While this was a great interview, I believe it would have been even better had they discussed the third rail of gun control, that of the horrendous number of young black males who die each year from black on black gun murders.
I just pulled this factoid up from a Reuters article regarding the rise of gun deaths during 2020:
While this was a great interview, I believe it would have been even better had they discussed the third rail of gun control, that of the horrendous number of young black males who die each year from black on black gun murders.
I just pulled this factoid up from a Reuters article regarding the rise of gun deaths during 2020:
'Among African Americans, the rate was 26.6 deaths per 100,000, a 39.5% increase over 2019. For white Americans, the rate was 2.2 per 100,000.'
Do we actually have a national problem, or do we have an urban black on black murder problem? But dealing with the horrendous problem of gun murders for black male youth is too hard, and would involve lots of accusations of racism, so we tend to ignore the real progress that could be made if we isolated and concentrated on it.
I'm of the belief that the motivation for mentally ill people to carry out mass murders is the issue that needs to be dealt with more than the access to weapons, but that's just mho.
It is the opposite of what you say. 56% of all gun homicides are black-on-black.
Furthermore, 30-40% of gun homicides are unsolved, from year to year, but most of the victims are black, hence likely most of these are also b-on-b. Easily 60-70% of all gun homicides in the U.S. (10-12K/year) are black (5K to 7K per year). And the numbers are rising because of poor or no law enforcement in the ghetto neighborhoods has become the standard.
"Do we actually have a national problem, or do we have an urban black on black murder problem?"
I think the answer is obvious. But few want to say it publicly. This is one of many examples of why our politics has become so irrational. Facts are frequently off the table. Only fantasy and make-believe are allowed on many topics.
It's true. Were it not for a small number of urban centers in the US (between about five and nine) and the black victims murdered by (mainly) young black men, the US would have a violent crime and murder rate not that different from many other developed countries. Pace the far left, the problem is not mainly in the South, which is what you'd expect were it a legacy of Jim Crow and slavery. It's largely a problem in large cities outside the South, all but one (NYC) ruled by Democratic mayors and machines for decades. This is why law-abiding gun owners in the US deeply and rightly resent the way they're repeatedly demonized for a problem they have virtually no connection with.
Actually, NYC is a great example. Murders shot up to 1,000 over the years of Democrat rule. By the time the 20 years of Giuliani and Bloomberg ended, it was under. 300. Then that idiot DeBlasio and now this phony law and order guy ex cop takes over with the far left ideals and the numbers are shooting ups again. NYC is actually the proof that left wing Democrat policies kill and conservative policies save
It is true. I think my impression of the data might be a decade old. Gun violence has been slowly rising in more rural areas b/c of the opioid epidemic. That was a mostly non-violent drug epidemic, until recently. And most of the people involved are white, not black.
Yes, there are games you can play like that. It's best to view by city and metro area. The bump up in southern states is still not that big in comparison.
Jon, you are right but no matter what we say it is racist. The mainstream media is no help when them amplify white shoots black news just to show they are woke...IT is sad to see so many inner city people killed by their neighbors. How to stop it? One idea: If you are 17 or 18 and not in school or working full-time then you must serve 2 yrs in the military or Dept of Natural Resources teams. No matter your color. 2 years of learning about team work, trust, other races, and more. Ends with 2 years of free college or advanced military/Air Force/navy position. Get the streets cleared of the young people and start our future leaders out on the right foot. Call them USA 1st TEAM Members ... Get on the team and avoid laying on the sidewalk
In my experience it is the military that no longer embraces that. The services won't commit with pending charges and the prosecutor's won't commit without a guarantee of enlistment.
No idea, but they ought to give them a chance if it is a misdeamor. Free food, free insurance, and much more. My son is a Major in the Army and he has seen some rough kids become true leaders in his units.
The crazy woke world we live in, recently corrupted by Black Lives Matter’s villainizing the police — the only group standing between homicidal thugs and innocent people in dangerous neighborhoods, has made this proven successful tactic illegal.
Stop and frisk works. If shootings were happening in Chinatown, with gangs of Asians killing each other and innocent people getting hit in the crossfire, would there be the same reaction against police stopping and frisking young Asian men? I don’t think so.
Not doing stop and frisk is immoral. Ask the innocent people living in these crime ridden neighborhoods how they feel about it. If the crime is nearly all being committed in black neighborhoods by black thugs against black people, who should the police stop and frisk — white people or Asian people in other neighborhoods where there is no crime? It’s such a ludicrous argument. And the only people losing out are innocent black people.
Young Asian men? Try this mental exercise with white males. Imagine that Chicago had almost entirely white guys killing each other, and sometimes innocent bystanders. Mayor Lightfoot would be advocating the most Draconian, tough on crime policies EVER...because we have to protect our community right?
Indeed. Our Congress's incompetency in choosing political expediency over a balanced justice vs. mercy solution to young male homicidal violence is endlessly frustrating. Adult men's refusal to life coach and discipline young men is a root problem.
Pareto's function applies, of course. The sum of the number of gun-involved assaults will be caused by the square root of their sources, be it single black males (7% of the population), in several Zip Codes, by a few types of weapons -- and so on. Single parent homes. Uninvolved fathers. All of these rationally calculated causes are, unfortunately, beyond the reach of the woke blue city governments.
The real problem is the social programs that intentionally trap people in awful situations so that they can be dependent upon their political massahs who want nothing to improve. They stole anger and division - it’s like political fentanyl. And they strike out. The miasma that results from liberal programs is destructive. And most violence is not between unknown people. It’s between people you know or live in your neighborhood. The left doesn’t want their clients to improve their lives. The thing they fear most is an educated black man who is married with children and who actually lives at home. That’s their death nell
I've read an evaluation of the statistics that suggests that if we remove the gun murders that occur as a result of black-on-black (often gang violence) from the total before calculating the per capita rate and comparing that rate to other countries, our ranking drops from very a very high number to a very low number.
But as you say, we can't talk about that, let alone do anything about it, because that would be "racist."
Per capita murder rate by state vs racial demographics per state
I've not conducted such an analysis, but I theorize that states with the most Euro-origin population would have the same murder rate as EU countries. Guns are not the relevant variable. Such data analysis would surely be considered verboten and "racist" though.
The racial connection is unavoidable to some degree, but there are many African Americans that live in non urban dystopias whose misuse of firearms rate is, I would wager, about the same as that of whites. Skin color isn’t the determining characteristic, culture is. Many here have touched on some of those cultural issues: no dad at home, drugs, poor and unsafe education, a culture of dependency, etc. The fault lies with Democratic initiatives and politics, mostly, beginning with the Great Society initiatives of the 60’s. As horrible as slavery was (and is today), it would not surprise me if more people died because of this government initiated cultural degradation than during the history of U.S. slavery.
what about Jim Crow laws. Interesting number in excess of 90% of people living in Nita housing in NYC work and are not on public assistance. Where would New York get all the low level employees if there was no place for them to live. For the record they pay 30% of their pre tax income for rent and are evicted if they don't pay. That does't not sound like a breeding ground for "welfare Moms" like you suggest
I agree that it's not racial, but it's the closest proxy to culture that we can effectively measure. I did look briefly. #1 and #2 US states by murder rate per capita are MS and AL. #1 and #2 states by % black population are MS and AL. Why can't we talk about this? If white majority states had the highest murder rates per capita we would absolutely be talking about it!
