While anti-gun voices may not believe it, I hate seeing stories of innocent people being shot and killed, particularly as essentially collateral damage in gang warfare on our nation’s streets. It’s even worse when it’s a young child gunned down. It always raises questions for me about what they would have done had they been able to grow up.

Could they have cured cancer or created a work of art that would have changed the world? We’ll never know.

So I get wanting to do something in the wake of such a horrible tragedy. However, I think these kids deserve better than this.

A memorial street sign is now up, for a little 9-year-old girl whose life was tragically and innocently taken four years ago when she was shot and killed sitting inside her mother’s car.

“So we’re here today in support of Saniyah Nicholson,” said Marva Patterson, a member of the Black Women Commission Cuyahoga County.

…

Nicholson was shot and killed in the head in her mother’s car on Lee Road in the same neighborhood back in 2018.

…

This sign is now a constant reminder to the young people walking by to put down the guns before another innocent life is taken too soon.

Congratulations. You have accomplished precisely nothing.

A memorial for Saniyah Nicholson would be one thing. Pointless, but a reminder of a young girl who never got a chance to make her own mark on the world.

But by trying to make it about “putting down the guns,” you’ve now turned it into something else. It’s a worthless virtue signal that won’t do anything to combat the problem it purports to combat.

Seriously, show me one person who has ever seen something like this and turned their life around, abandoning the gangbanging lifestyle. Show me just one.

So far, no one has.

Look, don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t hurt anyone and it’s not infringing on my rights, so while I’m annoyed, that’s my problem and not theirs. I’d be more annoyed if they used this to justify taking away my guns, so there’s that.

But on the same token, there are ways to actually accomplish something and do so in Saniyah Nicholson’s name. There are efforts that have been proven to be effective. Instead of putting up a street sign, why not spend the money addressing the underlying issues?

Or, you can just make a big thing about what you did, pretend you actually give a damn, then go back to doing whatever else while patting yourself on the back and telling yourself you actually did something.

Stop it. I’m sick of seeing it. This girl deserves better than that.

Now, if this is just one part of a larger plan, so be it. Yet I find it interesting how that wasn’t mentioned in the piece linked above. One would imagine that if such was happening, that would have been a big part of the story.

It’s not, which means they just did this and either expect everything to be better or expect people to believe they’ve just made everything better.