GUN CONTROL IS WHITE
PRIVILEGE
by Thomas Calandra
“There
has been a lot of talk said recently, because I supposedly said
something about Negros buying rifles. White people have been buying
rifles all their lives, no commotion.”
- Malcolm X
"In
California 1966, you can carry a loaded gun on the street as long as
it is register, not concealed, and not pointed in a threatening
manner; you can carry that same gun in your car as long as it is not
loaded, not concealed and not pointed in a threatening
manner. And of course, as soon as we did that they changed the gun
law on us."
- A
Huey P. Newton Story
“The
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls on the American people in
general, and black people in particular to take careful note of the
racist California Legislature which is considering legislation aimed
at keeping black people disarmed and powerless at the very time
racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the
terror, brutality, murder and repression of black people.”
-
Bobby Seale 1967
"
"Let's
talk about how gun control banning or restricting firearms is the MOST
white privileged idea ever. Rich liberals scoffing at the notion that a
person might need to defend their own life is a tower so IVORY you
can't look at it in the sunlight. Like saying "just have the maid
do it"
- Unknown
Only a
privileged white person would think that the best, safest, and most
practical situation for the betterment of all the inhabitants of a
society, is for the only people legally allowed to own, handle and
operate fully or semi automatic weapons, are Cops.
Only privileged
white people, a group of whom have had their rights from the
beginning of this country, could have the audacity and the shelter of
consequences to tell another group such as black people, (whom have
had their rights for only 53 years) that certain rights are
“outdated,” “not relevant today,” immoral and ultimately
“unnecessary.”
Only white people
would have the gall, the sand, and the effrontery to at one moment
support Black Lives Matter, then go and scoff, snicker, and sneer at
those who wish to not be unarmed against foreboding institutions of
state violence or conscious tyranny; calling the fear "unneeded,"
"unjustified," "unwarranted," and ultimately
ignoring or excusing murder.
Only privileged
white people think that by simply "doing something" or "to
act" will inevitably bring about net positive results. For if
they do something in order to decrease gun violence, then by
definition it will decrease gun violence; as if it was a law of
physics are a mathematical certainty. And by no means is it possible
that gun control might have increasingly more harmful unforeseen
(actually they are very foreseen) consequences, or in fact, increase
gun violence; by no means could reality be an antagonist to their
motives, precisely because the motives are their motives. As
if it is impossible for it to be raining out as long as they are
outside.
THE WAR ON GUNS
AND DRUG CONTROL LAWS
In many ways,
stating that a current reality is the result of “white privilege”
has become the “God works in mysterious ways” of the Left. Both
are their respective ideology’s escape hatch from debate that is on
the cusp of deflating dogmas that are not only “self-evident” to
their worldview, but are those that the beholder was never reasoned
into in the first place. However, when it comes to gun control, there
is absolutely evidence showing that laws for greater regulation,
control or prohibition on firearms, there is a privilege white
people have over people of color, just as there is with prohibitions
on drugs or any state control on any aspect of private life. However,
because guns do have something to do with self-defense, (be it from
the state, other people who wish to harm you like criminals, or in
warfare against enemy combatants) guns are different. And also
because when you compared those who have the forbidden or controlled
item or substance, a lot more people have guns than who are the
victims of guns than say drugs, like heroin, or methamphetamines. The
debate about gun control is a weird absurdity because it quite
literally mirrors the same economic factors and political principles
as the War on Drugs, yet the position of the Left and the Right are
reversed in the case of gun control.
