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espressocycle t1_j9u3o0i wrote

Reply to comment by BigDeezerrr in 4 teens, 1 woman injured in shooting in Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion section by bulbous_mongolian

So I'll give you the answer poor Black teens have given me. Some of them just want to live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse but most of them don't want to live this way but they have no choice. If everybody has a gun you need one too. If turning the other cheek marks you as weak and invites further transgression you have to fight back to survive. If you can't trust the cops to enforce the law when someone steals from you or assaults someone you care about, you take the law into your own hands.

It's an endless cycle of violence and retribution that often spans generations. The kid holding the gun has usually lost a father, uncle, cousin or brother to gun violence and the kid he's pointing out at has too.

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notapersonaltrainer t1_j9ywo55 wrote

Do you work with these kids?

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espressocycle t1_ja0idkr wrote

Not anymore. I worked in communications for a nonprofit that had programs for foster youth so I used to interview them and I had some other interactions here and there. Not gangbangers or anything, just kids with really rough lives. They know right from wrong like anybody else but they tend to have a lot of trauma and self regulation issues and just do so much ridiculously stupid stuff that messes up their lives as a result. I don't know the answer here, but community mediators has generally been the most successful at reducing violence but it's hard to scale and easy to cut when the budget is tight. It also works best when the police make an effort to keep the same cops on the same beats and building relationships, but we know how hard that is.

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