The Paw Print

A news publication created by Baruch's College Now high school journalism class

violence

Man Up And Stop Using Guns

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In the United States eevry year about 4.5 million firearms and 2 million handguns are sold.

The increase of gun violence needs to stop within our neighborhoods. Many do not see how it affects the streets of our neighborhoods as a whole, but it does in numerous ways.

More the 53 percent of teens’ deaths in New York are caused by homicides, and two thirds of those victims are black. The Health Department states that 200 kids ages 15 through 17 died from gunfire, more than any other cause of injury, between 2002 and 2011 in New York. This affects everyone, from the family and friends of the victim, to those of the shooter.

Most of these gun-related deaths take place in low income neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, where there have been 31 gun related deaths, High Bridge Morrisania in the Bronx where there were 16, and East Harlem which had nine deaths due to shootings in the past year.

This makes my blood boil. We’re out here killing each other over dumb things that probably won’t matter to us 20 years from now. But it never hit me that so many teens my age were being killed around me. When you hear the numbers — that 2,694 kids in the United States were killed from guns — you don’t realize that it’s the equivalent of 134 classrooms of 20 kids.

It didn’t hit me that there needed to be a change in these low-income neighborhoods until my close friends Raphael Sadonte Ward was killed on Jan. 4, 2013 by another very close friend of mine. It happened because of years of issues between the Jacob Riis Houses and the projects up the block, Baruch Houses.

The feeling of confusion when both of your close friends have their lives taken away from, one from a gun and the other from the system, is extreme.  I started to feel like I was disloyal to both my friends because I felt bad for both. But at this time you couldn’t sympathize with both sides — you were forced to pick one and stick to it. I couldn’t do that because I knew both the shooter and the victim too well and loved them dearly. I was upset at the shooter for killing him and at Sadonte for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sadonte was an amazing person who was loved by everyone. He had dreams of becoming a baseball player and getting his mother and eight year-old brother out of the projects.

Ever since his death my neighborhood has been divided. One would think this loss would calm everyone down because both sides lost people who were very important to them and they wouldn’t want to lose anyone else, but instead every project began Facebook arguments with one-another, threatening  the shooter’s family amongst other things.

On July 19, 2013 another friend of mine, Deontay Moore, was shot in his face by a young man from Sadonte’s neighborhood. Deontay was also a good kid just trying to make something out of the messed up living conditions of living in the projects. He was a funny kid who walked around with a smile on his face who always tried to find ways to make everyone smile even if he wasn’t really smiling in the inside.

Left: Raphael Sadonte Ward, August 18th 1996 – January 1st 2013 Right: Deontay Moore, September 18th, 1994 – July 20th, 2013
Left: Raphael Sadonte Ward, Aug. 18, 1996 – Jan. 1, 2013
Right: Deontay Moore, Sept. 18, 1994 – July 20, 2013

More things need to be done to stop the gun violence. Teens should not be able to access guns as easily as they are. The city should do more gun exchange programs inside of these hoods. Most teens want money and if they know they can turn their guns in anonymously and receive money, they would do it with no problem.

There should be more after school programs placed around these neighborhoods. They should receive help from the government to stay open and help kids to realize just because you’re from one project or another you’re no different or no better. If kids learn this at a younger age it would stop problems between different hoods. Also, kids need role models to show them there’s a whole different life outside of the life they’re living and they can only see it if they get off the streets. Remember no mother should ever have to bury her child.

 

Why Does the Gunman Shoot?

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painted by Kan MufticWhen one is informed of tragic events that happen on a world scale one may ask himself thought-provoking questions about how this could happen. Some may say that evil is the creation of God. Another would disagree, likening it to the actuality of dark and cold. But consider this. Acts of violence cannot only be attributed to the absence of God but also to inclinations within the human condition. In other words, the human race has the inclination to do something wrong whether it be to cheat on a test or to go so far as to commit an act of violence. The presence of God is what prevents one from committing a wrong thing.

When arguing the validity of God and Christianity some would say that God created everything. In addition to that, some may even imply that, if God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists. Therefore according to the principal that our actions define who we are then, God is evil.

Coming to this conclusion is logical but the flaws in this logic must be exposed. Liken this to the existence of cold. One may say that cold indeed exists simply based on the reason that they have felt cold. In fact cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in actually the absence of heat. Everybody and every object is susceptible to examination when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes incapable of reaction at that temperature. In actuality heat, on Earth, can never be absent. Rather it can vary in its intensity.

One may also believe darkness exists based on what they have experienced. Once again this empirical evidence is baseless and invalid. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. We can study light , but not darkness. We can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color.

You cannot measure darkness. How can one know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present.

Now ask yourself does evil exist? Evil in fact does not exist, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of Jah. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith or love that exist just as light and heat do. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no warmth or the darkness that comes when there is no illumination.

The actions of men are those that come from overwhelming inclinations that stem from the human condition. When one does things that seem to defy our nurtured reasoning, that is evidence of the natural inclination of man. Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Kongfuzi believed that humans all have a sense of evil within them that must be contained in one way or another. Kongfuzi believed that men should understand the order of respect and mutual respect. He felt that if all men understood those levels of subjugation, evil would have no place and if those who have liberating powers, like fathers and leaders of countries, practiced ultimate benevolence evil would have nowhere to take root.

Thomas Hobbes on the other hand expressed his radical conservativism towards the autocratic subjugation of peoples whether it be brutish or benevolent. To Hobbes all humans were evil and needed to be subject to a higher power. He once said, “The condition of man…is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” Hobbes implies that men do what they want within the confines of their own material gain. He felt men create a “social contract” between one another so that they may be able to coexist without mutilating one another because that is their natural tendency.

To both of these philosophers of old evil is the constant and goodness is simply a catalyst. However, evil is not the constant. Goodness, kindness and benevolence are the constant but, like heat, vary in intensity. One may ask oneself that if we have this “social contract” why do men kill other men? Well to simply answer, it is the absence of God.

In 2010, America suffered a homicide total of 12,966, 67.5 percent of those homicides were firearm related. This is an ever-so-often occurring issue in America. We hear about these events and then wonder how does God allow these things. Why are they happening? The fear of God is not in the hearts of the men who commit them. They kill for pleasure and even as a quick fix to their own problems. They have disregarded Hobbes’ “social contract” and Kongfuzi’s hierarchy of respects. Evil has outshined the light of goodness.

How can politics solve a problem that is simply more than just crime? This issue is not about how many guns are in the nation. This issue is not about how many bullets are in a clip. This issue is not about some conspiracy to disarm the nation. This issue is an issue within the fabric of humanity and has been and will always be. A man will kill when he feels he wants to. The only way to control this is by regaining the goodness we were born with. We regain it through God.