Gun regulations, like
all regulations and state-enforced infractions on the populace, hurt
the least off first and the most before it slightly hurts the
supposed best off, wealthy, or those with the most social credit, if
it hurts them at all. Much like a rich person can afford to legally
find loopholes in the tax code to then keep a higher percentage of
their income, a rich person would have the means to legally find
loopholes in whatever gun control or regulations passed by the
legislature. Much like a larger giant corporation has the means to
pay a regulatory fine to the government, while the smaller business
would no doubt go bankrupt from that same fine- a fine issued to an
individual for disregarding a regulation on a firearm, a rich person
would be able to pay the fine easily, while the poorer person would
not, and then might have to go to jail instead. If it is criminal to
simply own certain guns -like a semi automatic weapon- who do you
think will be able to afford the legal team to get them out of jail
time, and who do you think won't be able to and then not only goes to
jail, but goes broke and no longer will be able to get a job when
they get out, a rich person or a poor person? Who do you think has
more money and therefore social and legal shielding to do this? An
average white person, or an average black person?
Just to
throw the statistics out there for those who need it, the real median
household income for whites was $57,000 in 2012, while that same year
it was $33,321 for black households. The median black worker earns
75% of that made by the white workers; they had a median hourly wage
of $14.92, while the median white worker hourly wage was $19.79.
Though white
people make up 65% of the general United States population, they are
only 39% of the prison population, while black people, being only 13%
of the general population make up 40% of the prison population.
Knowing this fact, what would background checks do the black
community compared to the white community? If you outlaw ex-convicts
or those who are on probation from owning guns, you are -perhaps
consciously, perhaps unconsciously- essentially trying to disarm
black people, especially black males. Now, you either do have faith
in the criminal justice system and the corrections system or you
don't. Either you claim that the corrections system rehabilitates
someone or it doesn't. But you can't say it works and then go and say
it didn't. When a person gets out of jail from serving their ordered
term, they either have the rights of a free citizen or your system of
rehabilitation is broken. You can't say, you have rehabilitated
citizens, yet deny them the same rights as those who supposed do not
do that which required rehabilitation and then claim your blue ribbon
for central planning. That is playing tennis without the net.
However, the liberal call for more gun control, and more stringent
background checks when attempting to purchase guns, would only
further marginalized an already marginalized people, only more so
disenfranchise and already disenfranchised people, and only make it
so the need for a black person to (now illegally) protect
themselves axiomatically makes them into a criminal for simply owning
a gun, no matter if they ever used it. And thus increases the
likelihood they would go to jail again, and further put themselves
into the institutional cascade of impairment to prosperity.
If you believe that
prisons are filled with nothing but murderers, rapists, child
molesters and adulterers, then I might have some clouds I would be
willing to sell you. Most of the people are in prison for non-violent
offenses, including drug possession. If you believe that someone that
is using marijuana or cocaine is morally equivalent to someone whom
has committed a murder or raped a child, then you are a moral
relativist, and by definition are in no position to make moral claims
or dictates on other people. By criminalizing the mere ownership of
something that wasn't criminalized before, you are putting more
non-violent people in jail and therefore costing more tax dollars in
the for of housing people in jail. Who are the people going to be in
jail for simply possessing a gun? When caught with some amount of
illegal drugs, who is more likely to get off and not go to jail or
pay a fine, a white person or a black person? Even if both get
charged, who is likely to have a lesser prison sentence, a white
person or a black person? If it is to pay a fine or go to jail for
breaking some new administered gun law, who is more likely to be able
to pay the fine and avoid jail, and who is more likely to not be able
to pay the fine, thus having to go to jail, a white person or a black
person? Who does drug laws hurt more, white people or black people?
What makes you think it will be any different with gun laws? What
makes guns laws impermeable to the economic laws which systematically
throw black men and women in jail and force them to live in living
situation privilege white liberal gun-control advocates can’t even
image?
There is nothing
different between guns and drugs when it comes to disproportionately
hurting black communities after prohibitions against the substances
or firearms have been initiated and enforced. Gun Control Liberals
essentialize guns much like Law and Order conservatives essentialize
drugs. The latter thinks there is some evil soul to drugs like
marijuana, cocaine and heroin, while drugs like alcohol and nicotine
are just mild excesses that need a slight looking-after; even though
nicotine and alcohol kill more people each year than marijuana,
cocaine, and heroin collectively will in a decade. The gun control
liberal does this with assault rifles and handguns, while hunting
rifles and even shotguns are there and need slight overseeing. Now in
truth, it is the handgun that is the cause of most gun homicides in
the United States, but that matters little. In truth, the War on
Drugs, and the War on Guns were and are cultural and political
battles just as much as the are supposed bandaging of an open wound.
