You are never going to stop the illicit gun trade. I don’t care where you are; bad people are going to want to do bad things, and that includes shooting people they don’t like.
There’s a very real part of me that figures if they want to kill each other off, let them. It’s adding much-needed chlorine into the gene pool.
Unfortunately, these people don’t just stick to killing one another. All too often, someone innocent gets killed.
Gun control advocates would say that’s why we need more regulations. However, when teenagers are exchanging guns in public places, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say that regulations aren’t the problem.
A 16-year-old boy who was shot while riding his bike in Fort Pierce has died from his injuries, and investigators now say the shooting stemmed from a planned gun exchange among teens.
Police say Kevin Searles was riding his bike along Avenue N near North 23rd Street on June 11 when several shots were fired. Detectives with the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, who were nearby, reported hearing the gunfire and seeing three teens run in different directions.
Deputies found Searles lying on a sidewalk on top of his bicycle, suffering from gunshot wounds. Authorities say he was also armed with a 9mm pistol at the time. He was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery, spending several days in the intensive care unit before dying on Monday, June 15.
Major Michael Santiago told CBS12 News on Wednesday that the circumstances surrounding the shooting have since taken a turn. Investigators now believe four teens — including Searles — arranged to meet that night through Instagram to exchange firearms.
“We, at this time, don’t know if they knew each other,” Santiago said.
Police say all four teens arrived on bicycles. When officers responded, three of them abandoned their bikes and ran from the scene.
Investigators say only one firearm was used in the shooting. Santiago would not confirm if the gun belonged to one of the teen suspects they arrested on an attempted homicide charge that night.
“What we have at the scene and the evidence we have, points to one person,” said Santiago. “We are fairly certain that this in fact is the individual that fired the weapon.”
And, for the record, all of the guns recovered had serial numbers, which means these weren’t privately made firearms, which the media loves to call “ghost guns.”
These are teenagers. That’s an age when I was trying to score beer, not handguns that I could use to engage in some kind of criminal activity. The shooting happened, a kid is dead, and while he doesn’t appear to have been a fine, upstanding citizen, he was still a kid and unless he was shot in self-defense, I cannot feel like this is anything but tragic. He was young enough that he could have grown out of this, only he can’t now.
Gun control laws make it pretty clear that these kids couldn’t walk around with these guns, trade them in any way, acquire them lawfully, or anything of the sort, and yet, here we are. They had them.
The answer to this sort of thing isn’t more restrictions. It’s actually going after criminals, undermining any allure for gang culture that continues to exist, and simply addressing the underlying causes of this kind of crap.
Unfortunately, despite claiming to be about “gun violence prevention,” the actions of anti-gunners make it clear that they don’t care about preventing anything other than you exercising your rights.
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