Criminals are now sniping at cops from rooftops. Two Newark officers were shot Tuesday, one in the neck, the other in the leg. Both were rushed to the hospital for treatment. At the time of this writing, the story is still developing, and the shooter has not been found by the police.
That kind of ambush is reminiscent of a scene from a Wild West movie, with gunman on rooftops and the balconies of cathouses waiting to shoot the Marshall when he comes to town. Unfortunately, the violence usually seen only in the movies is now on our streets, not just our screens.
The Shrinking Number of Cops
Almost every major city in the country has fewer men police on the force than they did three years ago. Policing has always been dangerous work, but the danger has increased because police are no longer seen as the “good guys” by some people, including too many city council members and mayors. Many cops have quit or taken early retirement, and those that cannot afford to do so are “quiet quitting” by being less proactive, arresting fewer people.
Why should cops arrest people when liberal district attorneys drop charges and refuse to prosecute? When the criminal is out on the street thanks to “no bond” laws, why should the cops bother to arrest them? And when there are no consequences, why should criminals change their ways?
No Consequences mean More Crime
If you’ve ever taken a child psychology 101, you probably learned about how consequences change behavior. Here’s an example:
Society says, if you shoot and kill someone, we will find you, catch you, throw you in jail, prosecute you, convict you, and lock you up for the rest of your life. If the murder is extreme, we’ll send you to death row, strap you in a chair, and send 50,000 volts through you until you are dead.
If a criminal shoots someone and also kills an innocent 11-year-old playing in a house nearby and they get caught, convicted by a jury of their peers, and sent to death row, other criminals take note. Before they shoot someone, they have to decide if it’s worth it. Maybe the criminal decides to beat up the guy instead of shooting him to avoid the death penalty. Each time a criminal makes that decision, lives are saved.
That was how it was 50 years ago. Today, when a criminal shoot someone and kills an innocent 11-year-old with a stray bullet, there is a great hue and cry about “gun violence,” but the criminal is never caught. He is not prosecuted and doesn’t spend a night in jail. The worst he has to fear is that a friend or fellow gang member of the guy he shot will drive by and shoot him. Instead of saving lives, the soft-on-crime policies of today’s Democrats cost lives.
Liberals have taken away the consequences of committing a crime and, somewhat ironically, we’re living with more crimes as a consequence of their decisions.
It Starts as Children
As a father, I believe the chance to teach children about the consequences of breaking rules comes early and if the lesson doesn’t take, then it needs to be driven home with corporal punishment. I don’t care if that is achieved with your hand, a belt, or a paddle, but a reminder every time they sit down helps drive home the lesson.
Kids need to be taught to respect authority, whether that is a parent, a teacher, or a police officer, and to follow the rules because we live in a society where the rule of law is important. Kids need to be taught that lesson early, and if it fails to sink in by the time they are 17 or 18, I’d like to see us return to the times when these delinquents were forced to serve in the military where it can be beaten into them or they can be sent to the front line and take their anger out on the enemy.
In many cases, the parents are the weak link. I don’t blame single parents, I blame weak parents. Love does not mean refusing to correct your child and letting them run wild. Love means making your child the best he or she can be so that they can reach their greatest potential. We used to want our kids to do better than us. I doubt that many parents look at the sonogram of their child-to-be and think, “I’m going to do everything I can to make our kid the biggest screw up possible,” yet too many do.
Broken Parts
In manufacturing, if a part pops out of the injection molding machine and the plastic didn’t fill the mold correctly, the part gets rejected. If a metal part isn’t made to the correct tolerances, it gets rejected or repaired. When the grain is moldy, the buyer rejects it. Why do we accept screw ups when it comes to people?
Why are so many mentally ill people on the street? Why are so many drug addicts tolerated? Why are criminals who prey on others allowed to persist and re-offend?
Why is society working so hard to fight against Darwinism? If people don’t want to wear seatbelts or helmets, let them. That will eliminate that gene from the gene pool.
Why are we giving hotel rooms to homeless drug addicts and illegal aliens? Let’s spend those assets on hard working Americans under the poverty line who are striving to make something of themselves. Let’s send their kids to community college for free instead of someone whose parents snuck them across a border when they were three.
Somewhere along the way, the liberal government decided that the person who thought he was Jesus, heard voices and hit Paul Pelosi on the head with a hammer was not a defective part that should be rejected or repaired by society. This week, they learned the consequence of that decision.
The same liberals determined that the gang member who used an illegal Glock switch killed the 11-year-old should be let out to kill again rather than kept locked up to protect all the other children. It seems like they see the consequences of that decision in Chicago, Baltimore and other liberal cities every weekend, but the lesson still hasn’t stuck.
Our Dystopian Future
Don’t those homeless camps look like they came from a dystopian science fiction movie? Have you noticed that the shambling addicts on our city street don’t look that different from the zombies in popular TV shows? Do the unrepentant criminals remind you of Gotham City in a Batman movie?
I’m afraid we’re headed into an increasingly dystopian future built by people who have implemented many of the policies from George Orwell’s 1984 and are trying to move us closer to the world of The Iron Heel by Jack London while they strive to become the ruling class of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
Think about where they see people like you and me fitting into that society. Hint: It’s not among the elite.