The War on Drugs was a response to both an actually increasing in
crime that was happening and a cultural change involving a highly
informal generation filled with ideas of free love, free drugs, long
hair, anti-hierarchical, anti war, anti-capitalism, anti commerce
sentiments. However, once drug laws were implemented and as time went
on, black communities became more of the victim as oppose to the
hippies, (whom either just went on to teaching at universities, or
became the corporate elite that tried to capitalize and hippyism in
the 1990’s by trying to selling us a plastic Volkswagen Beetle) and
the conservatives didn't mind so much. In fact, then doubling down
and creating mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession laws
first with New York State in 1973 and the rest of the country in
1986. Similarly, the War on Guns is a political and cultural blow,
not to the Republicans that disagree with them, but implicitly to the
South, and the culture of the supposed Southern “white trash” or
“Redneck,” whose way of life the northern liberal finds as
disdainful – with the dialect, and ignorance, and the music—as
the conservative does with those in poor urban communities. Yet, much
like the conservatives attempt to legislatively kill off the
counter-culture of the far-left Soixante-Huitard just ended up
bulldozing black communities and the lives of the families within, so
will the liberal attempt to legislatively kill off Southern white
Redneck Gun loving Honor culture, just end up just too destroying the
lives of the black people.
The Nobel Prize
winning libertarian Economist Milton Friedman once said, “If you
look at the Drug War from a purely economic point of view, the role
of the government is to protect the drug cartel.” What he meant,
and adopting it for our discussion, was that gun laws, like drug
laws, widen the gap between the have and the have nots. Drug laws are
corporate welfare (the corporations here are drug cartels) paid for
by the poor people to whom drugs affect the most negatively. Much
like minimum wage laws, which help big businesses (whom can afford
the compulsory uptick in wages) weed out smaller competition, (whom
can't) drug laws help big cartel weed out smaller drug dealers and
lesser competition, because cartels can circumvent, manipulate, and
avoid the law much easier than smaller drug operations; and thus
creates corruption and crime that would not be there if the laws
never existed. In other words, the rich ones get richer and the poor
ones go to jail.
It
has become a platitude in the debate for gun control that new gun
laws create criminals
out of those who were not before with simple stroke of a pen. However
banal, this is still true, just as a law passed tomorrow prohibiting
the ownership of decaffeinated coffee, would too create criminals out
of those who otherwise were model citizens. Guns however,
like drugs and decaffeinated coffee, will still
be in the hands of those who can afford to pay the now higher cost of
being a legal criminal. And by criminal we mean someone who simply
owns a thing, instead of the appropriate definition of criminal,
which is someone who does violent acts and creates victims
from such actions. Returning to the drug comparison, we see a moral
and crimina distinction between a drug dealer (who does an action)
and someone in mere posession of a drug (who is a criminal simply for
posessing a thing). No one suffers from simply owning something, be
it a plant, a clock, or a gun. However, by controlling, regulating,
or outlawing the mere ownership of a thing, one institutes an
apparatus of marginalization of those who can pay the newly expensive
price for the product, (which is in gross demand or else there would
be no need to create laws) and those who can't. Although, now they
have an incentive to get skin in the game, because the price of the
forbidden product induces those who have nothing to lose
(economically) to become one player in the new prohibited industry,
which was only created by the law in the first place. If one has a
gun that via law becomes illegal to own, that person not only is now
automatically a criminal, but that person is now extremely wealthier,
because the price of that gun just went up. Illegal items, such as
drugs and now guns, become of interest to black market venture
capitalists. It attracts those who have money to make more money. By
creating prohibitions against guns or drugs, clocks or decaf coffee,
you are helping to accentuate the divide between the burdened and
un-incumbered. And between black people and white people in America,
whom do you think is the burdened and whom do you think is the
un-incumbered?
