For almost a century, dating back to the early 1930s, America has been in love with gangster movies.
James Cagney became famous as an Irish hoodlum in 1931’s “The Public Enemy.” His sadistic leer as he prepared to mow down his rivals set the stage for a bunch of Warner Bros. crime films during that decade, many starring Cagney or Edward G. Robinson.
Perhaps the two most memorable gangster films are 1972’s “The Godfather” and 1990’s “Goodfellas,” both about the Italian Mafia in New York City. Both remain popular today. Another good one is the 1983 remake of “Scarface,” which featured the twist of a Cuban exile reaching the top of Miami’s drug market. The original, naturally, came out in 1932.
It’s been clear for a long time that gangster movies make money. The stories are interesting and there’s lots of gunfire — think Michael Corleone knocking off a rival mobster and a corrupt police captain in an Italian restaurant; or Sonny Corleone’s assassination at the toll booth.
Everyone complains about “real” crime, but for many, violent entertainment is a guilty pleasure. It is no surprise that Hollywood is addicted to guns and blood, because its viewers are too. They have been for 90 years.
And really, it’s all just a harmless movie or TV show — until it starts to hit closer to home. Unfortunately for McComb and Pike County, these gangster crimes are hitting home.
The most recent fatality occurred Friday, when a gunman barged into a Lincoln County building with a recording studio and shot to death a 22-year-old Pike County resident. Obviously he was the target, as authorities said no one else in the building was harmed.
To make the case more attention-grabbing, the victim had been accused of murder in the 2020 shooting death of a 20-year-old. But he claimed the gun fired by accident, and a grand jury recently declined to indict him.
Two men have been arrested in Friday’s shooting, but information about their motive has not been released. It does seem clear that this was far from a random attack, and it also regrettably seems clear that a few young Black males in this area have declared open season on each other.
That’s a horrible thing to say. But the repeated gun violence of this year in the McComb area, dating back to the four teenagers accused of killing a 6-year-old child in a gang-retaliation drive-by shooting at Oterious Marks Park, can lead only to that conclusion.
Even worse is the sense that some people who are older than the 16 to 22 age group are encouraging these shootings. Teenagers can be transfixed by “The Godfather” all they want, but they can’t get coaxed into gunfire and crime without the help of experienced hands.
Law enforcement, as much as it is able, must focus on these enablers with the same energy it does on the gunmen.
So far, though, efforts to stop bloodshed have failed. The gunfire continues. Can anybody get through to these young killers?
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
