It's not like my neighborhood is a shooting gallery, but there is a fair amount of violence amongst black teens here. It's mostly stupid shit, an argument at at party that leads to a later shooting. The cops and city say it's gang violence and these kids are probably in "gangs" but I think it's mostly mimicking the stuff they have heard/seen in music and movies. The "gangs" probably move about as much product as kids do at any high school, but probably play it up like they are the real deal.

There are real gangs that control the drug trade here, but I don't believe that they are often involved in violence, mostly commerce. Heroin is huge here right now. The average user is in their late 20's to early 30's, not really the type of person looking to score off kids.

Record number of murders in my neighborhood was four in a month, all within about twelve blocks from my house. Two of those murders were a brother and sister who won a bunch of money in the lottery (hundreds of thousand, not the big one). From what I hear they owed some money to folks and didn't want to pay it back, and there ya go, dead. The third was some gang/teen bullshit, guy died about a block from my house, someone I know found the guy bleeding out on their porch. The last, and the only random murder I have heard about in my neighborhood was a guy who they think got his house broken into when he was napping. He woke, startled the robbers and dead. I knew him in passing, seemed like a real nice guy. I guess that because out of all the murders I know about around here the fact that only one was random violence leaves me feeling pretty safe.

There are about 10X the number of shooting as there are actual hits. I have often joked that if they could just improve their aim about 10% we might be able to afford a house in this neighborhood.