Keller @ Large: What can be done about spate of summer gun violence?
BOSTON – Three of the nine people shot on a Florida beach boardwalk over the holiday weekend are now out of the hospital.
Police in Hollywood have two people in custody and hope surveillance video will help them track down others involved in the violence. Officers say just before 7 p.m. Monday night two groups started to argue and someone pulled out a gun. Police recovered five weapons at the scene - two were stolen.
This incident happened over the same weekend as a spate of violence on Revere Beach. Both cases appear to involve young people.
Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy was outraged.
"To have an altercation with guns in a public setting with thousands of people around them is beyond reckless," he said.
Revere Acting Mayor Patrick Keefe said in a statement that a shooting that sent hundreds of beachgoers scrambling in panic over the weekend "will absolutely not be tolerated in our community."
No wonder these officials are freaking out.
"Fear of mass shootings is at an all-time high," said Prof. James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist who's been studying this type of violence for years. "It is an epidemic, an epidemic of fear."
And while we've seen that mass shootings can and do happen anywhere, summers in the city have seen more than their share.
"In Revere Beach, down in [Florida], we have alcohol, sometimes drugs, parties, gatherings and guns. And that's a very deadly mix," Fox said.
Youth violence is nothing new. But nowadays, notes Fox, "it's almost 90% of homicides committed by adolescents using a gun as opposed to a knife or other means."
What's to be done about it? Professor Fox suggests a two-front response.
"We really need to see a higher minimum age for gun purchasing, and more work by parents in terms of preventing their kids from having guns," Fox said.
But while Massachusetts has much tougher gun laws than open-carry Florida, the fact remains it can and does still happen here.
"One thing about juveniles compared to adults is they may not be good marksmen, but they're much more likely to pull the trigger, even over very minor trivial issues," Fox said.
That comment speaks to deep-seated social and cultural problems for which there is no easy solution. But when it comes to mustering the political will to take hard steps, it's worth noting that we spent billions to cleanup Boston Harbor to make beaches usable, and Revere alone has spent millions in fix up Revere Beach.
Will that money go to waste because we can't find a way to disarm and defuse a handful of young people who think our beaches make fine shooting galleries?