of the TV cameras to offer a feel-good tough-on-crime soundbite every other week, this kid would be behind bars today instead of on life support with a bullet wound to the head.
This laissez-faire attitude toward crime control is literally killing the Commonwealth. This kid, like so many others these days, violates nearly every firearms law on the books, and is free to roam the streets while our legislators spend their days dreaming up new ways to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens who choose to stand up and defend their families from violent crime.
I'd like to say that change is on the horizon, but that's an entirely foreign concept to our elected officials for whom the status quo has become a very comfortable way of life.
"He thought it was over, and that's when he got shot," Santana said. "I was just a few feet away. He got hit in the head. . . . It was pretty bad."
Saladin, 20, who lived in the Dorchester development with his mother and brother, was clinging to life last night at Boston Medical Center, but his mother, speaking at times through a translator, said funeral arrangements were underway.
The irony here is that if our politicians, prosecutors, and judges were serious about fighting crime in the Commonwealth, instead of showing up in front of the TV cameras to offer a feel-good tough-on-crime soundbite every other week, this kid would be behind bars today instead of on life support with a bullet wound to the head.
In January 2000, according to press reports, Saladin was arrested at Dorchester's Jeremiah E. Burke High School for allegedly carrying a loaded gun in his school backpack.
This laissez-faire attitude toward crime control is literally killing the Commonwealth. This kid, like so many others these days, violates nearly every firearms law on the books, and is free to roam the streets while our legislators spend their days dreaming up new ways to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens who choose to stand up and defend their families from violent crime.
I'd like to say that change is on the horizon, but that's an entirely foreign concept to our elected officials for whom the status quo has become a very comfortable way of life.
