When will it stop? (Banner Midterm)

I’m actually going to talk about something very important and newsworthy to me. It hits really close to home, and was actually one of my biggest fears growing up, so maybe I will be able to offer a different perspective to some people.

In Vancouver there was only one thing that ever really scared me when I was little, and even now when I go back to visit my old home and friends and family.

Gang violence is really something that has been around Vancouver (as well as many other places in Canada/US and many other places) for as long as I can remember. My mom tried to shield me from it when I was super young and a girl was killed as a result of gang violence at the school across the street, but I knew what was going. I remember having to be careful which way I came home, because I didn’t want to run into anyone affiliated with any kind of that stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Vancouver, and it will always be home to me. There are so many beautiful places, so many friendly people, and there is no place in the world I love being more than that city, but the senseless violence HAS to stop. I remember not too long ago a cousin of mine got in an argument with someone at a mall. He didn’t know who the person was, he just didn’t appreciate the rudeness shown towards him and his girlfriend. Well, they went in to watch a movie, and when they came out the guy was waiting for him with his gang. They stabbed my cousin AND his girlfriend and for what? My cousin made it through, but his girlfriend didn’t. She lost her life because her boyfriend stood up for her, how does that make any sense at all?

In the past month in the city of Vancouver alone there have been 18 gang related shootings. That’s not anything at all that I want my friends and family to be around. That’s not what I want to have to worry about when I go back to see them.

And while I don’t like him, or agree with many of the things he says or does, I completely back the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper with the unveiling of his new anti-gang legislation. Under the legislation ANY gang-related murder becomes automatically a first-degree murder charge, any drive-by shooting (resulting in injury or not) results in a MINIMUM of a 4 year sentence, and any assault with a weapon, or assault causing bodily harm would potentially hold a 10 year sentence.

We can’t just magically eliminate all of the sick people, who somehow think it’s okay to physically harm another human being, but we can at least impose stiffer penalties, taking them off the streets when they do, and hopefully deter them from doing such thoughtless and selfish acts with stiffer penalties.

Go to this site, if you get a chance: http://www.cbc.ca/bc/features/homicide/2009.html

It’s an interactive map of the homicides in the Metro Vancouver & Fraser Valley areas alone, and it’s only for the 2 months of 2009. It has the names, and the manners of death, for each and every victim to this point. Some of them are by my old house, some by my grandparents’, one practically in my aunt’s back yard.

I love the city, and I love the people more than I can even begin to express, but something needs to happen to make this stop.