Another Saturday night in New Orleans

This one won't be as popular as others, but that's what the blogger (self-appointed, without pay, without requests) does, I reckon.

Saturday night in New Orleans was another same-old, same-old. A fender-bender. Words exchanged. Tempers flared. Shots rang out. A husband, father, friend, dead in a matter of seconds.

I want to make sure everyone understands this. A husband, father, friend dead. If the person shot weren't famous, this column wouldn't exist. If the person shot weren't famous, if the person shot weren't famous, no one would bring up the issue I'm going to explore. No one. Not me. Not others. If the person shot weren't famous, we wouldn't have football players hitting twitter and Facebook with the viciousness they normally reserve for football games. If the person shot weren't famous, we would simply wait for the rains to clear the street.

If the person weren't famous, we would have forgotten by now. There was no mass shooting. There were no children shot to death. This happens all the time in the Big Easy. When the live production of The Passion was held on national television a few weeks back, I was terrified someone would be shot right there on live TV.

It was a Saturday night in New Orleans, this past weekend. Weather was about what it had been. Humidity was up (which around there is like saying Saturday night was dark). Apparently there was a fender-bender. Metal was, I'm assuming, crunched. Shouts were exchanged, but not insurance cards. One man was incensed and went for a gun. Shots exploded into the night. One woman was shot. One man was shot multiple times.

And someone famous, with an even more famous name, was shot eight times, dying at the scene. It happens. It happened 164 times in 2015. New Orleans ranked seventh in the country in this awful statistic last year.  No one wants to talk about this horrific disease, but it continues to be catchable in this town.

When we, my family and I, moved to New Orleans in 1991, I was scared. Scared. We left two kids bikes outside our apartment front door, and as I recall things, the bikes didn't make it to the second weekend before they were stolen. There was no gun play. No shots were fired. No one was hurt, other than my kids' feelings. 

But there could have been issues. 

Will Smith's death by shooter was the 31st murder this year, and one of 118 shootings. In 2014, New Orleans had the country's third-highest per-capita murder rate. But that was actually good news. In 13 of the last 22 years it has ranked first. Heck, in March and April of this year alone, there have been 59 shootings. Since we first moved to New Orleans, Police Chief after Police Chief, mayor after mayor have tried to fix this. They're not succeeding.

Now, it would be so easy to write about things I have no knowledge of. I didn't watch the battle of words between the two men, didn't see the gun pulled, didn't see who was right and who was wrong and all the gray areas between. Didn't see the argument or what led to its bloody conclusion.

But I'm not. Nah. What I want to write one paragraph about is simple and without argument. 

Here tis: If former New Orleans Saints player Will Smith lived in a world where guns weren't legal, he would be alive. Three kids would have a father. Will Smith's wife, Raquel, would have have a husband.

That paragraph will cause half my readers to come unglued. Second-amendment such and such and such. That paragraph will cause the other half of my readers to start bouncing in excitement. The irony is I'm not advocating anything in this blog. I'm merely writing a paragraph that sums up my grief, anger, fear. No gun. No death. Maybe they would have beaten each other half to death, for they were two huge men and apparently anger was the only referee.

But it is indisputable that the gun Cardell Hayes used in the shooting killed Smith. I'm not judging the hows and the whys; that's best left to the courts -- even though there is and was immediate judging going on and has continued all week. 

No. I'm not here for that. I'm simply, clearly saying that if there were no guns, at worst they would have fought. But that's not the world we live in. That's not the New Orleans that both men lived in. That's not who we are this dark day in April. No, we live in a world where one can legally buy and legally carry weapons that can take lives in an instant.

What happened that night won't be completely clear till all witnesses are interviewed, all video is watched, all audio is listened to, if even then. 

But till then, and after that, another life has been taken by a hand gun. In New Orleans. No one can dispute that. What's at odds in this is why that's necessary. Smith had one or perhaps more guns in his car. Hayes had one he could get at a minutes notice. Maybe Hayes was terrified for his life. Maybe. I DON'T CARE.

In a story by Kent Babb in the Washington Post today, retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore' said that the city's gun violence problem is too big for one incident -- no matter how famous the victim -- to bring on meaningful change. "How do you break that cycle of violence in a place where people resolved their disputes with pistols?" Honore' was quoted. "Honestly, we don't have an answer."

Life was taken. Life. Precious, wonderful, life. Given by God. Taken by a gun.

Let the arguments begin (or continue).