One bad night for mankind

So I'm sitting there trying to keep the next teardrop from falling while thinking of the four young men who were killed Saturday night -- and trying to figure out yet again how to defend Durham against the attacks we know are coming -- when a commercial for a new video game comes on TV.

It wasn't for Pac Man or Kong or any innocuous game fit for children. This video game, featuring hip-hop mogul 50 Cent, was fit for no one.

All you need to know about his game is that his last CD was called "Massacre," the game is called "Bulletproof" and that he raps constantly about killing other young black men.

Fitty -- as he is called even by network news show interviewers who should know better -- was up to his old tricks. He was bulletproof, but the people he aerated on the video screen with a huge hand cannon weren't.

In real life, neither is he. And neither are the thousands of young black men who die each year at the hands of other young black men.

That's right. Unless you're one, you have little to fear from the homeys charged with committing a disproportionate percentage of crimes in society. Most of their deadly venom is spewed on anyone unfortunate enough to remind them of themselves.

Durham cops aren't giving up many details on the four deaths -- it would have been six if the shooters had been more thorough -- except to say they are drug-related.

Drugs are bad; drugs are illegal. Yeah, sure. We know. I've got a bet with a colleague on the number of calloused-hearted moralists who'll surely call me and say, perhaps while sipping their evening martini, that these men got what they deserved for dabbling in drugs.

Never mind that some of the victims may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Never mind that the drinks the callers themselves sip used to be bad, used to be illegal, used to get you killed.

Those young men didn't deserve what they got, and their grieving, inconsolable survivors certainly didn't deserve the lifetime of sorrow they got.

Police Chief Steve Chalmers promised that the killers would be captured. Too bad neither he nor anyone else can promise that it won't happen again.

One way to possibly lessen the chances of it occurring again, though, is to get guns off the street.

Don't laugh. I'm serious, even though it's such a quaint notion. The National Rifle Association has spent so much money convincing us that "guns don't kill people; people do," that talking about controlling access to guns for anyone makes one sound hopelessly naive or foolish.

If proposing getting rid of guns is foolish, try this one on: We also ought to get rid of malevolent music, video games like "Bulletproof" and violence-glorifying movies like Fitty's "Get Rich -- or Die Trying."

Why? Because too many young men are doing just that.

City Manager Patrick Baker, answering a question at the police news conference about the impact the quadruple slayings will have on his city, summed up solemnly by saying, "Saturday night was not a good night for Durham."

Homes, Saturday night wasn't a good night for mankind.