A local reporter chats with frightened, anonymous business owners along the deadliest stretch of Murder Beach. Most cite large numbers of menacing, armed, high teenagers as their least favorite thing about life on the boardwalk. The sense of menace, and the big police presence that scary people draw to the area, more and more discourages folks looking for a relaxed good time with their kids.
What sucks is there’s no solution. South Carolina prides itself on having just about the weakest gun laws in the nation, and I guess the legislature is working every day to make them even weaker. Says here SC also (natch) “suffers one of the highest rates of gun homicides in the nation,” but if it really were suffering it would take a look at laws insisting that every tyke in the state get a big effing gun and tote it around. Maybe it could tweak the laws so that armed teenyboppers stop bopping everybody.