Larry Elder and Candace Owens talk about this as well as other Black conservatives. They are censored by the left-wing media because the Left needs to keep Black people in victimhood because they are their base voters. If you haven't read/listen to Candace Owen's book Blackout you should check it out. She outlines when our government made this diabolical shift to further enslave Black people without them realizing it. Under the leadership of arguably the most racist president Lyndon B Johnson who famously said that his welfare policies would have Black people voting Democrat for the rest of their lives. This was the beginning of using Black people as political pawns. Extremely upsetting and frustrating that we can't break out of this cycle that he created. We are moving in the right direction but the left is always there to thwart. Evil evil people.
Interestingly, similar data analysis shows that statistics on Americans of Nordic ancestry (and the communities in which they are the majority) tend to line up very closely with the statistics from Nordic countries. It's as if culturally ingrained values MATTER.
You do need to know about the culture to be influenced by it. My husband was adopted. He didn't even know(other than by strong Norwegian physical similarities) about the large amount of Norwegian dna he got from his bio father/mother till he and our son did dna test from Ancestry when my son was 16 and interested about the genetics from the bio lines.
I, too, am adopted. But I have a lot of traits and preferences that come from my bio parents. For example, I've always loved sci-fi--a common trait in my birthfather's family--despite the fact that no one in my extended adoptive family does.
Well yes that makes sense. We actually connected to my husband's birth father's family. Apparently the bizzare morning thing he does making up silly songs to wake our son up in the morning (since he was a tiny boy, he's 18 now, the son that is. I'm worried on who his new target will be with our son off to college. ;)) is something his birth father did.
I wasn't suggesting that Nordic culture is more pro-gun than any other. Indeed, I wasn't even thinking of the gun aspect at all. I was bringing up another clear indicator of the fact that values (and the behaviors that arise from them) are connected to culture.
I think Clarence Thomas would agree strongly that values are connected to culture. Like most black conservatives, he recognizes that the fatherlessness that LBJ's War on Poverty created for too many black Americans has damaged black culture in horrifying ways.
I dunno the facts of the matter. But I *suspect* that of all the gangs in America, the overwhelming percentage are in black neighborhoods. Basing that on the murder rate.
But there are tons of gangs in middle school and high school (in affluent areas), and a lot of them are lilly white. There's gang culture online. They may not be shooting at each other on the streets, but it's psychologically deadly nonetheless to victims.
Lefties care nothing about minority deaths, they want as many of them dead as possible. That is why they worship Maggie and put a majority of their death factories in minority neighborhoods!
It’s just a natural by product of their overall strategy. Identity politics requires opposition and the left controlled MSM stokes it. They want people to be dependent upon government and politicians. When I grew up in the projects, no one - NO ONE - would ever rat out on the drug dealers. That was their “source” - they needed what they were addicted to. Liberals are the drug dealers of politics and urban blacks are disproportionately addicted to the dependency of government. So…hand out freebies, continue to hand out more and demonize those who (a) have more then you (because they work) and (b) see the game for what it is an oppose you.
Then open the border and see if you can add more of them.
Love your comment just one question how did we vote Brandon in this is so 20th century we left it all behind in 2016 why would we go back to this way of life for Americans it’s very strange
I really don’t think we did. I’m not one who is married to the thought that the vote count was manipulated via machines and double counting. Bit, I am quite certain that cheating went on enough regarding the ballots submitted for counting to turn the election. Lots of nursing home patient ballots filled out by others, ditto the door knockers who intimidated people to turn over the ballots, the collection of ballots,for,people on the rolls but no longer resident or perhaps even alive. Lots of ballots that were ruined bit saved in key precincts. Lots of ballots undated that arrived after Election Day. Courts changing the rules not before, not after, but in the midst of elections.
It didn’t take a whole lot of votes to flip a few states and make a difference.
Read a book called Rigged by Molly Hemingway there was no chain of custody on ballot boxes there was Zuckbucks to tune of $430 million its a lot of money to put into a national election on one side only it was a manipulation a gaslight of our system however it’s not the first time it had been going on since the beginning of the 20th century with the advent of Covid it was a perfect storm for the Democrats it appears now they think they have another perfect storm in 1/6 we not far from Nov let’s see what they can conjure up now Rick
They can’t address that question. The left intentionally herds blacks into violent communities and fills their heads with messages of no opportunity, other people are the reason why you are a victim and they turn to drugs and their anger boils over. They’ve destroyed the nuclear family unit intentionally. It’s part of their quest for power and blacks are just useful tools to them.
It’s strange I don’t think Bari has to much support from the usual crowd on this platform - these comments seem generally a pretty good judge of where people will be voting in the midterms and I don’t think it’s going to be The Democrats
Jon, T. Reid, and Madjack all point to the actual problem which has nothing to do with "too many guns" and everything to do with social breakdown in the black urban communities, and lack of care for the mentally ill.
Unfortunately, some 30-40% of gun murders every year are unsolved, yet most of the victims are black, so clearly the black homicide participation is likely much higher than 53% (or 56% or whatever number for a given year, based on bjs.gov statistics). Let us say, 60% or 65%.
What's more, it's certainly not all black males who commit murder, but a small fraction thereof, age 16-39, in urban ghetto neighborhoods. Let us say, 10% of the black male population, or 0.6% of the U.S. population.
That's less than 1% of the country causing 60% or more of all the gun homicides. If you could somehow clamp down on this violent population, throw all the gang leaders in prison, intervene in at-risk families and incentivize more economic development in the cities thru lower taxes & regs... and of course better policing... then our gun murder rates would drop down to the level of Canada and Western Europe, or even lower. We would not even be having a debate on gun control, because relatively speaking, it would simply not be such a significant problem.
Trump did try, with his (and Sen. Tim Scott's) opportunity zones initiative, along with his "back the blue" rhetoric. One can hardly imagine a better approach. Unfortunately, the Democrats pulled him down from power, shut down all these initiatives, and have pushed the country ever further into anarchy and urban decay.
Consider the economic incentives of black markets. Violence in black markets is used routinely used to settle disputes and expand market share. This violent incentive created gangs and long standing drug war has encompassed multiple generations. Our drug policies are partly to blame for the culture of violence within these communities. To date we have militarized our police, spent >1 trillion and the addiction rate remains flat from 1980. We could lock up every potential murder based on the profile stated above and the murders will not stop because the incentives are still there.
Giuliani proved that smart policing in partnership with an enlightened city governance could reduce the problem.
Unfortunately, he was the exception. The woke racist fools running most of America's big cities are simply exacerbating the problems.
Of course, substance abuse is a huge problem. But there are ways to attack the gang violence and at least reduce the shootings. There are only so many men out there willing to commit murder. Lock up enough of them, and the problem starts to diminish.
Yes. Substance abuse in and of itself does not drive murders. San Francisco is so addicted that city sidewalks are littered with addicts mainlining themselves toward the grave. But murders there are low. They don't have the drug-related gang violence of other cities.
I believe it was Bill Barr who stated that most violent crime in cities is committed by a relatively small group of individuals that cycle through the system on a regular basis until they are removed from the streets when locked up for an extended length of time or die.
