Several months ago we wrote an editorial decrying the rampant use of the gun in our community. We have to address this again, as we see gun crime escalating in Miami-Dade County over recent weeks. People in the community are concerned about the rash of gun-slayings, especially as many young people have been killed. 

An aspiring young man, just seventeen years old, just about to graduate from high school with a 5.0 GPA was gunned down because of a foolish argument about competing cars. A young lady was killed the day following her graduation - gunned down in drive by killing. Another young man, stepped out of is house to meet a friend and was mysteriously gunned down in the streets in Northwest Miami-Dade.

Again we appeal to the authorities to turn their attention to serious gun controls. It is just too easy for people, especially young people to get guns. Long gone are the days when people settled arguments via a fistfight. In these latter days, it is the bark of a gun that indicates who wins the argument, or who gets whatever one wants to get. This correlation between gun crimes and the youth of our community must be broken.

So often, we complain and agonize about the high rate of gun-crime in the Caribbean. Some people are refusing to return to the Caribbean even for a visit, because of the fear of crime. However, we need to stop and realize that the crime rate right here in Florida is overwhelming. We are living in a society with crime raging all around us, but yet many of us remain silent, retreating behind the walls of gated communities. We need to speak out and loudly. We need to demand that the ease in which guns are available be controlled, and there must be means that are found to disarm teenagers who carry guns.

When we are not losing our youth to the gun we are losing them to motor vehicle accidents.  Too many parents continue to reward their children with high-powered vehicles at too young an age. Too many parents think they should appease their children by giving hem a car only for the purpose of making them ‘fell that they are loved.”  Too many parents believe that they must compete with the Joneses. Their neighbor’s children have a car, so their little Johnny must have a car too, even if the parents can hardly afford to buy one. The fact is that, unwittingly, too many parents are giving their children a passport to meet their maker prematurely.

As we wrote a few weeks ago, the ownership of a car must be aligned to the maturity of the youth to whom that car is assigned.  Although many young people will not enjoy reading this, a sixteen year old is much too young to be given his/her own car. Irrespective of how disciplined a child is, when they feel that power of a six or eight cylinder car purring under them, the inclination will be to speed. We too was once 16, and each time we got around a the steering wheel of a car (when we sneaked out the old-man car) we always wanted to see how fast that car could go, and controlling that car was a challenge.

As adults, we do have a responsibility to the youth in the community. That responsibility increases when the youth is our own children. Not because they look like adults when they reach sixteen, is reason for us to treat them like adults and let them loose without guidance.

Many parents, are extremely proud to see how grand their little girl or little boy have gown up to be a young woman or young man, and would very much want to protect them from the world by keeping them locked in doors as much as possible, However, we all know that this is just not practical. But we can still protect them nonetheless. We certainly can try to assist them in making correct choices.

Whatever the answer is, whatever the means that it takes, we must find a way of protecting our youth from guns, from violence and from misusing fast cars. The youth are our future, we cannot afford to lose them today.