It's Quiz Time!

So, let's say that you believe one of your best pals was senselessly shot and killed last year walking down the middle of the street minding his own business. To memorialize your good friend, do you?:

1. Hold a candlelight vigil with your church group on the anniversary of his unfortunate demise.
2. March peacefully with placards along the main thoroughfare, or in front of city hall.
3. Drive up and down the strip with a PA system to spread your message.
4. Place a stolen pistol in your waistband to go see what's happening.

If you chose #4, you chose poorly, young Jedi.  Please step up and claim your Darwin Award.  That's apparently how 18 year old Tyrone Harris chose to honor his dearly departed chum, Michael Brown.  Caught up in the revelry that undoubtedly enveloped the solemn occasion, young Mr. Harris got involved in a gunfight, including shooting at an occupied police van, culminating in police returning fire.  

Who'd a thunk it?

For his lack of discretion, Mr. Harris now lies in a hospital bed, critically wounded. Maybe on account of their training and stuff, the police are apparently better marksmen.

Sixty years ago, Pete Seeger wrote the hauntingly beautiful anti-war circular folk song Where Have All the Flowers Gone?  During the Vietnam War, the song was popularized by Peter, Paul & Mary - its message of breaking the cycle of the so-called military-industrial complex resonated with the youth culture of the '60s and on college campuses.

Today, it's not a land war in southeast Asia, Mr. Vizzini, that's killing our youth - it's lawlessness in blighted communities, following the same tired cycle, generation after generation.

In the 21st century, where's the next Pete Seeger who will bring the message that continual hooliganism will deliver a bitter harvest?