In yesterday's post, we touched on a "third rail". I called it that because, in today's politically correct environment, the risk of being accused of racism can quell public discourse and focus the attention on killing the messenger. That does no one any good, especially the hapless messenger, and particularly harms minority groups who historically have been disproportionately held down by the twin scourges of crime victimization and citizen disarmament.
We will proceed anyway and take our chances.
Eric Holder has accused us of being "a nation of cowards" when it comes to matters of race. I'll agree with his conclusion--but not with the reasoning he uses to justify it. We will not get anywhere until we dare discuss crimes of violence in "the community," what I call "the elephant in the room we dare not speak of."
As an aside, regulars will notice I voice a point of order about an article by my my esteemed colleague in Seattle, but I suspect this is just a matter of looking at things from another angle rather than an actual disagreement. My bottom line:
[We] also can't forget to look at race--not as a cause of violent crime, but as an indicator of populations most directly affected by and responsive to a continuing history of destructive government policies.
If we're afraid to even address this, we're never going to be able to make things right. And those hurt the most by this self-imposed blindness will continue to be the least prosperous and protected among us.
OK, now that I've succeeded in alienating the left, let me work on the right. No sense forming an angry mob unless it's a big one.
Several years ago, I wrote a defense of armed Black Panthers.
What, am I nuts?
Relax. There's a context within defined criteria of conduct, and most importantly, the fundamental principles apply to all citizens regardless of their race or politics. At the very least, it should provide for a lively debate.
But I'll stop making advance excuses and apologies for the piece, and let the words stand on their own.
That'll be my next column, barring something happening that delays it...
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A South Dakota conundrum
South Dakota Gun Owners has put out an alert with a desperate plea:
Senator Gene Abdallah (R-Sioux Falls) is at it again.
Many will remember that in years past, Sen. Abdallah supported every single anti-gun bill to be introduced...
Sen. Abdallah and six left-leaning members of the Senate State Affairs committee voted to gut HB 1278 with the very same anti-gun amendment. They have changed it from a very simple pro-gun bill to one of the most anti-gun bills to hit South Dakota in years.
Now here's the puzzling part. Per Project Vote Smart:
Based on lifetime voting records on gun issues and the results of a questionnaire sent to all Congressional candidates in 2008, the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund assigned Sen. Gene G. Abdallah a grade of A+...
What in the world...? Someone in the know, please feel free to educate us.
Check out the latest from other Gun Rights Examiners:
Austin Gun Rights Examiner: TSRA annual meeting: moving liberty forward
Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner:Reports of 'gun lobby' death are greatly exaggerated
Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner: Fewer police on the street puts citizens at risk
DC Gun Rights Examiner: Georgia legislator introduces bill to repeal permit requirement to open carry handguns!
Denver Gun Rights Examiner: Mental toughness
LA Gun Rights Examiner: Take Heart, Part IV: Explaining it to the Republicans.
Minneapolis Gun Rights Examiner: An open letter to Senator Jim Webb and pro-gun democrats
Seattle Gun Rights Examiner: At it again: Anti-gunners trying to demonize yet another class of firearms
Seattle Gun Rights Examiner: Citizen disarmament lobby is waiting for the next tragedy to exploit
Comments
This topic is absolutly ripe for someone to take from the devil's advocate position. It would work so well because of all the fallacies it would uncover and attention it would draw.
"Clearly, the minority populations of the inner city aren't responsible enough to own firearms. Seeing as how most cannot keep themselves employed in even the most simplistic means, it is indicative that they aren't responsible enough to exercise the rights that those who aren't minorities can..."
I think that pretty clearly demonstrates how effectively an article like that might work. Just tell people they can't have something because of race, and suddenly they will want it.
It's funny you should mention the Black Panthers. I've been thinking about them a lot recently and have been tempted to write a post about them.
Citizen militias are (at least in theory) defined in the Militia Act of 1792 and protected by the Second Amendment. The extreme fear the Black Panthers produced by marching on the State Capitol is the beginning of California's insane clamor for "gun control".
