We are so lucky Americans are impressive with what they're willing to give. We get bashed too much. And, so many young people in this country give so much. They're not all gang bangers.
I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer's gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.
I remember when I was at the first showing of 'John Dies at the End' at Sundance, and I was talking to some of the people in the standby crowd who were outside and didn't have tickets. They were just waiting in line to see if they could get in. It was this whole gang of die-hard sci-fi wacko people, and they were just fantastic.
I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.
The global phenomenon of poverty tourism - or 'poorism' - has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Tourists pay to be guided through the favelas of Brazil and the shantytowns of South Africa. The recently opened Los Angeles Gang Tour carries visitors through battle-scarred territories of urban violence and deprivation.
Before my father would open up a karate school in a particular neighborhood, he'd clean up the block - kick all the drug dealers and gang bangers off the block. My father was very clear: 'I've got guns too, and I'll kill you just as much as a rival gang would.' And he meant it. He was a man of many facets and complexities.
I'm not really part of any group or clique or gang because that's always been my nature.
I've been working on my relationship with my parents and my sister over the years. We have become more close. I think having kids makes you want to keep the gang together.
Not too many people know it, but when I was in junior high, I was a pretty tough kid and was the leader of a street gang. Well, OK, it was less a street gang than an Ecology Club. We were pretty intimidating, though, and had our own meeting room until we got run out of there by a bunch of thugs from the Poetry Society.
We don't need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community.
I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.
Some people figure that if they're part of a gang then they have less of a chance of being killed, because they are in larger numbers. But the problem with this is that it will lead to people doing stuff that they wouldn't usually do.
However, don't let these statistics mislead you, gang violence is not limited to California and or big urban areas - that might have been true a while ago but it is no longer the case today.
Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.
We did a reunion when TV One first launched episodes of 'Living Single'. Every time any of the gang comes through Atlanta, though, we always visit.
What law enforcement will tell you is that in a terrorist act or even an act of people who are involved in crime, such as a drug gang, that they tend to get their weapons illegally.
I'm politically inclined towards the left, but I don't like to be in anyone's gang; I'm a bit of a loose cannon.
The employer is not going to choose the gang member who's just been released from prison: they're going to choose the person with the skills.
I'm not a guy who goes into the neighborhood, gets beat up by the bully's gang, and then now I want to join their gang. That's just not me. I wanna fight - let's go! I mean, I'm gonna stand up for myself. That's just the competitive nature of where I come from, the era I grew up in.
I went to a failing school, and by the grace of God, my mother was able to put me into private school, and had she not, I would probably be in a gang or dead right now, because that was the road I was going down.
When I was a younger actor, I was pretty much solely motivated by validation. I just wanted to be told I was good and handsome and a part of the gang. It was pretty simple animal-social stuff. I don't care as much about those things anymore.
Gang members have invariably grown up in broken, chaotic homes, often experiencing domestic violence; they have truanted from school and many have been formally excluded; and they live in neighbourhoods where worklessness, addiction and crime are rife.
I would hope that government officials have a healthy respect for the complexity of the gang problem. They should never lose sight of the fact that there are human beings involved. There is no single solution.