Accurate. Vermont allows license-free open and concealed carry of firearms. It has a Western Europe level of murder per capita. Chicago specifically, and Illinois in general, has a strict licensing scheme and areas of Chicago have per capita murder rates exceeding Brazil and South Africa.
Vermont's neighbor Maine, a state that is larger than all the other New England states has for many decades allowed open carry, and within recent times has made concealed carry legal for most of its citizens.
Folks in Maine can even carry a loaded hand gun in their car, or walk into a private business with a firearm (including restaurants and bars) if the owners allow it.
I spent most of my working life in Maine and did the paper work to get a concealed weapon permit. But within a few years, the Maine legislator made my permit redundant.
My wife and I now live in a rural area of north central Florida.
Within a few months of moving to Florida I got a concealed carry permit, but it also is now mostly redundant when I visit my friends up in Maine.
Seems I can never get a break from inconsistent firearm laws 😁
Chicago's numbers aren't nearly that bad. St. Louis and New Orleans, however, are. A couple neighborhoods in St. Louis are one of the murder capitals of the world all by themselves.
Coleman Hughes would be an excellent addition to this round table. He has compiled an extraordinary amount of evidence around race relations and gun violence and although he skews towards academia-speak he is thoughtful, smart, and consistently debunks the common media narratives that leave out half of the very pertinent information.
While I am an Independent I have to say it's not ignored by Republicans so much as they are shouted down as racist the minute they talk about the real source of the issue. It's cultural of course but the Democrats have made gang banging a strictly black cultural phenomenon and somehow made pointing this out, rather than participating in it, the racist thing. They are really good at BS PR.
I fully agree with you on this. This is a stark and really important point, which I came across in a video by Eric July, a libertarian YouTube commentator whose channel is YoungRippa59, in response to the BLM movement during the Floyd riots. Here's what he said at about 23 minutes in:
"When I was banging, you know, getting in all these fights and stuff like that, doing things that . . . had me on the path to being dead or in jail — just like a lot of the people I grew up with — never once was I accused of not being black, or being “white-washed,” “Uncle Tom” . . . I never was accused of that. Never once was I accused. It wasn’t until I dropped what I was as a leftist, from a political side of things, stopped begging for acceptance and all that sort of loser stuff — that’s when they said that.
"So what does that say? What does that say? Because I choose not to align myself with that, what does that say? I could go beat up, kill — all that — other black people, terrorize, steal from other black people, and they feel like that’s, that’s what it is to be black.
"That in itself shows you it’s a cultural problem. That they don’t want to address because it would require responsibility. And when I say they don’t want to address it I’m not saying there aren’t people who aren’t addressing it, I’m saying that when they look at all of these different things, they treat people like there’s nothing they can do to better their own situations. It’s “I’m the victim”. . . they act as if everything is not their fault. They’re in their situation — and I’m not saying there aren’t people that are actually victims of things — but to sit here, and I’m not willing to do that, sit here and pretend like all black people are innocent, just getting the short end of the stick due to “oppression,” or the history, the legacy of slavery? Like, C’mon dog! No. Lotta y’all in positions you got exactly what you deserve and it’s what you doing, what the folks within your community are doing. But that again requires responsibility. It requires agency." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JocOjvPizzY)
Understanding the cultural problem that has been fostered within urban black communities, and how it breeds a victimhood mindset that results in societal alienation and violence, is key to reducing gun deaths in the U.S....and a host of other problems. If anything, it's racist to refuse to have that honest conversation.
I can only imagine the angst that would accompany a truly clear eyed look into the statistics of gun violence by our populace. It's far easier to blame the guns than formulate an actual plan to reduce the violence. Keep in mind that the race baiters and hustlers making money off the division have no intention of solving the problem. That would eliminate the need for them.
For the 2020 FBI crime states, 53% of US murders where the race of the offender was known were committed by blacks. Who comprise 13% of the US population (and most of these are committed by males, so 6.5% of the US population). This is a VASTLY disproportionate murder rate per capita. It is never spoken of. A problem not acknowledged cannot be solved.
Precisely. I’ve read that up to HALF of all gun deaths are suicides. No discussion about that by the panelists though. Not to be outdone, Bari asserts that, “As of 2020, the leading cause of death among children is guns” but neglects to mention that 18-year-old “child” gang bangers are included in that statistic and when it’s removed, the REAL leading cause of death among children is cars. How many gun offenders have been released with little more than a slap on the wrist? How many of them are repeat offenders? Where are the actual statistics? It seems the only statistics we get are phony, like the one peddled by Bari. I haven’t even touched on the malleable definition of “mass shootings” the gun grabbers employ to dupe the public.
It’s difficult to take seriously any discussion of gun violence when neither of the participating twits even bother to discuss what does work. I’m old enough to remember the rampant gun violence in New York City back in the 70s and 80s. When Giuliani implemented his “stop and frisk” policy, gun violence almost disappeared. Success be damned, the leftist gun grabbers shrieked for years that the policy was racist until finally it was abandoned with predictable results. The statistics are available but their exclusion from the discussion speaks volumes about the real goal, eliminating guns from law abiding citizens while letting armed criminals roam the streets until they get their way.
To top it all off, we get to hear Rajiv Sethi, an Indian immigrant patronizingly chastise we native born Americans for the “widespread belief that there's a sacred right to bear arms that's enshrined in our most cherished document through the Second Amendment” Someone should point out to him that the Second Amendment together with the rest of our cherished Constitution is what separates us from the cesspool he emigrated from.
More than half, I believe: suicides account for two-thirds of gun deaths, and murders the other third, with a tiny fraction left over for accidents and justifiable homicides.
Stop and frisk WAS racist, in that NYPD stopped and frisked black and brown people almost exclusively. They also found 99 percent of those stopped and frisked had no guns on them. I'd argue that stop and frisk didn't cause the plunge in homicides in New York City, it was coincidental. Murders, gun or not, rise and fall independent of most anything we think of as "the cure."
Agree that "child" in this case is disturbingly flawed. Take out the numbers of dead who belonged to gangs, and got caught up in that warfare, to get a more accurate number.
Rajiv Sethi is an idiot for having said that. I don't believe it's a "sacred" right as in religious, but it's as cherished a right (as you said) as anything else in the Constitution and thus worth defending to the max.
“I'd argue that stop and frisk didn't cause the plunge in homicides in New York City, it was coincidental”
Then, by your logic the staggering increase in homicides once stop and frisk was dropped is also coincidental. I’m no statistician but I’d say the probability of both being true is about nil. As someone who has been wrongfully stopped by police, I appreciate that abuses occur, but please, lets get over the racist trope. Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t most gun crimes committed by black and brown people? Frankly I find the whole argument against stop and frisk disingenuous when you consider that every time we board a flight we’re treated like would be terrorists by the TSA. We're scanned , frisked and have our belongings rummaged through yet 99.999…% of the time there is no gun, no explosive or threat of any kind. I'd argue that the absence of any hijackings since 9/11 can much more plausibly be considered coincidental.
People don't claim stop-and-frisk was racist because of the outcome of more young black men getting arrested for gun crimes, but because the policy was to presume that any given young black man was a criminal and search him without cause. Mayor Bloomberg was notoriously recorded saying essentially that (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/leaked-audio-bloomberg-aspen-institute-racial-profiling-stop-and-frisk-policing.html). It was immoral, and a gross violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Morality is a tricky thing. On the one hand you have a young black man briefly detained by police, then being sent on his way. On the other hand you have predominately black inner-city neighborhoods being ravaged by gang-related gun violence. It's not a tough call, really.