"It is no trick to make a lot of
money...if all you want to do is make a lot of money." - Mr.
Bernstein in 'Citizen Kane'
Greed is a human universal,
and you won't earn one a dime simply by being greedy; you have
to do something about it. Some people create things and put them up
for sale in the marketplace and hope people want them. Others find
ways to get to a position of power in order to make laws on all
people but end up only helping their own personal finances. However,
when it comes to those who will do anything to make money -no matter
how illegal or how difficult it is to buy legitimacy- those with
money or the social shield will inevitably have a leg up in the new
industry that was created by the good intentions of the ones
calling for the prohibition. Gun cartels will be built because of the
"need" for gun control. And these gun cartels will be
shielded from economic destruction by the new laws that protect them
from competition and the very laws that were meant to end them. White
people will be more so able to buy their way out of legal
repercussions, while black people will most likely not be able to.
Black people will go to prison more than white people for doing the
same anti-gun crime, just as they are more likely to go to prison for
comitting the same drug offense, or any criminal action. Black people
will not be able to afford the fines like white white people do.
Black people will not be able to afford the same legal defense as
white people are able to afford today for drug offenses. Anti-gun
laws will do the same to black communities that anti-drug laws do. Do
anti-drug laws do the same to white communities as they do to black
communities? No. Again I ask, do you think anti-gun laws will be any
different?
THE
LICENSING SOLUTION IS ANTI-BLACK
Many gun
control advocates would like to see gun regulation somehow mimic the
regulations bestowed on driving a car, with a heavily broadcasted one
being the call for gun licenses. "You need a license to
drive a car, why not require a license to buy a gun?" And of
course when pressed, the licensing process would be similar to that
of driving, in where one takes a written test, a training course and
an administered test, much like the test for a learner's permit,
five-hour coarse, and road test. The problem is that licensing for
guns, much like the licensing for driving, hurts minorities in a
variety of different ways, with black people getting gutted by both
sides of the double edge sword.
The first problem can be
easily seen. People with money and with cushy jobs have the ability
to take time off of work to afford the cost and time it would take to
get a gun license. Depending on the state, there is an application
fee to just get your learner's permit, then there is a fee to take
your driver’s course, then there is a fee to take your road test
and acquire your physical license. How much are each of these steps
going to be when it comes to gun licensing? More or less than
driving? If it is regulated by the states then we can be sure that
each step in the conservative states would be inexpensive and the
liberal states would be expensive. How long is the training course
going to be with guns? 5 hours? 5 days? 5 weeks? Again here one would
that think the conservative states would be much shorter than the
more liberal states. Yet, the longer the course is, the more one will
have to pay the trainers. The more one has to pay the trainers, the
more the course will cost to those who wish to get the license. The
more the course will cost, the less likely poor people will be able
to afford it. Only those with that large amount of money can afford
to have a gun. Recall the stats above on black and white disparities
regarding income; Who is more likely to have this time and money to
attain a gun license, white people or black people? And even if a
black person has the money to afford the cost of a gun license, do
you think they are less likely or more likely to have a job that will
allow them to take the time off in order to get a license?
Of
course, guns are to the liberal, as crime is to the conservative. No
conservative wants to be seen as soft on crime to other
conservatives, and no liberal wants to be seen as soft on guns to
other liberals. So gun control advocates setting up the licensing
laws will want the fees to be ever so higher, and the training
courses ever so longer, to not only make it more and more difficult
to get a gun, but to virtue signal to other co-thinkers that they are
the most serious about "fixing" the "problem."
