The smoking gun represents the violence that occurs everyday among young people.

GANGSTAS PARADISE by Coolio

Fifty-nine percent of children in 6th through 12th grade say they can get a hand gun if they wanted to.  Between 1987 and 1991 the number of teenagers arrested for murder increased by 85% and in 1991, 10 to 17 year-olds accounted for 17 % of all violent crime arrests.  Seventeen percent doesn't seem like a significant number, but if you look at all the violent crime that goes on the amount is staggering; and it keeps rising.

Gang violence occurs so much that people soon became immune to it and just think of it as part of normal everyday life.  In an article we read, a six year old girl described a scene she saw in which a woman was shot to death, her baby's throat slashed, and the baby's grandmother's body was slammed in between a door.  After telling about this, she just smiled and said she wanted to be a ballerina when she grows up.

January 1996