I don't know about the south, but in California, "gun control" is definitely a racist attempt to control an entire segment of the population strictly on the basis of skin color. It was in the beginning, and it still is today.
"Gun control" is a hot topic in California because the rich white minority that runs the State is deeply convinced in their own minds that blacks and hispanics are primitive, barbaric people who cannot be trusted with firearms.
No one has ever proven that secret deals between the local organized crime syndicate and key politicians was the driving force behind the rapid expansion of heroin distribution in Oakland right after the March on Sacramento. However, myself, I've long felt that if one day some unexpected evidence does come out proving it definitively, I will not be surprised.
Prior to the rapid expansion of heroin sales (blamed on the Black Panthers but never definitively linked to them either!), the Black Panthers had accomplished a lot of good in some of the more crime infested neighborhoods in Oakland. No one ever remembers that aspect of them. Most historians are far too fascinated with the March on the Capitol, too busy digging for facts behind the accusations of drug dealing, and too happily busy retelling every tiny detail of the final shootout, to bother themselves with questioning the status quo.
I'm with you. I think we need to bring them back, without the drugs. I said as much in the comments section of Mr. Gray's op-ed piece on bringing back the AWB as an answer to us "gun nuts".
Oddly, the issue of inner-city crime has nothing to do with race. Whites misbehave (as in robbery, rape, murder and drug retailing)at the same rate as non-whites when you sort for economic status.
One study I found which did this quite well was Centerwall, Brandon S. "Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 198O" Am J Epidemiol 1991;134:1245-60. Punch that in at Pub Med and you can probably get the full text.
Unlike most of the gun related studies in the medical literature, Centerwall and company went to the trouble of comparing demographically similar populations in the USA and Canada, looking for a difference in behaviour that could be attributed to the different gun control laws. He did this in a rather clever way, by using the number of people in a domocile as a way to capture real economic resources. The more crowded, the lower the amount of money available.
What he found was zero measurable difference from gun laws, zero measurable difference from race (there goes your "culture of violence" theories) and a very large measured difference based on level of crowding. More crowded = poorer = more crime. Duh.
You find the same thing when you do the little exercise of making a red dot every place there was a murder on the map. Forest fire of red downtown, practically nothing in the burbs and rural areas.
Note that this does not speak to the CAUSE of the phenomenon at all. All that it does is eliminate the presence of guns and the presence of non-White race as possible factors in violent crime.
Which coincides nicely with common sense and observed reality, doesn't it?
Incidentally, the Centerwall study is one of six I found to meet the bare minimum for sound study design out of about a couple hundred I read in the medical literature on firearms. My non-famous opinion is the same as the National Academy of Science opinion when they looked at it. We differ as to our conclusions. NAS said "more study is needed", I think a whole bunch of journal editors and reviewers need fired.
Brian- I agree. I think there is absolutely a subversive agenda to disarm people of color. They are cutting off their own noses, though.
Phantom,
Thank you for letting us know about that study. However, I have a disagreement with your interpretation of the data, unless you were using "culture of violence" as codespeak so that you could avoid saying "black".
You stated:
"What he found was zero measurable difference from gun laws, zero measurable difference from race (there goes your "culture of violence" theories) and a very large measured difference based on level of crowding. More crowded = poorer = more crime. Duh."
Poorer is not necessarilly more crowded. I know, and have lived in, plenty of dirt poor rural communities. What we are seeing is an inner-city culture issue. It is not dependent on race, but then culture is not by definition dependent on race.
Once the consideration of ‘race’ is extended beyond the realm of science as a minor genetic variation separating those identifiable as members of the ‘human race’ from primates--it seems to me a significant number of those most adamant about making ‘race’ an issue are quite often using it as a means to separate themselves according to a quality not necessarily specific to them as a person but instead based primarily on physical characteristics…and intentionally or otherwise engaged in attempting to use certain variations among the ‘human race‘ to foster some type of agenda.
Among the many questions brought to fore here is one with regard to what purpose exactly is being served by the head of the Justice Department and chief law enforcement officer of the United States focusing his attention, and the attention of others on issues relative to ’race’?
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