"Who comprise 13% of the US population (and most of these are committed by males, so 6.5% of the US population)."
Yes, and considering that the vast majority of black people, including black males, are NOT crminals the number of black people committing the majority of crimes is really something more like 1-2%. There is a very small, incredibly violent group of gang bangersw commiting most of the gun violence in this country. Remove them and we are safer than Denmark when it comes to gun homicide stats.
I've posted this before but I think it is relevant: Every time there is a mass shooting like Sandy Hook or Columbine High School there is an outcry from the left to confiscate guns from law abiding citizens. In the majority of these shooting these victims are white and the nuts who shoot them are white. There is no doubt that these shootings are tragic and horrible.
However every week in the inner cities far more black people are murdered by black armed thugs than are these mass shootings. Yet I don’t hear outrage from the Democrats, who claim to be the party defending women and minorities,. To be fair you don’t hear it from the Republicans either. In fact the only thing you hear about these outrageous murders from either party is the sound of crickets chirping.
The point I am making is you never hear from the minority support party any outrage about the slaughter in black communities but you sure do hear it when there is a mass shooting in the white community.
Isn’t that one of the definitions of racism, outrage about white deaths but silent about black deaths?
Years ago after Sandy Hook Diane Feinstein called for the confiscation of all guns. Of course she meant confiscation of law abiding citizens guns. Not one person in the media or from the right asked Diane how she proposed to get the guns out of the hands of the gangs that have been terrorizing black communities for decades.
According to FBI statistics, in 2020 at least 9,713 blacks were murdered. In the past 30years tens of thousands of blacks were murdered in the inner city. Where is the outrage? Isn’t it racist to ignore these murders? Where is BLM, Antifa and the woke people when they are needed the most. More importantly, where are the Democrats who claim to be the party of the minorities? They control the House and the Senate. Why aren’t they screaming to stop these murders. Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Oh, wait a minute! They make their livings off the misery of black people.
Yes. It is racist to ignore black-on-black murders, because the innocent people in those neighborhoods need help stemming the bloodshed. Like all of us, they want to be left in peace to live their lives and not have to throw their babies in the bathtub when gang gunfire breaks out.
Mass shootings in schools and workplaces seems to be a white phenomenon, and nobody has any qualms about saying so. Street murders by gun is largely (though not exclusively) a black phenomenon. That needs to be equally emphasized, because pretending otherwise does not help Americans of any color.
"Mass shootings in schools and workplaces seems to be a white phenomenon." Regardless of how the Media spins it, mass shootings seem to be becoming less exclusive to white people. The NYC subway shooter was black, as was the Tulsa hospital shooter. The Uvalde shooter was hispanic.
Workplace shootings at Hartford Distributors in Connecticut, at Rite Aid Distribution Center in Maryland, Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, and at the Washington Navy Yard were committed by black shooters. Workplace shootings at Fort Hood and at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California were committed by Muslim Arabs (as was the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Florida and the grocery store shooting in Boulder, Colorado). A workplace shooting at the UPS facility in San Francisco was committed by a Thai man. The school shooting at Virginia Tech was committed by a South Korean.
So the Media's insistence that mass shootings are a white phenomenon is disingenuous.
Well, I saw a statistic that about 22% of mass shootings were committed by blacks (higher than their population percentage), but I didn't trust it because of the tendency to lump gang violence in with mass shootings (to make it look like there are more than there actually are).
So I decided to look at *actual* mass shootings, the way most of us understand the term: a shooter intentionally firing at multiple people in a single location for reasons that are unrelated to any other criminal behavior (e.g., drug deal gone wrong, gang warfare, etc.).
I also excluded "assassination"-style shooters, who go around killing targets at various locations over a period of time. If you add in those, you have the D.C. area pair and the L.A. shooter as notable black examples.
Though eminently well-documented, this is not widely understood. Cops are doing their job (mostly) and making arrests. Prosecutors / DA's need to prosecute every violent crime, every gun law violation (and any sort of malfeasance one could possible do with a gun is already a crime). I wonder why big money leftists have taken such an interest in DA's (like the one in NYC and the recently removed one in San Francisco) who are soft on crime? They WANT chaos, it aids their march towards power.
T R...seems to be the sick part...buttered-up thru the Media. To be forthright, the media must ease-up on the " you have not advanced because of Whitey" proclivity. More MLK , Sen Scott and Walker. Less of the substance from the assembly fluttering "Racist".
Exactly. Prosecutors have, for decades now, been in the habit of dropping gun charges and any sentencing enhancement for using a gun to commit a crime. As a result, those who have demonstrated the propensity to shoot or threaten to shoot people end up back on the streets in a short time, instead of being locked up for a very long time.
I would be in favor of INTENSE sentencing enhancement for the use of a gun to commit a crime; say, for example, an automatic ten-year enhancement, on top of whatever penalty they get for the crime they committed. If the gun criminals were locked up for long periods, there would be fewer of them on the street.
But that can't happen for the same reason that prosecutors end up dropping gun charges: the results, in practice, appear to be too "racist."
You're absolutely right! Do politicians and the academe think these young black men care about the second amendment; the NRA? Those arguments are a distraction from the real issues that (sshhh!) can not be discussed. We also have the disenfranchised white middle class overly medicated kids with mental disorders raised by parents and, in many cases, grandparents. These folks live in fear and denial and suddenly everyone is shocked when disaster strikes. It brings me very little solace to compare our stats with that of El Salvador and Guatemala.
I agree completely. Let out all the people who are locked up for merely possessing drugs (our utterly failed "War on Drugs" and put the violent criminals in there instead.
Back a few decades, firearm “enhancements” were added to sentencing, such that in my state the commission of a felony while armed added 5 years without possibility of “good time” in prison. The point was to deter gun usage. But the pendulum has swung so far that criminals using guns aren’t even being prosecuted in some places. Anyone who supports such policies, and votes for such politicians, has blood on his/her hands.
The policies will NEVER change as long as those areas are run by Democrats. I'm not even convinced that Republicans have the cujones to make the necessary changes, should they somehow be elected in those cities. We need LEADERSHIP, and there is none to be found.
The gun-grabbing Dems have students' blood on their hands by never allowing or encouraging serious protection at our schools just as they protect themselves with armed, trained personnel and sophisticated entry doors & procedures.
The interviewee David French does not see any reason to worry about tyranny in America. (If this is the well-known "conservative" fellow, he appears to spend most of his recent writings worrying about MAGA people.) I would have agreed with him maybe until 2008, when our president elect said he would "fundamentally transform America." The results are in and America is fundamentally transformed and it is scary as hell for non-criminals and non-woke.
I'm with Celia with one exception. No life if committing a crime with a gun. Here in Los Angeles if I shot an intruder in my bedroom, I'd be in jail for life. Otherwise, there is a great deal of frankness on this issue with Celia and so many others.
Your statement about wounding or killing an intruder in your bedroom, and thus facing prison for the rest of your life, Dennies, may be true in other states, or was true years ago in California.
One problem with the internet is that most of us have passed on urban legends or propaganda that we may think are facts.
I also thought the firearm laws in California made it a crime for citizens use a gun in a self defense or the Castle law situation.
