C ongratulations to the UAPB football team for a dramatic victory on homecoming weekend. And a shoutout to all the students and especially the alumni who returned to Pine Bluff to join in the Golden Lions’ homecoming celebration.
All that said, wouldn’t it be nice if, in the same breath as mentioning UAPB homecoming, there was not a sigh of fear and sadness over the shootings and people hurt and killed during the many celebrations?
It seems that every year, the play is go team go and then duck for cover. That is not normal, not how it should be.
In 2021, the worst of the worst happened when two people were killed after 12 people were shot during two separate incidents. We recall one of those in particular when the young man spoke on the phone to his sister, after he’d been shot at an event at the Sahara Temple on Main Street, telling her he was about to die.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
No one has ever been arrested in those killings.
Two years ago, at another homecoming-weekend celebration downtown, two people were shot, one in the jaw and another in the shoulder, in what police said could have been a related incident. Two shooting injuries was an improvement over two shooting deaths, but as one former police officer said, the difference between a death and an injury in a shooting is just a matter of aim. If bullets strike a jaw and a shoulder, there’s not a lot of room for error in turning those into deaths.
And then last weekend, two people were shot on the UAPB campus after a bonfire celebration. One was treated and released. The other, a juvenile, was listed in critical condition after the Thursday night shooting.
We, of course, do not have any answers other than to say that there are too many powerful guns in America and they are too easy to get. To date in 2024, there have been almost 14,000 homicides from gunfire, including almost 27,000 injuries from gunfire.
Most people, and by that we mean somewhere around 60%, believe gun laws should be stricter, but translating that into meaningful legislation has been impossible so far because politicians do not want to get on the bad side of the gun lobby.
That leaves the grownups in the room to chart a safer course on their own by urging people to lock up guns, educating the public on their dangers and working with law enforcement to limit the impact gun violence has on our city, state and nation.
We are always rooting for the home team, but unfortunately we first have to root for a safer world.