My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that new national holiday Juneteenth “was celebrated in many communities with gunfire and mayhem”. He described several of those events, though he missed the one we noted previously in Lexington, and the three homicides on Saturday in the City of Brotherly Love.

This was the longest incident he documented:

AUSTIN, Tex. – A deadly weekend mass shooting in Austin’s famed entertainment district arose from a feud between two groups of Central Texas teenagers, according to a police affidavit filed Wednesday.

Harker Heights High School student Jeremiah Tabb, 17, was arrested at school Monday and remained in Travis County Jail on Wednesday. He is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. . . .

In the arrest affidavit filed by Austin police filed in a Travis County district court Wednesday, a wounded male juvenile is quoted as telling detectives at an Austin hospital that he was with friends on East Sixth Street, a famous entertainment strip, when they began exchanging stares with a youth he identified as JT and JT’s friends.

“Exchanging stares”? Yeah, that’s reason enough, right?

The male juvenile, who was not identified by name, said he had attended the same Killeen middle school as JT, who said to the juvenile’s group, “What y’all wanna do? Y’all wanna fight?” The juvenile said he answered, “It’s whatever,” at which point JT pulled a handgun from his waistband and opened fire. A companion of the juvenile, also a juvenile, drew his own gun and returned fire. One person was killed and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Of course, the “wounded male juvenile” broke gang discipline, and ratted out Mr Tabb when shown a photo of Mr Tabb, claiming that Mr Tabb had already shot him in the leg a few days earlier.

Mr McCain then ended his post with three rhetorical questions:

1. Why are groups of minors walking around downtown Austin after midnight?
2. Why are these minors carrying pistols?
3. Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder?

I, of course, am the type to answer rhetorical questions! The answer to the first two is simple: their parents — assuming that there actually were parents who were supposedly responsible for these teenagers — didn’t rear them right, and didn’t care about what their ‘children’ were doing. I’ve said it before: you show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you some rotten parents.

What kind of parents don’t bring up their children to understand that it’s just plain wrong to shoot people? What kind of parents have failed to educate their children that murder — and if you shoot at someone, you must intend to kill him — is wrong? What kind of parents don’t tell their children that, if you kill someone, you might just spend the rest of your miserable life in jail?

Those teenagers were walking around Austin after midnight, and were walking around carrying pistols, because the same kind of ‘parents’ who failed on the three questions in the paragraph above are the ones who don’t give a f(ornicate) about where their kids are or what they are doing.

But the third question?

Austin cuts police budget by 1/3 amid national ‘defund’ push

The Austin City Council has voted to cut one-third of the city’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement in favor of spending more money on social services

By Acacia Coronado | Report for America/ Associated Press | August 13, 2020 | 6:52 PM

AUSTIN, Texas — In a unanimous vote, the Austin City Council moved Thursday to cut about one-third of next year’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement agencies in favor of spending more money on social services.

That will come to just over $150 million that will be redirected to social services in the 2021 fiscal budget, which starts Oct 1.

Further down came this gem:

Austin Councilman Gregorio Casar, one of the main proponents of cutting the police budget, called the move “unprecedented in Texas” and praised the decision following the vote.

“Extreme, anti-civil rights voices will try to send us backward and are already working (to) mislead people about this vote,” Casar said on Twitter. “But today, we should celebrate what the movement has achieved for safety, racial justice, and democracy.”

Really? “Safety, racial justice, and democracy”? I’m not certain just what the esteemed Mr Casar thinks is an achievement for safety. According to monthly reports posted by the Austin Police Department, there were 33 murders from January through the end of May; in 2020, the city recorded 19 murders in the same time frame. That’s a 73.68% increase; just how much “safety” has the defunding of the police department achieved?

“Racial Justice”? Young Mr Tabb, who is black, if he is convicted, could see “racial justice” meted out to him in the form of perhaps two decades behind bars. If the bullets which killed 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor during this gang shooting came from Mr Tabb’s gun, he could spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

All because two hostile groups were “exchanging stares”.

Mr Kantor wasn’t even a target; he was an innocent bystander, a visitor from Michigan.

So, why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? Perhaps it is because dumbasses like Mr Casar cut the police department’s budget by a third!

So, where is the money cut from the police department going to go?

Beginning in October, about $21 million will fund social services, community resources including response to the coronavirus, mental health aid programs, violence prevention, victim services and food, housing and abortion access. Another $80 million will be redistributed to similar city services throughout the year, and $49 million will be spent on city’s Reimagine Safety Fund, which aims to provide alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing.

Somehow the city’s “Reimagine Safety Fund” has managed to mean “you’re on your own.” Whatever “alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing” don’t seem to have worked.

Austin, the state capital and home of the University of Texas, is the most liberal city in a conservative state. Joe Biden carried Travis County, where Austin is located, 435,860 (71.62%) to 161,337 (26.51%), and has been governed exclusively by Democrats. If all of the feel-good liberalism and racial and social justice ideas actually worked, Austin should be one of the safest places around.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, reducing law enforcement doesn’t really work when it comes to keeping the public safe?