But the long ago newspaper reporter that still occupies a part of my rapidly aging brain twitched and forced me to examine the actual law in your state.
Here is a link to a web page that provides easy to understand language about current the law in your state:
However, the gun laws in your state include draconian restrictions that make it nearly impossible to use a hand gun to protect you or your family during a home invasion.
"According to the California Attorney General, the safest way to store a gun is with a state-approved firearm safety device and by keeping the weapon in a locked container. Owners should also ensure that the firearm is not loaded. Finally, people should store their guns and ammunition for these guns in different locations."
It's 0'dark thirty and two thugs crash through your bedroom door.
You and your family would be dead before you could even begin to comply with the storage requirements.
A firearm that is not loaded is less dangerous than a brick. And thus while you may not go to jail for life, you might still run afoul of your state's "sensible" gun laws.
It sounded strange to me that you could not defend your home but I believed it because it was after all California which is probably the bluest state in the Union, the home of fruits, nuts and flakes.
Move to Texas. We have castle laws. You shoot an intruder here in Texas, the police drag the body out and shake your hand for ridding the streets of another scumbag. It has always puzzled me how the left love criminals and ignores the victims. I've seen videos of left-wing nut cases outside of a prison in tears because a murderer is going to be executed. I have never seen a lefty consoling the murdered victims' family. Remember a few years back in San Francisco when an undocumented Democrat shot and killed young woman who was out walking with her father? The SF jury acquitted him. I was stunned but I didn't say "unbelievable" because after all it was SF.
Thanks Lonesome and Dennis Mills. Los Angeles is what it is. I Have lived my entire life here except 10 years in San Diego. I know it much better than most. I live in a guard gated community in the hills above Beverly Hills. Our HOA has gone to unprecedented lengths to keep the community safe, but I have spoken to the deputy police chief of the entire San Fernando Valley, which our community is a part of, and his senior officers. I have spoken to senior officers in the worst part of LA, South Central LA (used to be called Watts) because I go there for a non-profit I am on the board of. I simply know enough to invest my time, energy and money in Nevada where we now have a second home. If the democrat Karen Bass is our next mayor, LA is done for the foreseeable future.
What part of Nevada is your house? If I were to move from Texas, it would be to the Tahoe part of Nevada. Most of the lake is in California. I would never buy there. California taxes are too high and the inmates are running the asylum.
Alas, I fear that you are right about the problem for certain areas of the country where self-defense is not considered a legitimate use of a gun. Perhaps that would have to be part of the package.
To be honest, I'm a little afraid of drawing too much attention to myself. I'm a participant on Quora, but I'm not a "big name," and I prefer it that way. I know too many people on that forum who have gotten actual death threats. I post a lot about Harry Potter there, and I know people in that fandom who have gotten rape threats for daring to like Snape.
Although I'm aware that most people who make threats online are just "big talkers," we've seen all too recently that some are quite willing to carry through with their threats. And law enforcement does not take these threats seriously enough, despite the fact that they clearly SHOULD.
The problem can be solved, although it will take a couple of generations. Eliminate policies that Democrats have established over the last 50+ years that are destroying families. Fatherless families are a HUGE problem, especially in urban areas.
That would help the woeful HS and college graduation rates, which would lead to natural resolution of the equity issues, and is far preferable to the ridiculous DEI programs.
you best me to it . i know 100's of gun owners they have lots of weapons , not one has ever committed a crime why should they suffer for a few insane people with short fuses and no control over their emotions ?
I live in a town where there has been no murders in 50 years. Next door is another town where the last gun homicide was 80 years ago. Yet, there are people in these communities pushing to pass ordinances banning various types of firearms, and enact red flag laws and other restrictions on lawful gun ownership.
So far, they've been voted down, in part because the town governance is afraid of the expensive lawsuits that would result, should they enact one of these dumb laws such as was passed in that town in Illinois.
The most recent murders in our town were committed with a pillow (in one case) and an electric cord (in the other). The last gun murder (still unsolved), dates to 1999.
I think that Bari Weiss is still on the liberal side of the fence, albeit slowly waking up. Someone should take her out target practicing or hunting, and maybe she'll start to be more pro-2A.
While this was a great interview, I believe it would have been even better had they discussed the third rail of gun control, that of the horrendous number of young black males who die each year from black on black gun murders.
I just pulled this factoid up from a Reuters article regarding the rise of gun deaths during 2020:
'Among African Americans, the rate was 26.6 deaths per 100,000, a 39.5% increase over 2019. For white Americans, the rate was 2.2 per 100,000.'
Do we actually have a national problem, or do we have an urban black on black murder problem? But dealing with the horrendous problem of gun murders for black male youth is too hard, and would involve lots of accusations of racism, so we tend to ignore the real progress that could be made if we isolated and concentrated on it.
I'm of the belief that the motivation for mentally ill people to carry out mass murders is the issue that needs to be dealt with more than the access to weapons, but that's just mho.
True but not the issue in this discussion. More white people shoot white people than black people shoot black people
See the data at bjs.gov
It is the opposite of what you say. 56% of all gun homicides are black-on-black.
Furthermore, 30-40% of gun homicides are unsolved, from year to year, but most of the victims are black, hence likely most of these are also b-on-b. Easily 60-70% of all gun homicides in the U.S. (10-12K/year) are black (5K to 7K per year). And the numbers are rising because of poor or no law enforcement in the ghetto neighborhoods has become the standard.
Not per capita. Per capita, way more blacks kill outside their race than any other race.
"Do we actually have a national problem, or do we have an urban black on black murder problem?"
I think the answer is obvious. But few want to say it publicly. This is one of many examples of why our politics has become so irrational. Facts are frequently off the table. Only fantasy and make-believe are allowed on many topics.
It's true. Were it not for a small number of urban centers in the US (between about five and nine) and the black victims murdered by (mainly) young black men, the US would have a violent crime and murder rate not that different from many other developed countries. Pace the far left, the problem is not mainly in the South, which is what you'd expect were it a legacy of Jim Crow and slavery. It's largely a problem in large cities outside the South, all but one (NYC) ruled by Democratic mayors and machines for decades. This is why law-abiding gun owners in the US deeply and rightly resent the way they're repeatedly demonized for a problem they have virtually no connection with.
Actually, NYC is a great example. Murders shot up to 1,000 over the years of Democrat rule. By the time the 20 years of Giuliani and Bloomberg ended, it was under. 300. Then that idiot DeBlasio and now this phony law and order guy ex cop takes over with the far left ideals and the numbers are shooting ups again. NYC is actually the proof that left wing Democrat policies kill and conservative policies save
It is true. I think my impression of the data might be a decade old. Gun violence has been slowly rising in more rural areas b/c of the opioid epidemic. That was a mostly non-violent drug epidemic, until recently. And most of the people involved are white, not black.
Yes, there are games you can play like that. It's best to view by city and metro area. The bump up in southern states is still not that big in comparison.
Jon, you are right but no matter what we say it is racist. The mainstream media is no help when them amplify white shoots black news just to show they are woke...IT is sad to see so many inner city people killed by their neighbors. How to stop it? One idea: If you are 17 or 18 and not in school or working full-time then you must serve 2 yrs in the military or Dept of Natural Resources teams. No matter your color. 2 years of learning about team work, trust, other races, and more. Ends with 2 years of free college or advanced military/Air Force/navy position. Get the streets cleared of the young people and start our future leaders out on the right foot. Call them USA 1st TEAM Members ... Get on the team and avoid laying on the sidewalk
Do some judges still give criminals the right to do military service in lieu of jail, or was that ruled unconstitutional?
