this year.

The children of children, by the time they’re half-grown, have habits, like rabbits, and young of their own.
The children of children, from their mommas’ laps, hop down to the ground, to be taken in traps.
The children of children trapped by dark skins, to stay in and play in, a game no one wins.
The children of children, while still young and sweet are all damned and programmed, for future defeat.
The children of children are trapped by adults, who failed them, then jailed them, to hide the results.
The children of children, unable to cope, with systems that twist them, and rob them of hope.
The children of children, the sin and the shame, keep pairing and bearing, and who do you blame?
The children of children cry out everyday, they beg you for rescue, and what do you say?

Children Of Children featuring Oscar Brown Jr. | Black Market Militia

I heard this track while listening to a podcast called In Over Your Head, produced by Julien Smith in Montreal. In between playing some great tracks he spouts his ‘stick it to the man’ and ‘we have been co-opted, fight back against consumerism’ agenda, which I always find funny coming from people with iBooks that drink Starbucks coffee et al. He comes off as a character from The Rebel Sell. Don’t get me wrong, I find him very entertaining. However, as usual, I digress. When he played this short track I thought it did a great job of summarizing what many people (unfortunately the people running our city aren’t included in this generalization, as far as I can tell) believe to be the core reason for the increased gun violence in our city of Toronto. There was a great article in The Toronto Star on Sunday called ‘What Philadelphia can teach us’, that laid out the reasons, but also took the time to provided great solutions that go beyond the current mandate of our campaigning political parties to, “Increase penalties and reduce the number of guns coming into Canada”.

It seems to me that 100 years of sound economic theory provides us with an alternative solution. Decrease the demand for guns. If no one wants them, you can save a lot of public money on stopping them at the border. Sadly NDP leader Jack Layton seems to be the only candidate saying he’ll do what the other guys do, and also increase funding to community outreach programs, so they can get these misguided children the guidance they need, and decrease the demand for guns.

If the other parties are saying it, speak up, because I’m not hearing you.