The crisis doesn’t fit the current narrative.
What would you call someone who stood on a street and fired a gun into a group of children playing in the spring sunshine?
A super-predator, perhaps?
Hillary Clinton is under fire for using that description in the 1990s to support her husband’s tough-on-crime bill that sought to reduce violence by locking up criminals and throwing away the key. Black Lives Matter is tossing the words in her face, charging that her husband, who once billed himself as the first black president, ruined African-American families and communities by signing the legislation.
Her opponent in the Democratic presidential contest, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, says the words “super-predator” are so obviously racist that Clinton must have used them with an intended antipathy toward African-Americans.
Meanwhile, in Detroit …
On Saturday, 6-month-old Miracle Murray was playing in the front yard of a west side home with other children and a young man. A car passed by once, and then again. On the second pass, a man stepped out, raised a gun and fired it several times.
Miracle, who got her name because she was the product of a difficult pregnancy, was hit by a bullet and killed; the 24-year-old man with her was wounded.
Detroit police arrested and released two suspects, and still believe the attack is related to an earlier deadly drive-by shooting in late March in the same neighborhood. While other children were waiting for the Easter bunny, the devil himself visited the home of 3-year-old Anaiya Montgomery. She died in her bed.
Clinton’s crime bill was overly harsh on low-level drug dealers. Still, its intent was noble — to shield children like Anaiya and Miracle from the mindless violence that swirls around the narcotics trade.