In my experience it is the military that no longer embraces that. The services won't commit with pending charges and the prosecutor's won't commit without a guarantee of enlistment.
No idea, but they ought to give them a chance if it is a misdeamor. Free food, free insurance, and much more. My son is a Major in the Army and he has seen some rough kids become true leaders in his units.
3 words: STOP and FRISK
The crazy woke world we live in, recently corrupted by Black Lives Matter’s villainizing the police — the only group standing between homicidal thugs and innocent people in dangerous neighborhoods, has made this proven successful tactic illegal.
Stop and frisk works. If shootings were happening in Chinatown, with gangs of Asians killing each other and innocent people getting hit in the crossfire, would there be the same reaction against police stopping and frisking young Asian men? I don’t think so.
Stop and frisk is immoral, and a gross violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, because it is a policy of presuming that any given young, black man is a criminal and then searching him without cause. Mayor Bloomberg essentially said as much in 2015: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/leaked-audio-bloomberg-aspen-institute-racial-profiling-stop-and-frisk-policing.html
Not doing stop and frisk is immoral. Ask the innocent people living in these crime ridden neighborhoods how they feel about it. If the crime is nearly all being committed in black neighborhoods by black thugs against black people, who should the police stop and frisk — white people or Asian people in other neighborhoods where there is no crime? It’s such a ludicrous argument. And the only people losing out are innocent black people.
Young Asian men? Try this mental exercise with white males. Imagine that Chicago had almost entirely white guys killing each other, and sometimes innocent bystanders. Mayor Lightfoot would be advocating the most Draconian, tough on crime policies EVER...because we have to protect our community right?
Indeed. Our Congress's incompetency in choosing political expediency over a balanced justice vs. mercy solution to young male homicidal violence is endlessly frustrating. Adult men's refusal to life coach and discipline young men is a root problem.
Pareto's function applies, of course. The sum of the number of gun-involved assaults will be caused by the square root of their sources, be it single black males (7% of the population), in several Zip Codes, by a few types of weapons -- and so on. Single parent homes. Uninvolved fathers. All of these rationally calculated causes are, unfortunately, beyond the reach of the woke blue city governments.
The real problem is the social programs that intentionally trap people in awful situations so that they can be dependent upon their political massahs who want nothing to improve. They stole anger and division - it’s like political fentanyl. And they strike out. The miasma that results from liberal programs is destructive. And most violence is not between unknown people. It’s between people you know or live in your neighborhood. The left doesn’t want their clients to improve their lives. The thing they fear most is an educated black man who is married with children and who actually lives at home. That’s their death nell
I've read an evaluation of the statistics that suggests that if we remove the gun murders that occur as a result of black-on-black (often gang violence) from the total before calculating the per capita rate and comparing that rate to other countries, our ranking drops from very a very high number to a very low number.
But as you say, we can't talk about that, let alone do anything about it, because that would be "racist."
Here's a data analysis that would be interesting:
Per capita murder rate by state vs racial demographics per state
I've not conducted such an analysis, but I theorize that states with the most Euro-origin population would have the same murder rate as EU countries. Guns are not the relevant variable. Such data analysis would surely be considered verboten and "racist" though.
The racial connection is unavoidable to some degree, but there are many African Americans that live in non urban dystopias whose misuse of firearms rate is, I would wager, about the same as that of whites. Skin color isn’t the determining characteristic, culture is. Many here have touched on some of those cultural issues: no dad at home, drugs, poor and unsafe education, a culture of dependency, etc. The fault lies with Democratic initiatives and politics, mostly, beginning with the Great Society initiatives of the 60’s. As horrible as slavery was (and is today), it would not surprise me if more people died because of this government initiated cultural degradation than during the history of U.S. slavery.
what about Jim Crow laws. Interesting number in excess of 90% of people living in Nita housing in NYC work and are not on public assistance. Where would New York get all the low level employees if there was no place for them to live. For the record they pay 30% of their pre tax income for rent and are evicted if they don't pay. That does't not sound like a breeding ground for "welfare Moms" like you suggest
Bob S
I agree that it's not racial, but it's the closest proxy to culture that we can effectively measure. I did look briefly. #1 and #2 US states by murder rate per capita are MS and AL. #1 and #2 states by % black population are MS and AL. Why can't we talk about this? If white majority states had the highest murder rates per capita we would absolutely be talking about it!
Larry Elder and Candace Owens talk about this as well as other Black conservatives. They are censored by the left-wing media because the Left needs to keep Black people in victimhood because they are their base voters. If you haven't read/listen to Candace Owen's book Blackout you should check it out. She outlines when our government made this diabolical shift to further enslave Black people without them realizing it. Under the leadership of arguably the most racist president Lyndon B Johnson who famously said that his welfare policies would have Black people voting Democrat for the rest of their lives. This was the beginning of using Black people as political pawns. Extremely upsetting and frustrating that we can't break out of this cycle that he created. We are moving in the right direction but the left is always there to thwart. Evil evil people.
Interestingly, similar data analysis shows that statistics on Americans of Nordic ancestry (and the communities in which they are the majority) tend to line up very closely with the statistics from Nordic countries. It's as if culturally ingrained values MATTER.
You do need to know about the culture to be influenced by it. My husband was adopted. He didn't even know(other than by strong Norwegian physical similarities) about the large amount of Norwegian dna he got from his bio father/mother till he and our son did dna test from Ancestry when my son was 16 and interested about the genetics from the bio lines.
I, too, am adopted. But I have a lot of traits and preferences that come from my bio parents. For example, I've always loved sci-fi--a common trait in my birthfather's family--despite the fact that no one in my extended adoptive family does.
Well yes that makes sense. We actually connected to my husband's birth father's family. Apparently the bizzare morning thing he does making up silly songs to wake our son up in the morning (since he was a tiny boy, he's 18 now, the son that is. I'm worried on who his new target will be with our son off to college. ;)) is something his birth father did.
I wonder if Clarence (as in Thomas) would agree with you. He is as pro 2nd Amendment as everybody here, yet he ain't from Norway, nor Denmark..
I wasn't suggesting that Nordic culture is more pro-gun than any other. Indeed, I wasn't even thinking of the gun aspect at all. I was bringing up another clear indicator of the fact that values (and the behaviors that arise from them) are connected to culture.
I think Clarence Thomas would agree strongly that values are connected to culture. Like most black conservatives, he recognizes that the fatherlessness that LBJ's War on Poverty created for too many black Americans has damaged black culture in horrifying ways.
And he gets called "Uncle Tom" for that.
Values are connected to culture, you're right. But what culture do you mean? Black culture? (As I thought you meant). Or gang culture?
If you mean fatherless children ending up in gangs for affirmation I agree with you. But that is not race specific.
I dunno the facts of the matter. But I *suspect* that of all the gangs in America, the overwhelming percentage are in black neighborhoods. Basing that on the murder rate.
No, not race *specific.*
True enough..when looked through that lens.
