At 8 pm Thursday, while working his shift at a Phoenix, AZ, Wendy’s, 16-year-old Brian Durham Jr. was shot in the head by a dissatisfied customer in an argument over barbecue sauce. The bullet grazed his brain, and he was taken to a local hospital, where he remains in critical condition.
According to Phoenix Police Sgt. Vincent Cole,
"The customer reportedly walked up to the drive-thru window, pulled out a handgun, and fired into the drive-thru window hitting the victim working inside the store.”
Durham’s father, Brian Durham Sr. said,
"He's very lucky to be alive right now due to the fact that he was in a confrontation that wasn't for him, and the bullet went through his head. It actually went through and came out the other.”
He added that his son was at the cash register, as his coworker and the suspect argued over the lack of condiments.
"He was in the middle, and the other guy’s right there, ‘hey, let me get some extra barbecue sauce.’ It became a confrontation. That somebody actually got shot over some barbecue sauce, so that was a confrontation, 'cause the dude couldn't get no extra barbecue sauce. My son just stayed quiet and had the guy’s change in his hand. Just stayed quiet while the other two was in confrontation."
The victim’s brother Harris Wonder agreed, saying,
"He was just innocent. Wasn't causing no trouble, wasn't looking for no harm. Just wrong place at the wrong time.”
On Friday night the Phoenix PD arrested 27-year-old Theotis Polk for the shooting.
On January 2, 16-year-old Niesha Harris-Brazell was killed in a Milwaukee Burger King during an attempted robbery.
Also on January 2, Tony C. Ebarb, 16, of Shreveport, was a back-seat passenger in a vehicle waiting at a Shreveport Burger King when he was accidentally shot and killed by his 15-year-old brother. Now the brother and father, Jeffrey Ebarb, face negligent homicide charges.
On January 8, Alejandro Garcia was shot and killed in front of his 19-year-old son when he refused to take fake money in a South LA Taco Bell.
On January 9, Kristal Bayron-Nieves, 19, was shot and killed in an Upper Manhattan Burger King by Winston Glynn, during an attempted robbery.
It takes someone completely deluded, blinded by zealotry, or greedy for profit and power, to deny there is a gun crisis in the US. The problem is three-fold. One, there are guns in the hands of violent people. Two, the NRA and other pro-gun groups, working in cahoots with craven politicians, promote a legal system that encourages gun violence and vigilantism. Three, Americans are more likely than other nationalities to resort to killing in dispute resolution. The murder crisis in America is so dire, that if you removed gun homicides from the equation, the non-gun homicide rate alone in the US is still higher than the total rate of homicide, with any weapon, in the UK.
I accept that guns are not going away in America - probably ever. With 4% of the world's population, Americans own 46% of the guns in civilian hands. There are 393,000,000 privately-owned guns in the US, or 1.2 guns for every man, woman, and child.
Visualize this. If you use a shoebox to represent three guns, those shoeboxes will fill 167,000 shipping containers — equivalent to 11 container ships.
Barring unforeseen events, Brian Darren Jr. will survive his shooting. But just two weeks into the new year, 666 Americans have not been so lucky. They are the victims of gun homicide. And another 990 Americans have killed themselves with a gun. And gun deaths are increasing - unlike car deaths.
A 40-year campaign against drunk driving, mandatory seat belt laws, and developments in safety technology have reduced the road fatality rate per miles traveled by 67% since 1980. And in 2017, America saw fewer road deaths (37,113) than gun deaths (39,533) for the first time.
But there as been no similar campaign to reduce the homicide rate. And the number of gun deaths is going up. In 2021, the number hit 44,860.
And lastly, let’s dispose of the nonsense that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. ”The number of gun deaths is typically higher in states that have high rates of gun ownership. And gun homicide rates tend to be highest in the Bible Belt. So much for “thou shall not kill.”