Of Guns And Fireworks...

Anyone picking up a newspaper or watching the news couldn't help but catch the story about the six people killed in Delavan, Wisconsin over the weekend. Described as a "quiet" neighborhood, these people were brutally shot dead, the youngest being twin INFANT boys. A neighbor's 19 year old daughter was among the dead. One two year old survived, but remained in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the chest. Now we could speculate on a myriad of things from the potential legality of the residents (their 22 year old father was named Ambrocio Analco), to the "ambiance" of the neighborhood (the A-frame duplex house WAS a rental), or even fate itself (wrong place ...wrong time). It could have been a botched home invasion (something I blogged about over a week ago).

What is just as troubling as the murders themselves, was that the neighbors "thought" it was FIREWORKS. Now if this was such a quiet neighborhood, why would fireworks enter into the picture, unless there were people that set them off with such regularity that others just took it for granted? And if fireworks were sounding THAT close, couldn't you have SEEN them? Take it from me...I have to put UP with the idiots in MY neighborhood that blow HUNDREDS of dollars (lord knows where all the money comes from, when NONE of them work) on fireworks (every freaking year) that are HUGE. They can be SEEN quite well, too (as they fly over my house), with a report that rivals a mortar round. The one neighbor that was interviewed on TV just made me think it was a neighborhood not unlike my own. And mine is about as FAR from what one could call "quiet" as one can get (unless you live in Baghdad or Fallujah).

And we won't even get into those morons in our fair city, that shoot off GUNS INSTEAD OF FIREWORKS....that's whole other animal.

I suppose we can always use the "catch-all" phrase: One man's cacophony is another man's quiet. That paraphrase of a much more famous quote describes in no small detail what all too many neighborhoods have become. What "passes" as quiet to many is fireworks, boomcars, kids screaming their lungs out for absolutely NO good reason, adults fighting, dogs barking, and yes, even gunfire. it's not that a neighborhood might even be construed as "dangerous", per se...it's just that people have become way too DESENSITIZED to what used to pass for noise.

Background noise alone has RISEN steadily over the years, and even rural areas are no longer exempt from the bane we enjoyed on a regular basis in the inner city, what with construction, traffic, etc.

Americans in general have become desensitized to a myriad of things.

In many neighborhoods across America, the sound of sirens and gunfire at 3AM doesn't arouse a soul from their slumber....they're USED to it. Whenever there is a homicide in Fort Wayne (especially on the SOUTH side), invariably the "neighbors" will tell the media "This is a QUIET neighborhood", or that "He was such a quiet person", when all along, anyone with half a brain can TELL that the people don't have the slightest inkling as to what the hell they're talking about. These areas would NEVER be called "quiet" by any stretch of any NORMAL imagination. And those "nice quiet young men" were dealing drugs, getting caught up in the resulting fate awaiting those who "play with fire". They got BURNED!

It makes me wonder when we become so "used" to things we should never get used to. It pains me to think that we can get so complacent with the status quo, that we believe abhorrent behavior to be normal, while normal behavior becomes more of an anachronism by the day.

We can ill-afford to become that "comfortable"....not in today's world.