some banger deciding that he is supposed to own what you have. From the article:
"Williams, the Northeastern Illinois professor of urban community studies who worked in violence interruption for two decades, says young men reach for guns when they feel powerless and believe they are left with no other options."
If a young man lives in Chicago's Englewood or West Englewood or Washington Park areas, Brooklyn's Crown Heughs or Miami's Pork & Beans, to name just a few areas with documented gang violence, once he drops out of school and takes on life in a gang, I suspect that the gun cements the bond between him and his fellow gangster buddies such that the use of a gun to commit a crime or the indiscriminate use whether for a violent act or indiscriminate shooting recklessly with no intended target, try as some might, there are very few options that will save a victim from a violent end or sever the young gang banger from his path to studies in a graduate school for violence taught free of tuition in a penitentiary.
I had a fellow Marine pilot with whom I went through Quantico, Pensacola and first tour in the RVN. He was a 1962 graduate of Columbia Univ, where he played football. He was also Black, not African hyphen American, Black. When he left the Corps in '67 he was hired onto United Air Lines as a pilot. To cut a short story shorter, as an investment, he purchased a package store in Inglewood bordering South Central near LAX. Sure enough, he claimed to fellow pilots that being Black would give him a pass.
Unfortunately, no such policy in South L.A., operative over weekends. On a day off from United he went into his store on a Sunday morning (circa 1971-72) and took one in the chest during a broad daylight robbery. Survived Vietnam and some banger from the ghetto does him in. RIP "Cooter" S/F Marine.
But what do I know? I do know enough to keep my car doors locked and steer clear of certain areas.