But there are tons of gangs in middle school and high school (in affluent areas), and a lot of them are lilly white. There's gang culture online. They may not be shooting at each other on the streets, but it's psychologically deadly nonetheless to victims.
I guess I'm only thinking of the murderous kind-a gangs. Didn't know there were so many.
There are many gangs of many colors. But as you say, the effects of the violence seem to hit hardest in black neighborhoods.
Lefties care nothing about minority deaths, they want as many of them dead as possible. That is why they worship Maggie and put a majority of their death factories in minority neighborhoods!
It’s just a natural by product of their overall strategy. Identity politics requires opposition and the left controlled MSM stokes it. They want people to be dependent upon government and politicians. When I grew up in the projects, no one - NO ONE - would ever rat out on the drug dealers. That was their “source” - they needed what they were addicted to. Liberals are the drug dealers of politics and urban blacks are disproportionately addicted to the dependency of government. So…hand out freebies, continue to hand out more and demonize those who (a) have more then you (because they work) and (b) see the game for what it is an oppose you.
Then open the border and see if you can add more of them.
Love your comment just one question how did we vote Brandon in this is so 20th century we left it all behind in 2016 why would we go back to this way of life for Americans it’s very strange
I really don’t think we did. I’m not one who is married to the thought that the vote count was manipulated via machines and double counting. Bit, I am quite certain that cheating went on enough regarding the ballots submitted for counting to turn the election. Lots of nursing home patient ballots filled out by others, ditto the door knockers who intimidated people to turn over the ballots, the collection of ballots,for,people on the rolls but no longer resident or perhaps even alive. Lots of ballots that were ruined bit saved in key precincts. Lots of ballots undated that arrived after Election Day. Courts changing the rules not before, not after, but in the midst of elections.
It didn’t take a whole lot of votes to flip a few states and make a difference.
Read a book called Rigged by Molly Hemingway there was no chain of custody on ballot boxes there was Zuckbucks to tune of $430 million its a lot of money to put into a national election on one side only it was a manipulation a gaslight of our system however it’s not the first time it had been going on since the beginning of the 20th century with the advent of Covid it was a perfect storm for the Democrats it appears now they think they have another perfect storm in 1/6 we not far from Nov let’s see what they can conjure up now Rick
They can’t address that question. The left intentionally herds blacks into violent communities and fills their heads with messages of no opportunity, other people are the reason why you are a victim and they turn to drugs and their anger boils over. They’ve destroyed the nuclear family unit intentionally. It’s part of their quest for power and blacks are just useful tools to them.
It’s strange I don’t think Bari has to much support from the usual crowd on this platform - these comments seem generally a pretty good judge of where people will be voting in the midterms and I don’t think it’s going to be The Democrats
Its only an indication of where they will be voting. Lets not live in any bubble not even Bari's bubble
Jon, T. Reid, and Madjack all point to the actual problem which has nothing to do with "too many guns" and everything to do with social breakdown in the black urban communities, and lack of care for the mentally ill.
Unfortunately, some 30-40% of gun murders every year are unsolved, yet most of the victims are black, so clearly the black homicide participation is likely much higher than 53% (or 56% or whatever number for a given year, based on bjs.gov statistics). Let us say, 60% or 65%.
What's more, it's certainly not all black males who commit murder, but a small fraction thereof, age 16-39, in urban ghetto neighborhoods. Let us say, 10% of the black male population, or 0.6% of the U.S. population.
That's less than 1% of the country causing 60% or more of all the gun homicides. If you could somehow clamp down on this violent population, throw all the gang leaders in prison, intervene in at-risk families and incentivize more economic development in the cities thru lower taxes & regs... and of course better policing... then our gun murder rates would drop down to the level of Canada and Western Europe, or even lower. We would not even be having a debate on gun control, because relatively speaking, it would simply not be such a significant problem.
Trump did try, with his (and Sen. Tim Scott's) opportunity zones initiative, along with his "back the blue" rhetoric. One can hardly imagine a better approach. Unfortunately, the Democrats pulled him down from power, shut down all these initiatives, and have pushed the country ever further into anarchy and urban decay.
Yip this comment is spot
Consider the economic incentives of black markets. Violence in black markets is used routinely used to settle disputes and expand market share. This violent incentive created gangs and long standing drug war has encompassed multiple generations. Our drug policies are partly to blame for the culture of violence within these communities. To date we have militarized our police, spent >1 trillion and the addiction rate remains flat from 1980. We could lock up every potential murder based on the profile stated above and the murders will not stop because the incentives are still there.
Giuliani proved that smart policing in partnership with an enlightened city governance could reduce the problem.
Unfortunately, he was the exception. The woke racist fools running most of America's big cities are simply exacerbating the problems.
Of course, substance abuse is a huge problem. But there are ways to attack the gang violence and at least reduce the shootings. There are only so many men out there willing to commit murder. Lock up enough of them, and the problem starts to diminish.
Yes. Substance abuse in and of itself does not drive murders. San Francisco is so addicted that city sidewalks are littered with addicts mainlining themselves toward the grave. But murders there are low. They don't have the drug-related gang violence of other cities.
I believe it was Bill Barr who stated that most violent crime in cities is committed by a relatively small group of individuals that cycle through the system on a regular basis until they are removed from the streets when locked up for an extended length of time or die.
T247...via Mayor Gugliami style
Accurate. Vermont allows license-free open and concealed carry of firearms. It has a Western Europe level of murder per capita. Chicago specifically, and Illinois in general, has a strict licensing scheme and areas of Chicago have per capita murder rates exceeding Brazil and South Africa.
Vermont's neighbor Maine, a state that is larger than all the other New England states has for many decades allowed open carry, and within recent times has made concealed carry legal for most of its citizens.
Folks in Maine can even carry a loaded hand gun in their car, or walk into a private business with a firearm (including restaurants and bars) if the owners allow it.
I spent most of my working life in Maine and did the paper work to get a concealed weapon permit. But within a few years, the Maine legislator made my permit redundant.
My wife and I now live in a rural area of north central Florida.
Within a few months of moving to Florida I got a concealed carry permit, but it also is now mostly redundant when I visit my friends up in Maine.
Seems I can never get a break from inconsistent firearm laws 😁
Chicago's numbers aren't nearly that bad. St. Louis and New Orleans, however, are. A couple neighborhoods in St. Louis are one of the murder capitals of the world all by themselves.
Coleman Hughes would be an excellent addition to this round table. He has compiled an extraordinary amount of evidence around race relations and gun violence and although he skews towards academia-speak he is thoughtful, smart, and consistently debunks the common media narratives that leave out half of the very pertinent information.
Yep. heyjackass.com tells a story nobody wants to talk about in ChiTown.
Wow. I can't imagine there's a more glaring problem in our country today that is totally ignored by both parties.
While I am an Independent I have to say it's not ignored by Republicans so much as they are shouted down as racist the minute they talk about the real source of the issue. It's cultural of course but the Democrats have made gang banging a strictly black cultural phenomenon and somehow made pointing this out, rather than participating in it, the racist thing. They are really good at BS PR.
I fully agree with you on this. This is a stark and really important point, which I came across in a video by Eric July, a libertarian YouTube commentator whose channel is YoungRippa59, in response to the BLM movement during the Floyd riots. Here's what he said at about 23 minutes in:
"When I was banging, you know, getting in all these fights and stuff like that, doing things that . . . had me on the path to being dead or in jail — just like a lot of the people I grew up with — never once was I accused of not being black, or being “white-washed,” “Uncle Tom” . . . I never was accused of that. Never once was I accused. It wasn’t until I dropped what I was as a leftist, from a political side of things, stopped begging for acceptance and all that sort of loser stuff — that’s when they said that.
