Why, oh Why?

"Why, oh Why?" wailed the woman on TV. "Who will stop the violence?"

She was a "survivor" of a murder. Her son had been gunned down at 2:00 a.m. on a street corner during a drug deal. The photo of her son showed him wearing his cap backwards, pants sagging so that his underwear was showing, gold chains, prison styled tattoos, and flashing a gang sign.

I wasn't feeling much love for the lady. What I wanted to scream at the lady (actually I screamed it at the television) was, "Your son wouldn't have been gunned down at 2:00 a.m. if he had been at home in bed where other civilized people are at that hour!" If he had been asleep in his bed in the front bedroom, exhausted from a long day of honorable employment, and a stray bullet through the front wall took his young life, you would have my full sympathy.

Sheesh. If you deal drugs on the street corner, you run the risk of death. Your son knew that. Drug dealing is a high-risk occupation. Your son chose his path in life. He rolled the dice and lost. You are not a victim of violence. You are a victim of your son. He held you hostage with his actions and you suffered the consequences of those actions. Do not wail on television for someone else to fix the situation. The only person that could have fixed it was your son. Lay the blame and hurt where it belongs...on your son.

Her final words, the same mantra all gang member's families chant at their deaths, were, "He was such a good boy."

Made me want to slap her silly.