RIP Randell Tarez Jones, 3, of Hartford

The toddler was killed by in a drive-by shooting on Saturday

Three-year old Randell Tarez Jones was a passenger in a car that was the target of gunfire on Saturday afternoon. His mother, Solmary Cruz, and her two other children were also in the car. Police said the target was a man who was also in the car.

Two hours later in an unrelated event, a 16-year old boy was shot and killed and a 17-year old boy was shot and injured near where Randell Jones was shot. Hartford’s Mayor Luke Bronin said:

We pay attention to mass shootings, but we dare not ignore these everyday tragedies that happen over and over again.

In 1994, 7-year old Marcelina Delgado died after she was shot by — police said — a Hartford gang member who thought the Delgado’s car was that of a rival gang member. It was not. Marcelina’s father was a mechanic, and he’d just fixed the car’s transmission and was driving it to deliver groceries to his mother’s apartment.

Gangs had the city by the throat, but even people who easily dismissed the capital city as a wasteland could not stand by. This photo ran over and over again in the media:

Marcelina Delgado

After her death, the city started a crisis-intervention program, and added police on the street. A federal task force on gangs stepped up its efforts. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development promised $19 million toward renovating part of Charter Oak Terrace, the neighborhood where Marcelina’s grandmother lived. The governor put millions toward programs to fight gang violence. Gang activity lessened immeasurably — though it didn’t go away completely.

Hartford is still a poor city, with a median household income of $34,338 (the U.S. median household income is $68,703). You can add all the police in the world, a thousand after-school programs and community centers, but in the end? Young Black men are 39 times more likely to die by gun than young white men. Research is starting to trace firearm homicide rates to…

…the rich–poor gap, level of citizens’ trust in institutions, economic opportunity, and public welfare spending.

The author of one study, Daniel Kim, an associate professor of social epidemiology at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences, looked at 13,060 firearm-related deaths from 11,244 non-mass shootings and 141 mass shootings— with three or more victims— in 2015. He found that the greater the inequality in which a person lives, the greater the likelihood a person will be shot.

We need better gun laws, and we need to go upstream and look at a system that allows this carnage to go on and on and on. Three years old. Jesus Christ.