It’s happening again: people are dying. Didn’t you hear? It’s all over The Skyline View. What, you don’t read The Skyline View? Then how are you going to know what’s going on?

That’s enough of the shameless plugging; let’s get to the mentioning…

People are being killed at an alarming rate nowadays, and I, for one, am getting quite sick of it. Most media will be afraid to use the words “gang violence” unless they absolutely have to. I, on the other hand, plan on using it very frequently.

However, maybe all the killings that we have had to report lately aren’t gang violence. It is fully possible that more and more people are buying guns and, hey, why shouldn’t they? The right to bear arms is what this country was founded on. Blood, sweat, and tears paved the streets of this land, with blood being of particular emphasis.

So with the history of the United States being the model, wouldn’t it stand to say that we should all be taking an example from these wonderful gang members who, through long hours of strife and hardship, have done a service to this country by acts of random violence, driving around in the middle of the night, beating people up for their shoes, robbing liquor stores, and killing policemen?

These individuals deserve our praise, don’t they? Why else would they be committing these acts? Not because they’re looking for personal profit at the expense of everyone and anyone they can get it from. Taking nobody other than themselves into account in the constant pursuit of what a street junkie with a shot of heroine might call the American Dream?

Of course not.

These people are modern-day revolutionaries. They are bringing this world back to the glory days of the Dark Ages, one bullet at a time. Without them, we would have no murder, no senseless violence, no six-year-old children left alone and orphaned, crying out for parents who will never come home for the simple reason that daddy had a nice car and he took the wrong street home.

Should I be serious again? Perhaps the sarcasm was too much, so let’s try it this way.

These people that I’m talking about, the gang members, rapists, murderers, they all have something in common.

They are important to us. Not in the same sense that our family is important to us, but at the same time, very close. They give us something to fear, something to truly be afraid of. They are unstoppable. You arrest one, and two more will take his place. Arrest a whole gang of them and still there are more gangs to deal with.

Gangs kill each other on the streets every single day, and yet there are always more of them out there, waiting for their moment to be in the spotlight, unless they prefer the shadows.

However you look at these crimes of robbery, murder, rape, or whatever else, it is not the crimes themselves that need to be feared, it is the people who commit them.

People are the cause of all of life’s problems, and only in people can we find the solution. Normally, I would have some big elaborate plan as to how to solve this problem. In fact, I even had one for a while, but when I looked it over, I realized that it involved making people care about other people. That’s when I knew it could never work.

It’s a depressing subject, one that most would rather not discuss. This is why I’m talking to you about it now. Unless somebody talks about it, nothing will ever happen.

Until then, I am the Accordion Cowboy, see you all next time same page, same column.