Miami Herald:

Morris Copeland runs the Miami-Dade agency in charge of juvenile offenders, and he mostly listened during a Thursday panel discussion about youth and violence and what may be causing so many children to end up either firing fatal shots or dying from them.

After about 40 minutes, Copeland leaned into his microphone and delivered the bluntest theory of the day.

“They have unimpeded access to firearms,” said Copeland, director of the the county Juvenile Services Department, which processes most children arrested in the county. “We have 11-, 12-, 13-year-olds packing heat. I’ve been in this business for 28 years. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Kids are going to fight. Kids are going to disagree,” he continued during the Youth: Next Generation panel at the State of Black Miami Forum at Florida Memorial University. “A child with firearms is a recipe for disaster.”

Uh huh.  “The bluntest assessment of the day.”  Kids have unimpeded access to firearms.  That’s the problem, is it, Mr. Copeland?  Form 4473 doesn’t stop your kids from getting guns?  The gun store salesman at the counter doesn’t mind selling to a 12 year old?  I’ve seen them refuse people much older.

Oh, you mean those kids break the law to obtain those firearms?  I’ve got it now.  So what you’re really discussing is a moral and cultural problem within the black community, right?  I looked at the picture in Miami Herald.  I saw a lot of black folk, blacks who care deeply about their community.  Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re made in God’s image just like me.  But that’s exactly what makes you accountable before God for fathering families that have fathers, for churching your children, for teaching them about life and the difference between right and wrong, for forcing them to deal with failure by working harder rather than demanding a handout or a promotion up to the next grade level even though they can’t read.

So here’s what we really need from you.  I don’t think your statement was blunt or honest at all.  I think you need to look your own community squarely in the face and do some truth-telling.  Then I would stand up and take notice.  In the mean time, don’t even think of curtailing my rights because of a moral and cultural problem within the black community.  Handle the log in your own eye before you look for the speck of dust in mine.