Gang related incidents have been a chronic
problem throughout the United States for several
years now. Los Angeles, perhaps the area most troubled
by gang violence in the country, is once again in
the news. On September 17, 1995, 3-year-old Stephanie
Kuhen was with her younger brother, 2-year-old
Joseph Kuhen when
the driver of the car taking them home made a wrong turn early Sunday morning.
Gang members
surrounded the vehicle, blocked the driver's escape and opened fire. Stephanie Kuhen was
killed and Joseph
was shot through the ankle. Currently,
there are four members of the gang known as
the "Mexican
mafia" in custody. Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams called the
gang "vicious,"
saying they have
"terrorized" the neighborhood for years1.
On September 27, 1995, the Los Angeles
Times printed one
response to the shooting written by two emergency physicians, H. Range Hutson
MD,
and Deirdre
Anglin MD, who were deeply saddened by the shooting.
The strongest argument presented in the letter
written by Hutson and Anglin was that unless the
root causes of
gang formation are effectively addressed, and gang access to illegally obtained
firearms is
nullified, gang
violence will continue. The claim was
presented in such a fashion that, while based on
widely accepted
ideas, an appeal to the emotions through sympathy for the injured children was
also
applied. To justify their claim, statistics such as 28
children under the age of 10 were murdered between
1987 and 1994,
95% of which were murdered with firearms and over half the murders were done as
drive-
byes.
Unfortunately, the means to correct even one of these problems was not
included.
Hutson and Anglin do cite what they consider to
be the root causes of gang formation:
poverty,
stressed
families, unemployment, underemployment, lack of education, racism, and a
breakdown of
sociocultural
institutions. However, they do not
provide any justification for their "root causes," thus
assuming that the
reader will agree with them. I believe
that to be an unreasonable assumption
considering that
while some people may agree with several of their points, the idea that many
people
would agree with
all their ideas without some sort of rationale behind it seems somewhat dubious. Even
if it is assumed
that the reader agrees with their root causes, the decision not to discuss any
means by
which to correct
the root causes, significantly weakens their argument. If some type of solution was
suggested, the
article would have carried more weight.
As it is, they come off as concerned citizens who
recognize a
problem that is recognized by many, and like the many, they don't seem to have
a solution.
This article does have some good ideas, and the
statistics do point out that there is indeed a
problem with
today's society. Unfortunately, that was
the only supported part of the article.
Instead of
including more
facts to support their ideas, they opted to go with the emotional approach, describing
the,
"horror of
these situations." Leaving the
paper without a suggestion as to how to rectify the problems they
acknowledge. As it stands, their article is simply another
in an ongoing series, that, until a solution is
found, will
continue to surface every so often.
1 Courtesy of CNN
On-line
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