Pierre Loury was a gang-banging thug brought up in a culture where gang life is accepted, killed by a cop in Chicago. But we have a “gun problem,” right?Alexis Myers and Jeremy Gorner have taken the time to delve into the short and violent life of Pierre Loury, a 16-year-old gang-banger in Chicago who was shot and killed after allegedly pointing a gun at a Chicago police officer.
Pierre Loury talked about going to college and becoming an engineer, yet he skipped classes for nearly a year in high school.
He encouraged his little brother to stay in sports and out of gangs, yet he claimed to have joined the New Breeds around the age of 10.
He spent hours recording rap music in a converted bedroom closet, but toward the end of his short life his Facebook postings show him posing with guns, cash and drugs and talking of chasing rival dealers off his block.
Still, his family and friends never imagined he would die in an alley not far from his home at age 16, shot and killed by a Chicago police officer last month after allegedly threatening him with a gun.
“He was becoming a man,” said his stepfather, Vantrease Frazier, who disputes the police account. “You know every teenage boy made mistakes and did stuff they ain’t supposed to do, but you got to learn from that.”
Since his death April 11, the Tribune has interviewed Loury’s family and friends and reviewed his juvenile court records and social media postings to tell his story. It’s one that fits many teens who grow up in Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods — neighborhoods that are getting even more violent and offering even tougher lessons.
There are indeed many lessons to be learned from the short and violent life of Pierre Loury, and the views espoused from his family and friends. They betray a worldview that is utterly alien to most Americans, in which thug life is justified, law enforcement and the criminal justice system is viewed as the enemy, and in which law-abiding citizens are viewed as prey.He encouraged his little brother to stay in sports and out of gangs, yet he claimed to have joined the New Breeds around the age of 10.
He spent hours recording rap music in a converted bedroom closet, but toward the end of his short life his Facebook postings show him posing with guns, cash and drugs and talking of chasing rival dealers off his block.
Still, his family and friends never imagined he would die in an alley not far from his home at age 16, shot and killed by a Chicago police officer last month after allegedly threatening him with a gun.
“He was becoming a man,” said his stepfather, Vantrease Frazier, who disputes the police account. “You know every teenage boy made mistakes and did stuff they ain’t supposed to do, but you got to learn from that.”
Since his death April 11, the Tribune has interviewed Loury’s family and friends and reviewed his juvenile court records and social media postings to tell his story. It’s one that fits many teens who grow up in Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods — neighborhoods that are getting even more violent and offering even tougher lessons.
I strongly encourage Bearing Arms readers to get a cup of coffee and take the time to really read the entire article in depth, for not just what the article revealed about Loury, but the culture from when he sprang.
When you see supporters of gun control railing about “gun violence,” they are, as a matter of objective fact, lying.
There is no such thing as “gun violence” anymore than there is “knife violence” or “stick violence” or “fist and foot violence.”
What we have is a subculture that has little to no concern for their fellow man. They are not good citizens. They live a predatory lifestyle and look upon the decent, law-abiding citizens that make up the majority of our population as prey to be attacked and exploited.
We’ve written about this mindset again and again, in small, incredibly lawless enclaves in cities and towns around the nation. As hyper-violent as parts of Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and other cities can be, when you start looking at block-by-block maps, the violence tends to be incredibly isolated.
Hey, Jackass!, a site dedicated to tracking the violence of Chicago, shows us that the majority of our nation’s on again/off again “murder capitol” isn’t that violent. Just five neighborhoods—Austin, Englewood, Garfield Park, Humbolt Park, and New City—account for most of the criminal homicides.
If politicians really had a sincere interest in dramatically reducing the already historically low levels of violence in the United States, they’d spend their time and energy focusing on changing the thug culture in these isolated areas, and would leave the rest of us alone.
Denying the rest of the nation access to firearms because of the serially violent actions of a tiny subculture is the worst kind of exploitation by some in our political class, and they should be denounced for attacking the law-abiding majority, instead of attempting to change the hyper-violent and isolated minority responsible for most gang-related crime.
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