Who’s to blame for dead dropouts?

There it was all over my Facebook feed, comments about how wrong the Dayton cops were for shooting Brian “Big Juice” Moody and “Unaliving” him. “They shot him 8x, They shot him in the back” and “I’d run from the cops too, they just shoot black folks.” “We want an investigation” says the NAACP and some other Black leaders. Yet, when we’ve had one shooting after another, where someone just busts off a bunch of rounds at people having a “party” – there’s no outrage.

May 2nd 2024: Tommie Lee Shreck, 29 dies in shooting on first block of W. Norman Ave,

June 24, 2024: 10:20 a.m. 2 people shot South James H. McGee Boulevard and West Fifth Street in Dayton

June 24, 2024: multiple areas near the 1500 block of Home Avenue around 12:40 a.m. police found seven people with gunshot wounds. 1 died, 22-year-old Donna Zile, one fighting for their life died a few days later. Turns out 8 people were shot.

Turns out it was “Thirteen people were shot, including an 11-year-old boy, in three separate shootings Monday in Dayton that resulted in two deaths.“

July 7, 2024: another shooting near the International School in West Dayton: “Around 40 casings were recovered after a fight early Sunday outside a Dayton school ended in gunfire with one man killed. Just before 3 a.m. Dayton officers responded to the area of Oakridge Drive and Geneva Road on a report of shots fired. When police arrived, they found 33-year-old Britton Harrison dead“

I left this post to ponder for a bit, and then Trump gets shot too.

In the meantime, there have been a ton more shootings, and I don’t even feel like trying to list all of them. I’m sick of it. I’m also sick of people missing the point in these discussions. I’m going to tell the truth- and some of you aren’t going to like it. Y’all been lied to for so long, truth seems to be in short supply- and far from popular.

The one thing I agree with is that the Sheriff’s department shouldn’t be trusted to investigate the Moody shooting. This is the same Sheriff’s department that is unable to determine if one of their own officers is really in the military, and thinks it’s ok to pepper spray inmates in restraints and let autistic kids slam their heads into the wall resulting in dead kids. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s department isn’t fit to catch dogs right now.

The big question is when is the Black community going to realize that if you keep electing folks like Mims, Shaw and Joseph who think spending your tax dollars on flying electric taxis is more important than keeping your rec centers open 7 days a week, with actual programming for youth sports, this is what you get.

Mayor Jeff Mims claims outrage, yet, even with all his years as an educator and a school board member, a City Commissioner and now Mayor, he’s sitting and talking about “I am committed to pursuing new violence prevention measures” like what? You seem to think license plate readers, shot-spotter, and other techie solutions make up for the fact that you’ve let our city decay and closed every single outdoor pool? Where is scouting, youth sports, after school programming, and most of all, the parents?

Now, while some folks seem to think the gun that was on the ground next to “Big Juice” somehow got there via space aliens, instead of out of his hand, let’s be clear, we’re all to blame for electing moron republican gun nuts in this state and country. The “pistol” that was recovered had been converted to full auto- and had a 30 round clip with one in the chamber. That’s not a gun, it’s a mass murder machine that can empty a clip in less time than it takes you say the word alphabet, never mind recite it.

Who gave that gun to “Juice” and what was he going to do with it? Was he part of a well-regulated militia? Last I checked, you have to be at least 18 to buy a gun in Ohio, and no one gets a full-auto under 21 and without a lot of paperwork.

Unlike most of you, I was part of a “well-regulated militia” and in my training I actually shot a Mini-Uzi, an H&K MP5k and a MAC-10. All full auto machine pistols. There’s a reason the Army doesn’t hand out full-auto pistols- it’s almost impossible to shoot one accurately- compared to their larger siblings, and the high rate of fire is impractical for troops who have to be able to hump enough ammunition with them to be able to use their weapons when needed. No one ever needs a full auto pistol.

Had “Big Juice” fired at the cops, who were wearing body armor, he may have gotten lucky and killed one or both of them. Had he sprayed a group of people at a party- you’d have another 7 or 8 wounded with a few dead. Do either of those sound like good outcomes to you? Cleveland just had a cop get killed in the line of duty. Would these “community leaders” still be blaming the cops for “Big Juice” using the gun for what guns are made to be used for?

In the Army, we used to say “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and that’s what “Big Juice” did. He won a Darwin award. If you don’t know what Darwin awards are- click the link, but he didn’t do it all by himself. We helped him.

We Americans continue to believe that owning guns makes us safer, when it’s obviously not true. American’s die from gunshots more than in any other industrialized nation- either in homicides or suicides. And before you start talking about all the poor Palestinians in Gaza, where the numbers of dead aren’t clearly delineated between Hamas and civilians, we shoot a lot more Americans with Guns every year and we’re “at peace.“

Real gun control was something I had as a part of my platform for Congress, go read, and watch the videos I shared.

Besides the fact that we have way more guns than people in this country, we are surrounded by media that glorifies guns. You can see shooting after shooting on TV. Even though I love the movie “Die Hard” I know that John McClain’s triumphs over the evil criminals is pure fantasy land. Anyone who had access to all those full auto weapons and the kind of planning to pull off that attack, would have people who are well trained and know how to shoot. And when it comes to pistol vs machine guns- pistols lose. Every time.

And, that my friends, is why we should be thankful that “Big Juice” was killed by the police, and sad that he made the choices he made. Because, if the cops hadn’t killed him, he might have been killed by someone else, killed someone else, or ended up in prison.

We seem to have an endless supply of money to put people behind bars in this country, or to elect our leaders (we’re probably going to see $20B spent this election cycle) but we can’t seem to figure out how to keep “big Juice” off the streets and involved in school and healthy activities? According to his obituary he was involved in sports, but somewhere along the line, that all disappeared. He went to school at Emerson Academy- a block away from me. Somehow, somewhere, our community failed to support this kids healthy activities- and made the choice he made that made him “unalive” seem more desirable.

We need gun control in this country. We also need national health care. We need to make sure no kids are hungry. We need to stop addiction and drug use and take the profitability out of dealing dope. We need to make affordable housing really affordable. We need to do a whole lotta everything to turn this country around- but most importantly, we need to figure out what’s right and wrong again.

Right is when police shoot someone with an illegal gun.
Wrong is a kid who dropped out of school is packing a full auto pistol.

Any questions?

The song for this post: Justice for Juice