High school shooting in Kansas City: Mayor blames guns, embraces thug culture of rap

Minutes after she and another "teenage female" had "an argument" and were escorted out of a high school basketball game, a teenage girl (now identified as "An'Janique Wright") was shot and killed in the school's parking lot. The high school is Kansas City, Missouri's "Central Academy of Excellence." It's been called that since 2012; prior to that, it was "Central High School." Walt Disney is among its alumni, but that was a long time ago. The name was changed in the "hope that the school would be transformed" and that "stronger discipline would be instilled."

Kansas City mayor Sly James's predictable response to the shooting was to blame the ready availability of guns and to call for more gun control. What do we learn from this? Well, for one thing, we learn that changing the name of a school does zip, zilch, nada to change the values and behavior of those who attend that school. And we learn that politicians like Sly James will always use incidents like this to blame guns, rather than blaming a "culture" that thinks gunplay is an appropriate way to deal with an argument over a basketball game (and celebrates that method of "conflict resolution" in the "music" that permeates that "culture")! That second point is not surprising, considering Mayor James's own history of promotion of that "culture." The mayor's choice of a role model for the city's "youth" is a "rapper" known as "Tech N9ne" (named after a gun). This rapper, who was the guest of honor at the mayor's Christmas tree-lighting ceremony a few years ago, is known for lyrics like these: "Gunz Will Bust" [Verse 1]

I know you know this is Kansas City

Where nigga life don't mean s---

So step to and immediately get yo dome split

I pack heat for days run street wit K's and hollow's

On a concrete crusade you made the pill now swallow

You never thought tomorrow

You see me beam up all strapped down wit a pump

Searchin' for the niggas on a hunt

Jerkin' on the trigga when I dump

It's not a game dude my killaz will mangle

Anything in my range fool

When hatin' get framed moved

We play the same rules... [Chorus]

Rough niggas in the street will bust 4 the bread

And meat deuce 57th Street and 7 deuce be packin' heat punks

Get the f--- away from we, for we buckin' these m--------- G.U.N.Z. You'd think Mayor James would know better. A former Marine and a successful attorney before he entered politics, the dapper mayor, in his trademark bowtie, hardly comes across as an admirer of the "thug life."

Photo credit: BlindManEditing. He's even found himself on the wrong end of thuggish behavior. Once, while touring Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, the mayor was forced to dive for cover when gunfire erupted in that otherwise genteel venue! But I guess the lure and "glamor" of the "gangsta" culture is, for too many, too hard to resist. How else to explain why even President Obama revealed himself to be a "wannabe gangsta" by routinely welcoming vile rappers as his guests in the White House, where he let them put their feet up on the historic HMS Resolute desk? Midcontinent Maven is the pen name of a Kansas City writer who fears retaliation for his political views.