This, of course, just widens the gap between both the rich and the
poor, but instead of just money and power, it is literally with
weapons. In a sweet irony, with the liberal states having systems of
gun licensing both harder to complete and more costly upfront, the
pro civil rights, Black Lives Matter supporting progressive, armed
with their good intentions, is hurting the black communities in their
districts in the manner of gun restriction, more so that that of
their counter parts in the southern bible belt states, whom in the
past have had a literal apartheid. Perhaps this time around the New
New Jim Crow laws are those involving guns and are enforced by
northern liberals.
The second problem is that driver's
licenses are mistakenly seen as a badge of responsibility for things
that have nothing to do with driving or cars. Employers constantly
claim that applicants with a valid driver's license are more likely
to be hired, because one is automatically seen as more responsible if
they are licensed; even if the job requires no driving whatsoever.
Minorities are more likely to no have a license than whites. Why this
is is because of a number of reasons: minorities are more likely to
live in cities where public transportation is more available, they
are more likely to not be able to afford to get a car thus making a
license unnecessary, they are more likely not be able to afford to
pay traffic violations thus getting their license suspended, and
because they have a higher incarceration rate, they are more likely
to not be allowed to get a driver's license. And because of this,
minorities are less likely to be hired for jobs. Not because of
conscious or unconscious racism -the employer can be a minority as
well- but because of a bias against those who do not have a driver's
license. As if there never has been an irresponsible driver.
Will
licenses for guns be the same? If two applicants for a job are
equally qualified except one has a gun license, is the one with the
license seemingly more responsible, thus making them appear to be
more qualified for the job? If so, then minorities would be at a
disadvantage, just as they are because of driver's license. Would
employers be allowed to discriminate against those with gun licenses?
For example, could a business not hire someone on the grounds that
they legally own a gun? Are those with a gun license going to be seen
as innately more violent, much like those without a driver's license
seen as somehow less responsible? One could possibly see perhaps that
liberal firms might see those with gun licenses as potentially
violent, and conservative owned firms might see them as more
responsible. However, it could be seen by certain firms that
minorities with a license are seen as prone to being violent, while
with whites it could be a signifier of responsibility. If this is the
case then it will discourage minorities from getting gun licenses
even if they can, and stimulate whites to getting them in order to
get a leg up. Either way, it disarms minorities and hurts their
chances of employment and economic mobility.
THE COP
PROBLEM WHITES DON’T HAVE
“I
have called for rifle clubs. I think Negroes in areas where police,
whether it be federal, state or city, have proven their
inability or unwillingness to defend Negroes – the lives and the
property of Negroes – that it is only intelligent and it is only
right that Negroes protect themselves...so that any time that anyone
makes any effort whatsoever to brutalize them, or attack them, or
endanger them, they should have something to defend themselves.”
-
Malcolm X
Malcolm X did not
think these clubs should be those of handguns or automatic machine
guns, nor did he advocate for anything illegal. However, Malcolm X
didn’t live in today’s world where the police have literal
military armories back at their police headquarters, each bought at a
discount price from the United States Defense Department, which
includes not just machine guns that renders the feared AR-15
impotent, but tanks, real honest to God tanks. Therefore, if you fail
to begin your arguments for gun control with the immediate discussion
of disarming or least regulating the guns of the police, then you are
at best not a serious person for whom we should all ignore, or else a
statist whose position is "your guns need to be regulated,
controlled, or confiscated for fear that you might use them in an
unlawfully deadly manner, but not the guns of Sean Carroll, Richard
Murphy, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, Paul Headley, Michael Carey,
Marc Cooper, Gescard Isnora, Michael Olive, Stacey Koon, Laurence
Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, Rolando Solano, Darren
Wilson, and Daniel Holtzclaw." All those officers passed tests.
All those officers were licensed. All those officers had training.
