If you live in Georgia than your familiar with one of the favorite radio talk show hosts Neal Boortz, and if you have been paying attention to the net you also that Neal has put his foot in his mouth yet again.
“We got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I’ll tell you what it’s going to take. You people, you are – you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun… We need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta. We need more dead thugs in this city.”
Truth be told if you heard Neal before there is nothing here really to shock you, in fact the uproar about what he said is more interesting than his comments.
I've listen to his show before, he is a professional provocateur but I wouldnt call him a racist as of yet off this which is the popular charge leveled at him based off his comments. This is right up his alley, to get under people's skin and get them to start talking. Unfortunately he has a point, Atlanta has a visible crime, ( although I do not know if it is because crime is growing in Atlanta or because of Gentrification more whites are moving in and being exposed to it), the Five Point area, the intersection of the public transit system of Atlanta, Mogadishu on a good day. The mass of lower wealth income city dwellers alone is good enough to scare the hell out of people not used to "urban" cities. Hell it will make the hair on the back of the neck of the most street savvy kid stand up. For a city like Atalanta to have a major intersection in it's city were tourist, students, (GSU and GT is a few blocks away), residents and visitors come through being loitered to death by criminals, (yeah a lot of them are thugs), is inexcusable.
But so is what Niel Boortz is advocating, it is not hard to get a gun legal or otherwise in Atlanta and Niel knows it. Giving advice to listeners to Cowboy up and "protect" your self from those who look different from you is begging for trouble. And lets be honest the only people his listeners are going to be shooting at are those who look different from them, insert the face of every young black male that you know here.........regardless if sagging pants are worn or not.
What is annoying here is that a guy Neal's age should have accumulated the wisdom by now to know that this is NOT how you solve crime, if that is truly his intent. Jobs, education, breaking the cultural cycle of poverty that instills a fear of success in the minds of kids, thats how you fight it.
But than again that is a tall order for people to accomplish in this country, just easier to shoot em up.
Oh well time to break out the kevlar.
