Kids with Guns
Nov 7th, 2009 | By Roxanne | Category: Thought Trigger- Issue One: Kids with Guns
Kids with Guns- Gleidy Montnor
The idea for this issue’s topic “Kids with Guns” sprang from various conversations, piss takes and insights over the past few months. This topic goes both ways; it can be an eye opener to a world and circumstances we cannot possibly imagine in our worst nightmares; but it can also be rather tragic when we look around us and realize what the media provokes in youngsters today.
So lets start from the beginning.
I am sure most of you are familiar with the film City of God ( Cidade de Deus, 2002 Brazil) directed by Fernando Meirelles. City of God is told from the narration of young photographer Rocket and provides a closer insight into the world of Rio de Janeiro’s slums. The film focuses on various key characters of different gangs and their growth from young hoodlums to full-blown Drug barons armed with guns and knives.
Broken up into chapters, the finale shows the final confrontation between two different gangs bringing their personal and business conflicts to an end. And what an end it is at that.
Many critics have said that the direction was heavily influenced by Scorsese. And all though more than one scene in this film might remind us of certain scenes in Goodfellas or Raging Bull, there is one key difference.
Whilst watching Goodfellas we might be somewhat overwhelmed by the violence displayed on screen be it in the form of beatings, shootings or sex. But it is rather easy to brush off the momentary tension after having seen scenes as such and go about your day without paying the matter much more thought because what we just witnessed was pure fiction.
This however is not possible whilst watching City of God. Unless you are a cold hearted bitch, there is absolutely no way you can go about your day untouched, after having watched the scene in which a boy no older than six years old is forced to decide whether to shoot a equally young boy in the hand or the foot after having been blamed for grassing.
the children fighting each other and the government in City of God found themselves to be in that position “voluntarily forced” into this environment for one reason or another – poverty, domestic abuse- as are pretty much all Child Soldiers.
Those of Rio de Janeiro were/are subject to gang wars/drug wars, the majority of child soldiers today are involved in a variety of political groups, including self-defense units operating in many conflict zones, militias and government-backed paramilitary groups.
The “Voluntarily Forced” story counts for the majority of child soldiers and where the most critical problem is in Africa, children are used for armed purposes in parts of Asia, Europe and Latin America. In 2004, hundreds of children were known to have served for an armed rebel Hutu group (Forces Nationales pour la libération FNL) in Burundi; in the 2003 Iraq invasion, American forces were fighting children in Nasariya, Karbala and Kirkuk, to name but a few examples.
What other alternative are children meant to see when all they are exposed to is a war destructed environment where the economical structure has collapsed, poverty is a given and their families have been tortured and/or killed?
Some countries still run risk in forced abduction of large groups of children as young as nine years old to be used for combat..
Organizations such as the DDR (Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration Programes) have been founded to help assist former Child Soldiers to learn new skills and return to their communities. However, as with most good causes there is a lack in funding and resources. A long term investment would be necessary to allow all the facilities and awareness to make the programme work effectively.
So here we are, having read through these shocking facts.
We are aware that there are children out there who simply have no other choice but to join the armed forces, gangs or drug lords.
Which is why it is even more disgusting to see dumb rich kids today toying with guns as means of “protection” or some kind of warped “social status”.
Not only has violence and the carrying of weapons turned into some kind of fashion, it actually looks as though there are more and more subgroups growing for this particular trend.
The Gangster- Wannabees, sporting their jeans half way down their ass forcing them to walk like toddlers who’ve just soiled temselves (you know the type), sit outside apartment blocks crying about how life is so hard, how “a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do”, only seconds away from giving you some kind of Provider story. Most of them are kids who have somehow tapped into a different reality where they think their the main character in Belly -or for the more Chav-like characters Scarface; imagine that, they are really convinced that they are in control of their life and their “hoods”, with nothing to their name but drugs and violence. What takes the piss is that the majority of those kids who whine about the bitch that is life and how hard it is to make but a dime and win some bread, go home at the end of the day, pushing through sparkling glass doors and elevators, into the warm living room of Mummy and Daddy, to curl up on the couch and play a few hours of PS3 on the flat screen TV while Mummy serves bacon sandwiches, before retreating into the comforts of a king sized bed and a big comforter, after a hard day’s of growing hemorroids sitting on a bench and getting wasted. Sounds pretty fucking cush to me.
In one part of the world, children dream of going to school and making something out of their lives, instead find themselves stuck in a world of war, hate, crime and violence, and above all neglect.
