Multiple shootings stem from misuse of term ‘grouping’

After a multi-victim shooting early Sunday morning on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street I think that powers-that-be should take a radical new approach that would reduce the number of innocent victims.
The Sunday shooting toll where one died and nine were wounded is exactly the same as a June, 2014 shooting that occurred only a few blocks away, also on Bourbon Street. It comes as the city has matched last year’s murder toll with still a month to go and during an event where police had saturated the French Quarter.
Grambling University had just defeated Southern University to claim the Southwestern Athletic Conference West Division title in the annual Bayou Classic and police were everywhere. (Indeed, video surveillance showed policemen on horseback riding onto the scene within seconds.)
Crowd shootings are not new in New Orleans. Among the more egregious recent outbursts were last November’s at Bunny Friend Park in the 9th Ward where 17 were injured by gunshots and the 2013 Mother’s Day parade in the 7th Ward where 20 people were shot.
The police usually find the shooters and the shooters usually turn out to be someone who has shot someone before. And so it goes.
I think the big problem here is that New Orleans’ gang-bangers have a different definition of “grouping” than traditional marksmen who understand that grouping is a matter of placing multiple shots on a target.  Gang-bangers in New Orleans and elsewhere seem to think grouping is firing multiple shots into group of people who are in the general vicinity of someone who needs shooting.
With so many people who go around thinking that somebody needs shooting and those somebodies sharing reciprocal feelings, and with so many of these folks packing firearms capable of spitting out multiple rounds in seconds, there is some wonder that more folks don’t get shot.
The radical solution to this problem would be, of course, to correct the gang-bangers’ misunderstanding of grouping. These guys are deprived of traditional mentoring from real marksmen. They are armed with the most sophisticated and deadly weaponry available, but they lack suitable opportunities to hone their marksmanship skills.
After all, if you are a gang-banger the last thing you want to do is to call attention to yourself by firing off rounds somewhere, no matter how innocent the practice. Most have already been convicted of a felony, so mere possession in itself is yet another felony.
So maybe we should train them in proper use of their weapons. Set aside a suitable shooting range in a remote but accessible location, furnish them with a reasonable of number of rounds in appropriate calibers for practice. Then provide knowledgeable instructors who could teach the real meaning of grouping.
As I’ve intimated, it’s a radical idea, but what else has worked? After every mass shooting there are vigils, marches, stop-the-violence slogans and banners. And after the next shooting we do it all over again.
At least if the gang-bangers were better marksmen, bullets would find fewer innocent bystanders.