Reason First: Do Chicago Gangs have to Continue?

A single murder always claims two lives: the one in front of the gun, and the one holding it. In every situation where a life is stolen, the authorities step in to assess it. The O-Block gang killed rapper Carlton “FBG Duck” Weekly in August of 2020, in Chicago. The police department there is confident they have captured the culprits.

The constant barrage of bullets in places like Chicago have prompted people to do one of three things: to eye the problem, turn a blind eye, or roll their eyes. In a city so ravaged by gang violence, it is unlikely groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) will be protesting the lives lost in gang warfare. They won't be concerned with the suspects arrested in the attack on Weekly and another man and woman, who were both injured.

BLM will be concerned with spreading lies and using those lies to support further mayhem at a later date. BLM doesn’t care about Weekly’s black life, or the lives of the black people who mowed him down. How ironic.

Weekly as a rapper garnered over 60 million views for one song before his death. His life, and death, are illustrative of the way the music industry can be all about fun and making money until life imitates art. After all, it is not exactly unique for the raucousness of parties, fueled by bombastic blasts of beats and rhymes, to end with shots ringing out, and lives ending. Memorials and funerals allow neighborhood leaders the chance to offer empty rhetoric about “peace” and “togetherness”, where they often mention the unknown and unknowable from ancient texts.

So the cycle will likely continue, despite BLM’s claims that “black lives matter.” Chicago is a hotbed for gang activity. With the lack of clear guidance from parents or mentors, young people throw away their chances for higher education and the workforce to join these gangs. Whether it’s the need to belong, or to find purpose, these young people flock to the collective of a gang, and outsource their morality, and with it their futures, because they’re rarely exposed to the beautiful potential of the human mind: individualism, achieved through reason.

Weekly would still be writing songs if his murderers had been capable of thinking on their own and understood the self-interest served by trading with others legally, to their mutual benefit. The irrationalism involved in these gang strikes and subsequent indictments, contribute to a seemingly endless cycle of bloodshed and other evils.

Gang violence will continue so long as there are unreasonable figures lurking and seeking to do malice against the populace. These groups rob drug dealers to promote their warfare. No matter how many ways gangs are targeted, until law enforcement agencies defund the gangs, the problem will persist.

The “War on Drugs” has been a massive failure on many fronts. As all drugs should be legalized, the authorities should focus all efforts on these organizations. While gangs do get entangled with the narcotics trade, the main idea of crime groups is to train each other how to do all this.

Gangs will be on the radar screen until the government focuses on these bad actors and enforce against the heads of these criminal organizations. With the federal, state, and city officials involved in curtailing and eventually eliminating the threat posed by these roving bandits, there should be no argument as to how they should take them down and prosecute them.

For figures like Weekly, there will be a bleak sense regarding the death and destruction that can arise from gangs. Does this have to be?