Posted on 01/20/2014 7:32:45 AM PST by Altura Ct.
Two years after someone fired 18 bullets into his body, we finally know the reason Gregory McFadden died such a brutal death at the age of 27 in West Baltimore. He turned his back on a guy.
It was disrespect, a malady that inflames the male ego and makes young men do terrible things. Disrespect has been around for centuries, of course, but its consequences have been particularly lethal in the age of the high-powered handgun. Killing someone because he disrespected you is a phenomenon that no amount of police power or community vigilance can seem to stop.
Some interventions Safe Streets in the Leon Faruq days have been effective when beefs between young men became known. But what do you do to stop a killing like McFadden's?
All of the following facts come from testimony in a murder trial last week in Baltimore Circuit Court. The shooting occurred on Tuesday night, Nov. 15, 2011, in Harlem Park.
McFadden was part of a group of young men on the street at 11 p.m. in the 700 block of N. Carrollton Ave., near a beautiful old stone church.
Maybe it's not a good idea to be on Carrollton Avenue at that hour, but until we declare martial law, a citizen is allowed to visit with friends on the sidewalk. That's what McFadden was doing.
The problem developed when a couple of guys approached him on the sidewalk.
McFadden had flirted with the girlfriend a couple of weeks earlier, and now Baker wanted to have a word with him about that on Carrollton Avenue.
McFadden declined the opportunity for conversation and turned his back.
Baker took offense. So did Moore.
They felt they had been disrespected.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
“...the high-powered handgun...”
Is there a low-powered handgun that is less lethal?
Sensationalism by journalism.
LMAO!
It's gotten worse since we stopped executing murderers within 3 years of conviction, and a revolution in combat medicine (mainly from the Vietnam War) significantly improved the odds of shooting victim survival in emergency rooms. Aggravated assaults per capita have almost tripled, but homicides per capita have remained flattish since 1960.
BS......... disrespect was not involved, it had to do with sex and genetics.
In the jungle, males fight over the right to reproduce.
The urban black community is as near the primevil condition as any place on earth
Self worth from the outside in. Very codependent. Some people get their sense of worth and value from within themselves, some don’t. Those who don’t get it from within themselves (and connection with Christ) will have to get it from others. Withholding it from them drives them frantic.
Institutionalized narcissism.
Executed or no, someone in prison can’t get involved in dissing incidents on the street. As for lack of survivors, ever hear of family feuds?
You do have a helpful note in your tag. Faith in God needs to be found by every generation. The previous generation can not just bequeath it to them willy nilly, though it can try to teach and preach it. Anyhow, the difference between these losers of life living like this and being saved could be only a missionary and a decision away.
“Codependency” is a hazy term as used today. Precisely, it has to do with the maladaptive behaviors expressed by the close associates to someone who is hooked on a destructive habit. It is one of the patterns in which sin expresses itself. We must be careful not to be either extremely liberal about it (where everyone is seen as victim of society) or extremely conservative about it (where everyone is held responsible, without being told patiently of the grace of God, to pull himself up by his own bootstraps).
It ain't all culture. Apartheid-era South Africa had 1/20 its current murder rate. They used to hang murderers within a few years of conviction. They don't execute murderers any more.
I guess it came after the age of the "low-powered handgun."
This epidemic of insane violence is what happens when two sets of gonads produce a product outside a stable core family group. It will never improve until we go back to the idea that children belong in a loving family with a father and mother who instill discipline, respect of the proper kind and morality grounded in traditional Judaeo-Christian values.
In no way is this an excuse for the perpetrators. They deserve to be locked up forever as the primal animals they have become. But the end product can be laid at the doorsteps of its creators.
Well, it used to be a big thing in the Southern white community. One reason we made a big thing about being polite was that people did take offense easily. Glen Campbell told a story about making a movie (True Grit?) about objecting to a line in his script which had his character speaking disrespectfully to another character, who then just argued back. Where I come from, Campbell said. this other character would have just punched me in the face. Fighting Words.
Well, we used to use six-shooters! :)
Maryland!
I am constantly amused over the uproar about “high-powered” guns. If I sit and think about cases of people I have actually known or known of who were killed with a gun it was in many cases a little .22 rimfire “squirrel gun”. It really comes down more to where the bullet strikes rather than the actual size or speed of the projectile. In fact if you are hit in a certain way you may be better off to be shot with a .45 than with a .22. A strike in the outer part of the rib cage, for instance, may mean a couple of broken ribs with a .45 but a survivable wound because it passes right on through while a .22 in the same spot may enter the rib cage and travel around inside the vital organs causing a quick death because it lacks the power to break through and exit the ribs.
On the other hand if you are shot in the head by a professional hit man you are maybe 99% certain to die regardless of the caliber but the case of Phineas Gage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage proves that a person may survive being shot through the head with a 1 1/4 inch diameter steel projectile weighing 13 pounds and longer than his arm.
All the commotion about bigger and more powerful handguns remind me of the way some people think you need a monster engine in a pickup truck to pull a trailer. Having hauled a lot of loads with a relatively underpowered engine I found that my biggest worry was how to stop the load that my medium sized engine would pull, I don’t think I ever wished for a stronger engine, just better brakes. An antique pickup with an eighty horsepower, six cylinder engine will pull a considerable load faster than it is safe to travel. Heaven forbid that some inexperienced driver should be given a 400 horsepower pickup truck to drive pulling a heavy load.
“Disrespect” is just another way of saying “I'm a violent thug and I'm going to f*** up anyone I want anytime I want.”
No intelligent or responsible people act like that. It is part of a mentality that is unfortunately becoming much more common among young people.
What about the white ex-cop who shot a white veteran in a movie theater last week over a disagreement because the guy was texting his babysitter?
The author, Dan Rodricks, has promoted every liberal policy over the course of his journalistic career and now he finds himself perplexed at the effects of those policies?
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