92 year old woman shot in NYC...

Watched it on the local nooz. Seems some kids were fighting on the street and she was collateral damage-- bullet went through her living room window and into her back.

This is the third one this year, relatively low for NY, but it got to me more than the others who got shot. 91 and she still got out of the house and volunteered in the neighborhood and with her church.

No big point about gun rights, control, or any of the other stuff here, just passing by with a lament over someone who got shot.

People do get shot, ya know.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7075211

Goddammit! 92 year olds should pass away quietly in their sleep, not be shot to death!

:cry:

If this were my Granny I would be out for blood!

in NYC (if you get approved). Carrying it outside the home is illegal. Possession of it is illegal if you're a prior felon (which the offenders most likely were).

There were multiple federal, state, and municipal laws broken here people. Criminals don't follow the law, imagine that!

What law would have prevented this from happening?

Really, what laws would you propose that would have stopped this crime from happening?

In NYC, where this crime happened, you are looking at $1000 to register a handgun, if you can get approved.

Carrying it outside of your home is already illegal in NYC.

Possession of a firearm by a felon is also illegal in NYC. Almost certainly the gunfight involved gang members with prior felonies.

So what law would you envision that would prevent this kind of crime?

A couple kids just killed someone. Probably because their family is poor, so their parent or parents are always working, and with no supervision they got mixed up in gangs.

I wonder how many deaths we'd avoid in this country if we paid everybody a living wage, something where they could go home to their kids after a shift and not worry about not having enough money.

who think it is cool to show off guns and to kill somebody.

Hell, I grew up in a small town, and the only kid around there who tried to kill anybody was from one of the wealthiest families in the area. Over drugs, of course.

not the poverty causes crime/murder meme AGAIN!

y'know in many societies, the parents work long hours and kids don't resort to gunplay and murder. it's a culture problem. it's not a poverty problem. poverty does not cause crime. that is not only empirically wrong, but it's incredibly demeaning to poor people.

The bottom line is there is definitely a correlation in the United States between poverty and crime. More specifically, there is a correlation between wealth disparity and crime. When you think about it, this is logical.

If everyone is poor, everyone struggles along trying to get by. There is no particular animosity towards your neighbor, because he's in the same boat you are, and you don't feel slighted by your own lot in life.

But when there are large disparities in wealth, it breeds feelings of resentment, hopelessness, and jealousy. Lots of people start feeling that "the game is rigged" and that there is no possible way to get ahead in life through legitimate means, and thus they justify turning to crime to get what they feel is their share.

So yes, it is a culture problem. It's a culture of greed problem where everyone is thrashing so desperately to get their heads out of the water that they will frequently push down others around them. Is it any surprise that those who find themselves constantly underwater get pissed at those around them rising up?

anybody who claims poverty causes crime doesn't understand either poverty, or crime, or human nature

to a need the practice of which is considered outside the bounds of a particular society's codification of acceptable behavior. The development and continuous reexamination of those standards is one of the functions of culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture



You're right, if I understand you correctly, that throwing money at poor kids won't make them grow up into moral adults. But money does buy you culture. It buys good schools staffed with highly trained and motivated teachers. It buys a safe place to live. It buys exposure to people and places beyond one's immediate neighborhood. It buys the personal attention of professionals to deal with specific mental or physical difficulties. It buys a series of safety nets that gives those with means more opportunities to fail without disasterous results. It buys kids time to learn.

With the right kind of culture people learn aboud deferred gratification, respect for history and the value of introspection. Unfortunatrly, that's not the kind of culture we have bought. Income disparity is the result of our culture's having thrown sizeable chunks of the population under the economic bus. We've become just another third world country with a lot more stuff.

Revolutions never start with the well off and satisfied. They start with the poor and disaffected. Yesterday's hoodlum is all too often tomorrow's freedom fighter.

the VAST majority of crime has nothing to do with NEED and has everything to do with want.

this holds true both in the literature, the studies, and ime (i've arrested hundreds of people in my career)

we have millionaires who commit crime, for example. they surely don't NEED anything.

National Geographic specials about some hunter gatherer tribe? They're filled with footage of some dude in a tent (or less) with bare feet, a pointed stick and a few feathers. That is how the human species was designed to live on this planet. Everything beyond that is gravy. We don't need anything else.

Culture determines percieved need. Our consumer culture affects inner city kids, millionares and everybody else in between alike. The linked article in the previous post is very informative on the subject of how consumer disaffection was created by corporate America.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962/


If the only acceptable proof of success is measured by the accumulation of material things, then that is what a kid will work to achieve. If that kid is rich, it's pretty easy. If that kid is middle class, more difficult. But if that kid is poor, it's impossible. Increasing income disparity in the face of rampant materialism in our culture will certainly cause civil strife. Given enough disparity, it can cause social upheaval.

Our wants have become needs manufactured by those who would profit from them.

Edited for clarity

there is a HUGE difference between poverty and culture.

if you can't recognize that, you are doomed

to turn to crime are a bad combination. In some areas, apprenticeship in the criminal economy probably appears to be the only path to a semi-happy life to many young adolescents. And if a child gets sucked in to the gang culture young enough, before their moral views are settled, some of them are going to turn into pretty bad people.

is and always has been appealing to some people moreso than others, regardless of income.

the idea that poverty is a causal factor in crime is not established, regardless of what you suspect

with the understanding that correlation does not equal causation, there are other factors that are far more correlated with crime than poverty is.

Justice won't bring her back, but I want to see the responsible person held accountable. Also, the scum who transferred a pistol to a minor.

and I think there are laws against shooting people, as well.

Cops have arrested a teenager for the heartbreaking stray-bullet slaying of a 92-year-old Bronx woman, police said Thursday.

Jamal Blair, 18, was picked up late Wednesday near the Wiliamsbridge home of Sadie Mitchell, a beloved "mother to everyone on her block," who died after a bullet blasted through a window and pierced one of her lungs as she walked into her living room.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said witnesses gave up Blair's name and cops tracked him down.

He confessed hours later, police sources said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/22/2009-10-22_cops_closing_in_on_arrest_in_.html#ixzz0UhkFSfSH


Sadie Mitchell, 92, who was struck and killed by a stray bullet at her home.


Detectives take Jamal Blair into Bronx Detective Command after his arrest in connection with the shooting death of 92-year-old Sadie Mitchell.

Damn shame about the lady, and the suspect is just a kid.