All those officers had registered firearms. And all those officers
and many more have destroyed communities of color. One of the flaws
in the thought patterns of the gun control advocate, when it comes to
demanding a regulatory apparatus for guns that involves training
seminars, written and practical tests, health requirements, and
registration and insurance of the firearm, is that this solution is
on par with what police officers have to go through before taking the
job; yet, there is a major problem with police brutality in the
United States, which involves the shooting of unarmed citizens.
For the exceptions
of shutting down one’s frat party, or asking the band playing at
your back yard barbecue to turn down the volume, white people do not
have to worry about the police, and especially not as a violent
threat on a daily basis. White people never have to consider that a
person may have to defend themselves against a cop.
Malcolm X once said:
“I
don’t believe that when a man has been criminally treated, the
criminal has a right to tell that man what tactics to use to get the
criminal has a right to tell that man what tactics to use to get the
criminal off his back. When a criminal starts misusing me, I am going
to use whatever necessary to get that criminal off my back. And the
injustice that has been inflicted upon Negros in this country by
uncle Sam is criminal. Don t blame a cracker in Georgia for your
injustice, the government is responsible for the injustices.”
Since 2013, there
has been around 900,000 to 1.1 million active police officers on duty
in the United States. In the same time, the police were involved in
unjustified homicides of civilians ranging from 1,100 to 1,400
annually. Which puts the unjustified homicide rate for the police at
120 per 100,000 population. Recall that the homicide rate for the
general population of the United States is 4.9 per 100,000. Why then
propose gun control regulations that produce only a group of
individuals whose murder rate is higher than the most dangerous
country in the world to live in: Honduras? A nation that has a
homicide rate of 90.4 per 100,000 population. People of color are hit
harder by the police than whites whom were killed at the hands of the
police at a rate of 2.9 per one million, while black people were
killed at a rate of 7.2 per one million. Only a white person would
think that the best solution to halt the needless slaughter of
innocent lives from mass shootings, is for the only group of people
that should be allowed to have guns are cops. Or somehow think that
for those to have a gun, one would have to pass the same testing as
that of a police force.
This isn’t a call
to arm oneself with the objective of offensive attacks on police
officers, but to be there as a line of defense and action against
those who have the power to hurt people with impunity which no doubt,
police officers have. Sherwin Forte, brother of a Black Panther
member spoke of when the police stopped a black man, or was arresting
a black person in their community and how his fellow community
members surrounded the scene from a reasonable and legal distance but
with rifles and shotguns to make sure that the arrest went according
to the law and without violence; “No one would do anything until
the officer injects around into the chamber. Then we would all inject
rounds into the chamber. Then all up and down the street you heard
this ‘clack, clack, clack, clack, clack.’” This may seem like
an insane scenario to you, one that may simply escalate the situation
to greater violence that necessary. If you believe this, one could
bet all the money in their pockets that you are a white person that
doesn't see cops as an immediate violent threat, much like one does a
charging bull. And therefore perhaps you are not in the position to
decide and make laws based on how much violence in the black
community is necessary.
THE ARMED GUARD
SOLUTION IS ALSO ANTI-BLACK
“These
laws are going to hurt us worse and going to affect us first. If you
put more police in schools, you are going to see more police engaging
African-American children in a violent manner. The same way the
little girl was slammed on her desk, the same way the little girl was
slammed at a pool party. Laws that are introduced are going to affect
my community first.”
-
Killer Mike
Usually in response
to liberal calls for gun control after a tragic shooting or massacre
of many people there is a conservative rebuttal of calling for an
“armed guard” or “man with a gun” to take out the shooter
when they emerge from their sick abyss. This is an absurd solution,
not because of the equally absurd liberal counter to it of “’More
guns’ isn’t the answer,” but because the mass shootings in
schools, places of worship, or concerts are so rare, so minuscule, so
infinitesimal, that mandating armed guards be placed in each
institution is so astronomically inefficient and a misallocation of
money and resources, the only comparison one could make is that it
would be like deputizing the ocean in order to lick a stamp.
