***Warning the above video is graphic in nature, viewer discretion is advised.***
Antonio Perkins, seen in the video above, was the victim of a drive-by shooting last week Wednesday. The 28-year-old Chicago resident was hanging out with two of his three young children when he was fatally shot in the head and neck.
Police say that the shooting was gang-related, but Perkins’ family and friends said that his gang days were behind him.
“A lot of people loved my son; he was a good person,” his father Daniel Cole told WGNTv.
Perkins worked at a local McDonald’s where he was recently promoted. Friends say that he worked almost every day of the week except for Wednesday, which was his night off.
A friend of Perkins named Tiffany was emphatic that he wasn’t connected to any street gangs.
“Stop judging everybody. Stop judging us like that. His life really did matter,” said Tiffany.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time tragedy has struck Perkins’ family. His older brother was also shot and killed several years earlier.
There is an ongoing investigation to find the killers.
Chicago is a city besieged by gang violence. Yet, despite the fact that much of the violence is gang-related, city leaders keep pointing the finger at guns, as if passing more laws will eliminate the unabating criminal demand for guns or somehow stop gangsters from getting guns.
City leaders last week called the gun violence in Cook County a “public health crisis,” arguing that money should be spent on research to determine the root causes of the violence (So far this year, there have been 303 murders, it’s not clear how many are gang-related. However, it stands to reason that a majority are).
“Sound research can inform good public policy to address this crisis. Prohibiting the CDC from conducting such research flies in the face of common sense and hinders our ability to address this national scourge,” said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in a statement.
“This crisis will not be solved overnight, but surely research into this public health epidemic is a critical step in the right direction,” she continued. “We must join the AMA, make our collective voices and call others to action.”
Not to oversimplify the issue, but it seems rather obvious what the problem is: gangs. Stop the gangs, and you’ll stop the violence. Because even if the gangs were miraculously disarmed of guns, they would still act violently toward one another — and innocent people — with any number of deadly implements, baseball bats, knives, chains, etc. So, to stop the violence, the city has to stop the gangs.
Another needless life taken. We debate, debate, demonize, stigmatize, blame, blame, etc. etc. I am sick to my stomach for hearing people blaming other people. The perps are sociopaths, choosing and narrowing their hardened beliefs that their paths are their norm. This has very little to do with race. Okay, okay, appears to be prevalent among certain races but that is not always the determining factor in the final analysis. There are many, many violent drug dealers in the seedy and impoverished sections of our society. Drug dealers deal in violence because that’s the language they use. They are not going to go along with our mains-stream American society. They can’t see it the way most of us see it. Race has little to do with this sociopathic aberration. Sadly, we are not able to change any of this because that’s not possible to do in short period of time, in our society. So people try to come up with quick reasons, but not long term solutions. The long term solutions will take a long time(as we all know) if we as a nation can see it and elect the right leaders to enact meaningful changes to enable us all. This is not happening so easily and that is our dilemma. It’s like it is a never ending dream. Dream gone sour by deaths like this. Needless, no end it sight. May God Bless America.
All this crap started over drug turf and has turned into to an all out war, fow what? The love of money. Pretty dammed sad senseless, isn’t it.
Roger, what an ignorant statement……”the genetics of the race that makes them violent.” Wow! Burn crosses much??!! It’s your ignorant comments that feed the “race” battle and keep it going.
I fully agree with Geo Ling and his statement: “The breakdown of the family, particularly prevalent in this community, reinforced by government policies championed by the very politicians you support, that encourage low socioeconomic performance and fatherless children, is largely the fuel that keeps this ash pit smoldering.”
It starts in the homes of fatherless children…..and gets magnified by the greedy, manipulative politicians who use this disparity to their advantage to gain more control and more power….and therefore more money.
There will always be some bad apples in the bunch, but the ones who have fathers that guide them with a firm hand are MUCH less likely to make life altering bad decisions like getting involved in gangs and drugs.
Prayers for the family and children who lost their loved one.
Draino, I couldn’t agree more about the breakdown of the family unit! Sending prayers myself! So sad…….
Ok heres something that I have a hard time with, these same people you hear screaming in the background “call the poolice” are the same ones who would be screaming racist pigs at the police if that poolice officer had conducted a stop n frisk 10 minutes earlier, and taken the gun away from the gangster who used it to kill this man. You reap what you sow, u don’t want poolice hassling young black men, then poolice, will respect your wishes, and this is an example of cause and effect.
Agree 100%. Sad but true.
You’re trying to prop up your opinion on a nonexistent cause and effect scenario. The problem is the murderers, not public sentiment about police behavior.
Of course his life mattered Tiffany, it mattered to everyone who loved him especially his two young daughters. An overwhelming fact though is that, as mama said, “if you hang out with crap you’ll get it on you”. Decisions and behaviors have consequences, good and bad consequences, our decisions and behaviors determine which one. And of course “race” is not the root cause here, it’s not genetics like the shallow minded have stated, but that reaction is to be expected when the overwhelming color of this kind of behavior is other than ones own. In this case the overwhelming color is black. An element of an otherwise awesome race, a significant portion, chooses to behave in this manner. If the race as a whole wants to stop comments like made above about genetics, the best way is to not lash out at everyone else, particularly white people, blaming others for this behavior, but to lash out at the bad element in your own neighborhood! Let it be known that this bad behavior will not be tolerated (because it gives your whole hood a bad reputation!) on your streets. Police “your own people”, stop blaming society, other races, cops, for this behavior and blame the individuals who portray it.
