I used to live in North Hollywood. If you play "word association" with "North Hollywood" the word you associate with it is "Shootout." There's ample Youtubage to be had; suffice it to say that the North Hollywood shootout is the reason LAPD now carries Glocks AND Mossbergs AND M4 carbines and was the principal impetus for SWAT teams all over the US started deploying the FN P90. I lost a neighbor to a drive-by and another to a gunfight within the house. The neighborhood was then and is now being contested between the Zetas and the Armenians.

That does not mean that young mothers didn't push their strollers down my street, and it does not mean the ice cream trucks did not visit.

Here's the thing: If this were normal it wouldn't shock you.

The mere fact that this has left you absolutely gobsmacked should be the thing that gives you faith in humanity. It isn't normal. If it were, you wouldn't sit there with your outlook shattered, you'd pour one out and clean your AK. If you want to see "normalization of violence" read some of the personal histories of the Argentine Crisis that the Preppers hold so dear to their bosom. Their economy failed, violence was rampant, and personal, day-to-day decisions were choices like "do I bring the Glock or the AR-15 to work?"

You're also seeking rationality in criminal behavior. You will not find it. As someone who spent a year and a half as the conduit for a guy in federal prison, "crime" is the domain of passion, not the domain of rationality. One does not mug the shit out of someone because they are a professional mugger. One mugs the shit out of someone because they are desperate, afraid, hateful and completely out of options. Keep in mind there's also an awful lot of illicit drug use associated with street crime and expecting Carl Sagan to be rational while hopped up on meth is expecting too much.

Finally, stop looking for socioeconomic roots. Criminals aren't "they" they're "we." Your "Great White Hope" approach to all this is making things worse, not better - you really want this to be about "your people" somehow upsetting "the natural order" of "their people" so that you can couch it in sociological terms you can understand. Stop it. Criminality, unless widespread and socially accepted, is deviation, not normality. It comes from anywhere and is birthed into existence by happenstance and misfortune. Shall I overshare a bit?

Here's one of my sister's childhood friends. They were in Brownies together. Used to hang out and smoke at the Overpass. Ran in the same circle.

http://www.cowtowninfo.com/personals/f092/f09-208.htm

Wanna know what she'd doing on Cowtown? Just google "Melissa French castration."

Now before you feel too sorry for Don Hamilton, know that he totally earned it, that he managed to chase off a couple punks with AK-47s by grabbing a goddamn SAMURAI SWORD off the mantle and chasing them out of the house, and then read what he did to one of my childhood friends:

http://santa-fe.vlex.com/vid/defendant-offers-version-man-ki...

And before you feel too sorry for Jonathan Dick, know that he smothered his own infant son and put his wife in the hospital for a week he beat her so badly.

I grew up with all these people. Jonathan lived two houses up the street. Knew him from Kindergarten. Don Hamilton I used to work on cars with. Melissa French? She was hot. We flirted all the time at parties. And two of them are dead and one of them is 18-to-life at Grants Correctional (Don Hamilton is out - he mistrialed because he managed to intimidate his co-defendants enough that they refused to testify. One of them strangled himself with his shoelaces). Shit - my sister's ex-boyfriend showed up beheaded in a ditch outside of Amarillo because he thought he could compete with the Cali cartel in a town with 10,000 people in it.

But my sister is an architect and I'm sitting here typing about why you shouldn't lose faith in humanity.

Evil walks the earth, but it generally walks in shadow. If this didn't shock you, it would mean it had you in its grip. And the fact that you can walk out the door, find a Starbuck's, pay $4 and sit and listen to Smooth Jazz while couples with strollers discuss diaper cream should tell you that light outnumbers darkness.

Your friend will heal. He will be a different person. So will you. But your brush with the shadows does not mean you dwell in them.