Saturday, January 17, 2009

An inelegant crime-prevention tool

A 9 millimeter handgun will lose a pissing match with an SKS assault rifle every time.

And thus, Omaha finds itself with two fewer common hoodlums on the mean streets -- a duo who picked a fight with a better-armed shopkeeper and ended up dead.

Why? All because they were upset about some gold teefuses they'd ordered from a grillz-and-bling joint.

YOU WANT TO KNOW why newspaper reporters drink? Because they have to -- day in and day out -- write about mind-boggling deviance and stupidity, and they have to do it with the print version of a straight face.

Consider
this Omaha World-Herald story today:
The store owner who shot and killed two men Tuesday night won't face charges because he was defending himself after being shot at by one of them, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said Friday.

Kleine said Marcel Davis, 16, and Willie Wakefield, 29, were upset about some jewelry that had been ordered from Andre McKesson, owner of Midwest Grillz & Jewelry at 6209 Ames Ave.

Brandon Boyce, a friend of Davis and Wakefield, said he, the two men and a fourth man drove to the store about 10 p.m. Tuesday to pick up a decorative mouthpiece known as a grill.

Boyce said that Davis and Wakefield went inside the store and that McKesson locked the door behind them. Boyce waited outside.

Boyce, 22, said Thursday that he could hear the men inside, arguing.

He recalled hearing, "Why you playing games with us, man? Where's our teeth? Can you give a refund? Then give me my teeth!"

During the argument, Kleine said, Wakefield pulled a 9 mm handgun and fired at least two shots at McKesson.

One of those bullets lodged in the wall above where McKesson had been standing. Two 9 mm cartridge casings were found in the store, Kleine said.

McKesson grabbed an SKS semiautomatic rifle he kept at the counter and fired 10 to 15 rounds at Wakefield and Davis, killing them, Kleine said.
IF YOU ASK ME, this sad story illustrates the rank tragedy of a minority underclass managing to do to itself what the Klan never could have accomplished at its pointy-hooded, malevolent zenith. How do you get to a point of such sociological deviance that you're willing to kill or be killed over ugly-ass gold dental adornments?

What level of familial and societal dysfunction produces such an animal -- one for whom the next logical step after "Where's our teeth? Can you give a refund" is to pull a 9 millimeter and start busting caps?

Thank God for thugs with about as much pistol skillz as brains. And for shopkeepers with better weaponry . . . and better aim.

(Not that honkies like me ought to feel superior for being, on average, marginally less violent . . . at least when it comes to disputes over gold teefuses. Every day, in every way, we're getting there. We're getting there. Hell . . . oftentimes, we ARE there.)

IT SHOULDN'T come to this.

William Wakefield and Marcel Davis Jr. ought to have had better upbringing, better opportunities and a fair shot at life. (No pun intended.) They ought to have been born into a world of order and nurture.

They ought to have lived in a milieu where the classroom held more appeal than the streets.

They ought to have been born into a country where "No child left behind" was more than a slogan. And where, failing that, the criminal-justice system was more than a crook-recycling program.

But they weren't . . . and didn't.

Damned sad, that.

WHAT HAPPENED on Tuesday night was a messy, bloody, horrendous and tragic solution to the problem of a pair of common thugs incapable of working and playing well with others.

Being that it was the only solution at hand -- and given the abject failure of all the others -- I suppose we should be happy with what we can get. That would be two dead crooks instead of one dead shopkeeper.

Happy. . . .

Zippity freakin' doo dah.

Lord have mercy on the dead . . . and on we the living.

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