All Over the Road

So Groot had a presser late last week:

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday implored young people to put down the guns — and urged their parents to secure their weapons and pay attention to their kids — after a weekend that saw eight children shot within an 18-hour span.
  
  Lightfoot ticked off the tragic circumstance behind each of the shootings, then talked about the “common thread:” children and teens with guns they “never should have possessed in the first place” because the “adults in their lives failed them.”

So if we're understanding this, Rahm's and McCarthy's "take it to the alley" thing is a dead issue? And we're blaming adults for supplying teens with guns? Are we finally ready to have Eric Holder's discussion on race? Well, not really.

• “No amount of policing, no superior crime strategy can address these private moments where adults allowed children and teens access to deadly weapons. Adults, we have to be better,” Lightfoot said.

So now police aren't to blame when the message last week was police were to blame? We're getting confused.

• “And for teens and young adults, my plea is put the guns down. You’re not a punk or weak if you don’t carry a gun. And you’re certainly not stronger or safer with a gun. A gun means that your future is gonna be ... irreparably shaped by a trigger pull. You pick up a gun, you picked up a ticking time bomb.”

But that isn't the message being taught on the streets, in the gangs, in the music and videos people (and folks) are bombarded with many hundreds of times on a daily basis.

• After talking to the students, Lightfoot openly acknowledged there is “a lot we can do better” to make certain that young people feel police are “on their side” and that those most at risk have the recreational alternatives they want and need. Police need to get “out of their cars” and start “building relationships with young people,” the mayor said. Interim Police Superintendent Charlie Beck strongly agreed.
  
  “I understand that they want and they think they would benefit from a better relationship, a closer relationship, a more normalized relationship with the police that work their neighborhoods,” Beck said. “Because of that and because this is also what I believe in, we are gonna set Chicago on a path to having beat officers … who are not chasing 911 calls but are there to work with young people ... to make communities healthy.”

Ah, okay. So is WAS the police's fault. Phew. Glad we got that straightened out.

Damn you evil police! Can't you raise everyone else's kids right?? Who do you think you are, coming into the community, arresting law breakers and then going home to your own families, coaching your kids sports teams, taking your kids to church, maybe even a movie, perhaps even saving for years for that memory making trip to Disney World or somewhere that isn't Chicago.

The article ends with Groot claiming the "moral high ground" from Rahm. It's entertaining, but we can't make fun of it the way Groot be-clowns herself.