The breakdown of the family, particularly prevalent in this community, reinforced by government policies championed by the very politicians you support, that encourage low socioeconomic performance and fatherless children, is largly the fuel that keeps this ash pit smoldering.
Tiffany, you and all your people, our black Americans, RISE ABOVE this nonsense, take responsibility for your own actions and the resulting consequences, good and bad! Vote not for the easy path, not for others to provide for you, but vote for FREEDOM, from the chains that bind your people!
Sad to see this young man was murdered. Sad that his past was never erased, if it is true he tried to improve his life. What it boils down to is, it is the mentality of those people he is surrounded with and was involved with. It is the mentality, the genetics of the race that makes them violent. Sad to say- if we knew then what we know now, we would have picked our own cotton.
The genetics of the race? REALLY? What race was it that was behind the extermination of Jews, Gypsys, Catholics and gays in the 1930’s? What race was behind the debacle at Waco? What race was behind Ruby Ridge? What race dropped an A bomb on Japan TWICE? What race was behind Wounded Knee? What race decimated the native population of North America, lied to them at every chance and stole whatever they could from them? What race was behind Sherman’s march to the sea? Killing and starving thousands of their own race. What race are most of the police that are shooting people without due cause? What race is it that designs the most terrible weapons on the planet to kill thousands at one time or even millions? Throw that way of thinking in the toilet where it belongs. AND BE SURE TO TELL US, WHAT RACE IS IT THAT DOES THESE THINGS? I think THAT race makes the black folks look like pikers. And yes, I am a member of the race in question, I’m not black. Mob mentality does it every time.
thats easy…the “jewish” race…everyone of them…..except maybe the indians who themselves taught us everything we could possibly ever hope to learn about savagery with all of the atrocities they committed against our men,women and children ……. but our history books dont teach our kids that anymore do they ?.
and yes “jew” is a race ……….just ask israel….
Right on, brother! It’s not like they learned scalping from us. Our forebears came over here from a peaceful Europe, where torture was unheard of, and where we lived in harmony with each other, and with the land. We asked kindly if we could settle here, and those perfidious Injuns turned around and tried to exterminate us. Of course, we shoulda known we were being setup by the Jews. Damn you, Jews-who-control-everything!
I do believe it’s the human race…
Precisely true.
“The genetics of the race”?!
Don’t turn this into a race issue. That’s quite possibly one of the most ignorant statements I’ve heard on this site; and that’s saying something.
1. There is ONE race of humanity-the human race.
2. This isn’t a “race” or ethnicity issue at all. It’s a socioeconomic one. Organized crime and gangs exist across every ethnicity in America and abroad. There has to be a reason why.
If you look back to the 1800-1900s of America, you see poor, uneducated or under-educated immigrants from every corner of the globe forming gangs and committing murders, robberies, rapes, burglaries, and other types of violent crime. It wasn’t just “the blacks” any more so than it was just “the Irish or the Italians”. Gang violence exists across all ethnic groups because of the human nature to exploit the weak.
Crack open a book and educate yourself before saying something ignorant and bigoted like “it’s a genetic thing that the blacks are violent and have gangs and commit crimes”.
Lastly, how about we stop trying to point the finger to justify or excuse an individual/s action/s by blaming it on something other than personal choice? You are no different in that regard than people who excuse violent crimes like this on a lack of employment, lack of opportunity, being poor, not being raised in a two-parent household, not having at least one parent graduate high school/college, or anything else that can be the scapegoat. People, regardless of their status in life; and regardless of any of the aforementioned demographics or any others, make choices for themselves and need to be held accountable for those choices. You can be poor, uneducated, and choose to commit crimes, join a gang, and not improve yourself or your life; or you can make something of yourself and improve your life. It’s a choice.
Beyond that, I agree with the author’s position that more gun laws are not going to do anything for the situation. People who use guns to commit crime are going to procure them by any means necessary and use them accordingly. Until the punishment for committing a crime with a firearm is punishable by death, we don’t need to pass any laws that are not going to have an impact on the problem.
actually according to obamas own DOJ, it is a race issue. If blacks were banned from having firearms, 68% of gun violence would be eliminated in America. In the FBI’s uniform crime report, they break down crimes by race, age, sex, except murders, in reporting murders, hispanic is missing in the breakdown. The reason, they have to lump whites and hispanics together to even get close to the murders committed by blacks, so the numbers don’t put blacks in a bad light. Don’t believe me look at FBI’s uniform crime report yourself, they break property crimes down by all races, yet put whites and hispanics together when it comes to violent crimes.
ken , youre not helping the 2nd amendment cause at all ,, with racial blathering ,, not all blacks or whatever race are criminals ,,maybe be a litllle more direct with youre comments like Non lawbiding ,, or criminal enterprise groups ,, if you want to rant there are plenty of neo nazi site you can go yell sieg heil on
Jay,
Well said. The point being made in my post is that it isn’t a ethnicity driven issue, it’s a personal decision issue. People need to start being held accountable for their decisions and actions; and other people need to stop blaming those actions and decisions on “race”, ethnicity, social status, employment, education, etc.
Roger race only matters when you are choosing what neighborhood to live in or what school you feel comfortable sending your daughter for an education.
Exactly! I have no problem living next door to trashy rednecks. I mean, I wish their damn kids would stop throwin’ crap in my yard, and I’m pretty sure they stole my lawnmower, but dammit, they’re white! Heck, they’re the ones who inspired me to take an interest in guns.