Behind this flat descriptive sentence lie the breathtaking, deathtaking statistics of America’s most murderous state, Louisiana, where shooting, especially among the very young, is happening pretty much all the time, pretty much everywhere. Two fatal shootings within a week on one American university campus – Grambling State, with today’s killing at a homecoming party – tells you how normalized it’s all become. Soon this stuff won’t make the news at all.
Grambling’s not far from Shreveport, if you want to get a quick sense of the world we’re talking about here. Shreveport’s already got among the highest gun violence rates in the nation; this year, they’ve gone UP eleven percent from the city’s rate last year.
Today’s Grambling killing happened at two AM…? The shooter wasn’t a student…? You might say there’s not much one can do about this – but there is, actually. Why in the world would you let your kid go to school at a place where they let campus parties go til two AM; and why, given the riot of gun violence in Louisiana, would the school not check i.d.s and weaponry at campus gatherings?
The school claims it had all sorts of security there. And that tells you that not only is it dumb enough to sponsor large late-night parties in a very dangerous neighborhood, but it’s also incompetent.
Don’t let your kid go to Grambling.
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Update: You see the … fatal disconnect in the president’s remarks: “Why would someone come to dear old Grambling and commit an act of violence?” Man seems to think he’s in dear old Arcadia rather than dear old murder capital USA. With that degree of denial at the very top, we shouldn’t be surprised at these outcomes.
“As an alumnus, I’m embarrassed,” said Edmond Davis, who was visiting his alma mater with his wife. “Deeply embarrassed. It saddens me.”
Yes. Your school can’t hold a homecoming without a fatal shooting. You should take the school’s president by the shoulders – firmly – and say as directly as possible Grambling is unfortunately located in the heart of the heart of American homicide. If you want the school to survive, you are going to have to make it as much of an armed camp as possible. And by the way, doesn’t the school have trustees? Do they do anything?
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“We must … accept that the issues we face with gun violence are non-students who come to our great institution and cause harm to students and other non-students who are casually enjoying themselves,” [Grambling’s student government president] wrote. “We must realize that at some point we must stop allowing outside individuals to pass through checkpoints without university clearance.”
Scandalous that this obvious necessity occurs to students but not university leadership.
October 18th, 2021 at 12:57PM
Grambling is about 60 miles from Shreveport. However, it is right next door to Ruston where La Tech is located. Louisiana is one of those states that has done nothing to hide the fact that they have two state universities next to each other due to old Jim Crow Laws. The same applies to LSU and Southern both being in Baton Rouge.
At least Alabama and Mississippi bother to separate their segregated universities with some distance.
October 18th, 2021 at 1:35PM
superdestroyer: I didn’t know that about Louisiana.
February 21st, 2025 at 8:59AM
[…] We’re one of the most gun-violent cities in America’s most gun-violent state, and you’re telling us to return the six handguns and rifles that fell out of a stolen UPS truck? This is Shreveport! […]