A lot of people posted/tweeted about this story on Saturday, and the accompany editorials intrigued me, as most were along the lines of, “Well why don’t they, out of respect, just stop being in a gang, period.”

From a sociological perspective, this brought me back to one of my favorite collegiate debates. What would a world with no gangs look like? One would assume the crime rate would be lower, although over an extended period of time, I’m not sure if that would hold true. One could also assume (I’d say with more certainty than the lower crime rate) that unemployment would rise, as the amount of men and women in law enforcement who devote their lives to fighting gang activity would all effectively be out of a job.

With that in mind, you start to wonder—is the job of law enforcement to try and prevent crime, or is it to deal with the aftermath?

(If you’re really bored, you can debate these topics too: Do anti-war activists really want an end to war? Do drug enforcement agencies really want an end to drug trafficking? Etc., etc.)