Cornel West recently expressed his belief that the concern Americans have about mass murder reflects a racist lack of concern with the real problem with murder, which is largely black on black.I left my post below as comment on a post at Outside the Beltway several days ago. West's comments are a good hook to post it here:
If gun controllers were honest and familiar with the facts, they would admit that America does not have a “gun problem,” we have a gang problem.
America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Our murder rate now largely consists of criminals killing criminals.As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, “The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It’s a fact.”
The elephant in the room that almost no one on any side of guns issue will admit is that criminal gun use is a race-based issue. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (see links listed at end), despite a fraction of the total population relative to whites, blacks kill one another in higher absolute, not just relative numbers. The homicide rate among American whites is almost the same as among Canadians. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks (86 percent for whites, showing that interracial murder is pretty rare, for whatever that is worth.)
The gun problem in America today is almost exclusively about criminal use of firearms by (mainly) young men who illegally obtain firearms specifically to use in criminal acts. And the majority of of those criminal shootings are blacks shooting other blacks.
That is why I say that the gun control movement is not merely uninformed, it is also inherently racist because it’s only when white grade schoolers or theater goers or US Representatives are shot to pieces that the media and gun controllers get energetic. The two to three Sandy Hooks that occur every week among the black populations of America never draw a protest from the Left.
The entire purpose of the gun control movement is not to stop shootings generally. It is to stop shootings of white people. Not one single measure proposed by Sen. Feinstein or coming forth from VP Biden will have the slightest effect on the gun-homicide rate among blacks, as even Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has said:
However, McCarthy acknowledged aiming at assault weapons misses the mark when dealing with Chicago’s gang violence. The weapon used is generally a handgun and rarely is it purchased through legal channels. McCarthy wants to target straw purchasing, which is when legal gun buyers will purchase a weapon and then let it loose in the illegal market.
Straw purchasing, of course, is already illegal.
But the Left doesn't care what cops like McCarthy say. It’s only the "chocolate kids," as Cornel West puts it, getting killed. As long as it stays inside the inner cities it matters not. But when it takes place in white-bread Connecticut or Aurora, Colo., something must be done!
Links:
