Gang War

There is a gang war going on here in Metro Vancouver and shootings are happening in Vancouver and Surrey and places in between. Like most gang wars these days, this too is fuelled by drugs and the fight over markets for them. This in and of itself is nothing new—with the thriving drug trade, on both the production and the consumer fronts, wars break out every three or four years. The government's reaction to these wars and the economy of illicit drugs is fairly minimal as if they are hoping that the bad guys would kill each other off and everything would return to normal soon with transactions limited to a minimal number of streets and closed doors. Herein lies one of the big different difference between the two governments in North America—The US overreacts and the Canadian under-reacts. South of the border they declare war on every little thing and one of the first ones is drugs. Which mis-reaction is better is hard to say, since neither seems to be effective. One thing that is sure is that gangsters need to have their eyes checked and target practice more. It is embarrassing how often they hit the wrong people by either mis-identifying the target of missing it entirely. I think the minimal the provincial government should do is to bring back free eye checks and open some video arcades.