In other parts of the world, children find themselves surrounded by plenty of opportunities and possibilities, a safety net unheard of to others, and still they find the need to pump their aggression with video games only to walk into school the next day and mow down an entire classroom or school even with a machine gun; or they’ll kick seven colors of shit out of an elderly man like they did at the station in Munich the other day; or maybe they’ll just mentally torture a young lass for hours before finally popping a bullet in her mouth, just because, you know…a kid’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.
Oh life is but so hard.
Roxanne Sancto
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Man this really was a kick ass article and so true. We live in the West smothered in comfort and abundance whilst moaning and bitching about the difficulty of our lives.
For the young this isn’t enough. Its ok for the middle aged to pretend that there lot, (e.g. a comfortable accounts job with a Narcissistic manager), is as bad as a Rickshaw driver in New Delhi but for young minds this is not enough. The youth particularly young boys and men or Kidults as the film famously calls them need to add danger and excitement to their poor syndrome. This is what pushes the middle aged moan past the boundaries of nonsense and into real climatic violence.
The truth is that everyone born and grown in the ghetto knows that the aim is to stay alive and get out whilst everyone born in the suburbs knows that to be cool you need to get in.
The bigger truth is that it is also all relative. The kid in the suburbs acting Gangsta just to be down is offensive to the kid born and trying to get out of the American ghetto. But similarly the kid in the Western European or American Ghetto is that smothered Suburban wannabee when compared to a child working in a diamond mine in Sierra Leone.
But picture this. You’re a 15 year old boy walking in South East London. You live in an area identified by the government as SE15 and you hop a bus to a neighbouring town identified as SE6. As you walk the trash filled streets in the pale artificial street light you hear the words of fear. The words every boy your age dreads to hear.
“Hey, hey you… yeah you, I don’t recognize you man. You aint from round these sides. Where you from, what you doing round here. Hey you, come here”
You don’t need to look back; you don’t need to be asked twice. You step up the pace of your stride trying hard not to be consumed by the growing sound of the voices and feet behind you until you reach the dimly lit corner of the street and then you break out into a fully braced sprint. You run as fast as you can concentrating only on your breathing, not looking back trying to drown out the voices drawing ever closer as they cackle and spit vitriol panting in pursuit behind you.
No need to make a story out of this as the ending is unimportant. If you made it on to the bus just as it was pulling away from the stop, jumping on sweaty and scared finally looking back at the mob who would have brought you mortal harm just for being in the wrong area; or if they back you into a corner hissing at you and baying for your blood, until descending upon you in a fury of fists, feet, knees, bottles, bricks and finally a knife.
The point is what the point has always been.
They started it.
They threatened us 1st. They beat up someone from my town 1st.
They took our resources 1st. They kidnapped our citizens 1st. They invaded 1st. They started the enriched plutonium program 1st. They launched the missiles 1st.
No two wrongs don’t make a right but when you in the position of the wronged what do you do. Step prepared or step empty handed with hope.
Yes it is a joke these western wannabee kids wanting to live the gangster lives that the real gangsters don’t want to have to. But at some point that wannabe mentality, that fantasy, that play acting becomes reality and at this point the violent world they fanaticised about inhabiting becomes a reality like stepping into and then getting stuck in a violent video game. The problem is once you’re in, once you get your dream of excitement, violence and danger. You are in a reality every bit as dangerous as those kids in the worst circumstances. A circumstance of life and death. A circumstance from which you have to fight, in reality to get out. Step prepared or step empty handed with hope. The choice is yours the resultant loss is ours.
Thanks for your comment Mr Libre,
I must say that I was dead impressed by your never-ending story of the SE15 vs SE6, you got the feeling across perfectly and actually took me back to many similar situations…and it is true what you say, theres always a finger to point elsewhere, people will always try to trace the history of certain incidents and battles back to the other side, so that at the end of it all, no one is any the wiser, and even those on “the inside” won’t be able to give you an honest account of who, how, what and why the fuck did it get this far anyways?
What remains disturbingly frightening is the fact that the Gangster Fantasy is becoming the Gangster Reality and I believe half of the time, most of these kids will walk the streets with the purpose of doing harm, disillusioned by the idea that they are actually serving some greater purpose, are fighting for some kind of noble reason, when quite frankly they have no idea what they are actually doing, and are just somehow climbing the invisible ranks of a ladder reaching ultimate Scarface/Clock Work Orange Status by…by what? Becoming more and more violent.