Mayor Suggests Public Boxing Rings to End Street Violence
Baltimore Mayor Jack Young has an interesting idea to stop violence in the city: Public Boxing rings. Yes, you read that right. He wants "thugs" to work out their problems in the ring instead of on the streets with guns.
"You know if they really want to settle [their issues], we can have them down at the civic center — put a boxing ring up and let ’em go box it out. The best man wins and the beef should be over. Those are some of the things I’ve been thinking about — hoping we can get these people to put these guns down.”
Mayor Young is getting a lot of backlash for his comments. People are calling his idea stupid and says public fights would just lead to more violence not less. But, I think Mayor Young is on to something here. Maybe it doesn't help this generation of people but if we de-criminalize fighting, we may actually get somewhere in society.
Let us go back a few years. When I was growing up, I never really had to worry about school shooting or anything like that. I grew up in Baltimore. Violence was apart of the city...all you have to do is watch an episode of the Wire to get a realistic view of that...but normal people didn't snap and gun people down. The violence seemed to be exclusive to those in the criminal enterprise.
And I believe the major reason for that is you settled your differences in a fight and moved on. A school yard bully got in your face, you fought him. A work place dispute? You went out back by the dumpsters, beat the hell out of each other and then went and grabbed a beer.
But, in the PC society we currently live in, fighting just isn't acceptable. You punch the bully at school, you get scolded and suspended. You settle a beef at work with your fists, you go to jail and probably get fired. Some people just keep letting issues and problems build and build until the only logical solution is to get a gun and shoot the other person down.
Even beyond that, there seems to be no consequences in today's world for being intolerable. If a kid was racist or a jerk or whatever back in the day, you'd be able to knock some sense into them. Maybe make them think twice before picking on the black kid or the gay kid. Now, they just get sent to counseling and get told everything will be alright.
While society is trying to help, we're probably just helping and nurturing these ridiculous beliefs and views. Sometimes in life the best lesson someone can learn is a swift punch to the face. Kids these days are growing up where there are little to no consequences to their choices. A slap on the wrist and a hug just doesn't have the same impact.
Again, will de-criminalizing and embracing fighting solve all the world's problems? Absolutely not. But maybe, just maybe it might cut down on some of the horrendous things we see in the world.