In the United
States, there are 11,000 people who die each year from homicides
involving guns. However, most of them die from a handgun and are
killed with a purpose of just killing them, as oppose to a mass
killing of individuals by a person with a machine gun that has an
objective of either murdering those belonging to a particular group
or deliberately at random. In fact, less than one percent will die in
that manner. And yet, that is just a small percentage of the small
number who die from gun violence. More people will die of heart
disease this year than half a century worth of gun homicides. But
most people wont die at all. Most people live and go about their day
only hearing of tragedies somewhere else. And by most Americans one
means 99.999999% of them.
If a law is passed
mandating that an armed guard be placed in every school, or an armed
guard stationed based on the school’s population, then schools in
poor districts, which have a higher percentage of being schools in
black communities with higher percentages of black students, are
going to be hurt more so than wealthier schools whom both are more
likely to be able to afford the arm guards and ironically, also more
likely not not need them.
Schools with poorer
communities that are mostly consisted of Black residents cannot
afford more armed guards. If armed guard policies are state-mandated,
they will have to move money from some other programs in order to
pay, or raise school taxes on already poor communities. If funds are
being provided by the government for the armed guards then this means
that, yes, the poor black communities school will have an armed
guard, but the more well-off school—who can already afford the
guard and is in communities that are more likely not in need of
one—the armed guard subsidy given by the government can be used for
other school programs by the wealthier white schools, thus increasing
the inequality between the two schools.
Though police
officers in predominately white middle class public schools may relax
the worries of white middle class parents, the same is not the case
for black parents of black children of frankly any class. The odds of
a shooting happening in any school is extremely low. The odds of
police engaging students in a violent manner is much higher. This
isn't to say the students are angels. No students are. Yet, there is
a certain percentage of engagements by police on students that will
be considered unwarranted, or unnecessary, or an overreaction. This
percentage would be true even for wealthier white schools. However
there is no question that this percentage would higher for black
students in black communities because it is true for the regular
police in general for black communities. And this is more likely the
more officers are there on campus, and is more likely to happen in a
school than in the general public, because the cop at the school has
nothing else to do but to engage into the activities of children.
This is even the case for security guards who are black as the recent
incident involving the police shooting of Jemel Roberson, (a security
guard for a night club) has proven. Roberson apprehend a man for
setting a fire he had the man in the parking lot when police arrived
they shot Roberson. This happened in very gun controlled Illinois,
outside of Chicago which itself has tight gun control. This is a
single example but it stands to be true that black man with a gun is
more likely to be shot on site than a white security guard in the
same position. Not to say this situation would never happen to a
white security guard, just like there are very poor, disadvantage
white people. This is just to say that it is more likely black
children that will be harmed by an armed guard or police officer
stationed there without reason, just as universal x-for-all programs
disproportionately don't benefit the poor, (who are
disproportionately black) because the programs pour tax payer money
into wealthier communities that could already on their own afford the
program; whom of which are disproportionately not black.
THE PERFECT
ENGINE FOR RACIAL DISPARITY
Black
people are disproportionately poor, disproportionately imprisoned,
disproportionately given the death penalty, disproportionately
unemployed, disproportionately denial loans, disproportionately
stopped, harassed and killed by the police, and
disproportionately the victim of homicide, which
is the leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 18
and 35.
When adjusting to general
demographics,
the biggest victim of gun violence in America are black people with
50% of the victims being black.
Of course, it
is very well known that
someone is much more likely to be murdered, raped, kidnapped or
assaulted by someone that they know very well, or acquaintance, than
by a stranger. Therefore, it is also true that the perpetrator of gun
violence against black people are other black people, just
as it is true that the largest group
most victimized and suffer as a result
of Islamic terrorism is other Muslims.
There are Umberto Eco-size libraries worth of books with theories on
why the black population in America has a higher rate of crime and
violence than any other group, just as there
are numerous reasons for all
the
disparities
mentioned
and even more numerous solutions for them with most involving
remaking society from the ground up as well as the top down; a task
this is horrendously
improbable, and no doubt time consuming if it wasn't
by definition impossible, unless we have a
Leviathan-state
disregard
the rights, will, and even consciousness of individuals in order to
do so; all the while hoping for those at the helm of the Hobbsian
monolith
to
have
the omniscience of the God
that isn't
there.
Yet,
there
is a tremendous amount of evidence that certain crimes that the black
population seem to be at a lower incidence than whites, (such as
rape, aggravated assault, domestic violence, and forms of property
crimes) are actually just as prevalent—if
not more prevalent—because
of lower number of avenues the
black community have
to get help, (especially when it comes to black women when victims of
rape and domestic violence) as well as a very understandable
reluctance to go to the police. For our discussion, what matters is
not the understanding of why it is true, but all that matters is the
understanding that it is true.
Footnote:
The long term data can be viewed by going to the Bureau of Justice
statistics’ website and reading their report Homicide Trends in the
United States: 1980-2008. The more up to date statistics are linked
in the sources. Not only does the data validate the premise, but it
will show that black on black violence has decreased greater over
time than has that of other groups. Thus adding to the thesis of vast
improvements have occurred in the United States when it comes to
stifling human suffering.
Gun
control laws, however, only exacerbate these disparities, and will do
so the more that are implemented. Drug addiction is a problem that we
would like to solve or at least mitigate as much as possible. Have
drug laws helped? No. Has it seemed to create more drug addiction?
Perhaps. Has drug laws disproportionately hurt black people? Yes. Is
racism and discrimination a problem? Yes. Will it be solve by the
passing of any law? No. Will it get better over time from a cosmos of
social, political and economic factors? The evidence suggests yes.
Will gun control whose laws almost mirror that of drug control laws
negatively affect black people? Yes, because the black market created
by the ban will make guns unaffordable to the most poor, because it
will create more cartels for the selling and producing of illegal
guns, (which as drug cartels do), which will hurt black people more,
and the licensing of guns filters out black people for protecting
themselves against problems white gun control advocates only believed
happened in episodes of The Wire.
It
is dangerous to create mass panic about a crisis that doesn't exist
because making social decisions out of fear is dangerous. Just as it
is dangerous to tell the public that a caravan of people coming to
the US is filled with terrorists, drug dealers, rapists and those who
call soccer "football", (because it causes a need for
thousands of military personnel to be sent to the border instead of
places they could be more effective, and creates an irrational demand
for a wall to keep them out, both are a huge strain of resources the
government could use for other social programs) so is it dangerous to
tell the incorrect fact that there is a growing epidemic of gun
violence to where at any moment any citizen, with an emphasis on
children (because parents are known for their rational thinking when
it comes to calculating risk) can be a victim of a mass shooter,
because first,(in the case of the conservative arm guard solution) it
puts resources to use where they don't need to be and therefore a
strain schools, or other institutions (especially of poor
communities) of money they could use elsewhere for programs that are
of greater benefit, and second (in the case of the liberal "more
laws, background checks, regulations" solution)
disproportionately affects, hurts and punishes minorities,
(especially black people) like all laws do, because gun control like
drug control creates an almost police protection for those who have
the illegal item but are wealthy, have social privilege, and those
with no prior offenses, while systematically throws in jail those who
have none of those things. Or, as I would conclude, a perfect engine
for making sure the only people with guns are white people and cops.
And sure one could
suggest that my arguments here are based on the economic disparity
between black people and white people, as well as the racial
disparity and unjust outcomes in our criminal justice system, and if
we were to correct them as a society, my argument that gun control in
all of its forms would no longer would be valid. I agree, but until
then, my argument stands, and pass gun control measures without those
social corrections only throw water on a grease fire, no matter how
hard you convince people that the water has been filtered and
purified.
“Before you give
all of your rights up, use them all.” - Killer Mike