"So what does that say? What does that say? Because I choose not to align myself with that, what does that say? I could go beat up, kill — all that — other black people, terrorize, steal from other black people, and they feel like that’s, that’s what it is to be black.
"That in itself shows you it’s a cultural problem. That they don’t want to address because it would require responsibility. And when I say they don’t want to address it I’m not saying there aren’t people who aren’t addressing it, I’m saying that when they look at all of these different things, they treat people like there’s nothing they can do to better their own situations. It’s “I’m the victim”. . . they act as if everything is not their fault. They’re in their situation — and I’m not saying there aren’t people that are actually victims of things — but to sit here, and I’m not willing to do that, sit here and pretend like all black people are innocent, just getting the short end of the stick due to “oppression,” or the history, the legacy of slavery? Like, C’mon dog! No. Lotta y’all in positions you got exactly what you deserve and it’s what you doing, what the folks within your community are doing. But that again requires responsibility. It requires agency." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JocOjvPizzY)
Understanding the cultural problem that has been fostered within urban black communities, and how it breeds a victimhood mindset that results in societal alienation and violence, is key to reducing gun deaths in the U.S....and a host of other problems. If anything, it's racist to refuse to have that honest conversation.
I can only imagine the angst that would accompany a truly clear eyed look into the statistics of gun violence by our populace. It's far easier to blame the guns than formulate an actual plan to reduce the violence. Keep in mind that the race baiters and hustlers making money off the division have no intention of solving the problem. That would eliminate the need for them.
I think the southern border crisis is an example.
For the 2020 FBI crime states, 53% of US murders where the race of the offender was known were committed by blacks. Who comprise 13% of the US population (and most of these are committed by males, so 6.5% of the US population). This is a VASTLY disproportionate murder rate per capita. It is never spoken of. A problem not acknowledged cannot be solved.
“A problem not acknowledged cannot be solved”
Precisely. I’ve read that up to HALF of all gun deaths are suicides. No discussion about that by the panelists though. Not to be outdone, Bari asserts that, “As of 2020, the leading cause of death among children is guns” but neglects to mention that 18-year-old “child” gang bangers are included in that statistic and when it’s removed, the REAL leading cause of death among children is cars. How many gun offenders have been released with little more than a slap on the wrist? How many of them are repeat offenders? Where are the actual statistics? It seems the only statistics we get are phony, like the one peddled by Bari. I haven’t even touched on the malleable definition of “mass shootings” the gun grabbers employ to dupe the public.
It’s difficult to take seriously any discussion of gun violence when neither of the participating twits even bother to discuss what does work. I’m old enough to remember the rampant gun violence in New York City back in the 70s and 80s. When Giuliani implemented his “stop and frisk” policy, gun violence almost disappeared. Success be damned, the leftist gun grabbers shrieked for years that the policy was racist until finally it was abandoned with predictable results. The statistics are available but their exclusion from the discussion speaks volumes about the real goal, eliminating guns from law abiding citizens while letting armed criminals roam the streets until they get their way.
To top it all off, we get to hear Rajiv Sethi, an Indian immigrant patronizingly chastise we native born Americans for the “widespread belief that there's a sacred right to bear arms that's enshrined in our most cherished document through the Second Amendment” Someone should point out to him that the Second Amendment together with the rest of our cherished Constitution is what separates us from the cesspool he emigrated from.
More than half, I believe: suicides account for two-thirds of gun deaths, and murders the other third, with a tiny fraction left over for accidents and justifiable homicides.
Stop and frisk WAS racist, in that NYPD stopped and frisked black and brown people almost exclusively. They also found 99 percent of those stopped and frisked had no guns on them. I'd argue that stop and frisk didn't cause the plunge in homicides in New York City, it was coincidental. Murders, gun or not, rise and fall independent of most anything we think of as "the cure."
Agree that "child" in this case is disturbingly flawed. Take out the numbers of dead who belonged to gangs, and got caught up in that warfare, to get a more accurate number.
Rajiv Sethi is an idiot for having said that. I don't believe it's a "sacred" right as in religious, but it's as cherished a right (as you said) as anything else in the Constitution and thus worth defending to the max.
“I'd argue that stop and frisk didn't cause the plunge in homicides in New York City, it was coincidental”
Then, by your logic the staggering increase in homicides once stop and frisk was dropped is also coincidental. I’m no statistician but I’d say the probability of both being true is about nil. As someone who has been wrongfully stopped by police, I appreciate that abuses occur, but please, lets get over the racist trope. Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t most gun crimes committed by black and brown people? Frankly I find the whole argument against stop and frisk disingenuous when you consider that every time we board a flight we’re treated like would be terrorists by the TSA. We're scanned , frisked and have our belongings rummaged through yet 99.999…% of the time there is no gun, no explosive or threat of any kind. I'd argue that the absence of any hijackings since 9/11 can much more plausibly be considered coincidental.
If stop and frisk was racist, that was because the facts were (and are) racist.
People don't claim stop-and-frisk was racist because of the outcome of more young black men getting arrested for gun crimes, but because the policy was to presume that any given young black man was a criminal and search him without cause. Mayor Bloomberg was notoriously recorded saying essentially that (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/leaked-audio-bloomberg-aspen-institute-racial-profiling-stop-and-frisk-policing.html). It was immoral, and a gross violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Morality is a tricky thing. On the one hand you have a young black man briefly detained by police, then being sent on his way. On the other hand you have predominately black inner-city neighborhoods being ravaged by gang-related gun violence. It's not a tough call, really.
Best comment so far!
"Who comprise 13% of the US population (and most of these are committed by males, so 6.5% of the US population)."
Yes, and considering that the vast majority of black people, including black males, are NOT crminals the number of black people committing the majority of crimes is really something more like 1-2%. There is a very small, incredibly violent group of gang bangersw commiting most of the gun violence in this country. Remove them and we are safer than Denmark when it comes to gun homicide stats.
You do realize you are a racist for pointing out the truth. It is burden you will have to bear. The left hates reality. It makes them uncomfortable.
Not a problem, Polecat. Golfer has a large assortment of weapons in his garage, ranging from a lob wedge all the way up to 3 iron.
And from 150 yards in he might even keep a deranged left of center crowd from ever getting closer than 50 yards. Golf balls are very hard 😁
I've posted this before but I think it is relevant: Every time there is a mass shooting like Sandy Hook or Columbine High School there is an outcry from the left to confiscate guns from law abiding citizens. In the majority of these shooting these victims are white and the nuts who shoot them are white. There is no doubt that these shootings are tragic and horrible.
However every week in the inner cities far more black people are murdered by black armed thugs than are these mass shootings. Yet I don’t hear outrage from the Democrats, who claim to be the party defending women and minorities,. To be fair you don’t hear it from the Republicans either. In fact the only thing you hear about these outrageous murders from either party is the sound of crickets chirping.
The point I am making is you never hear from the minority support party any outrage about the slaughter in black communities but you sure do hear it when there is a mass shooting in the white community.
Isn’t that one of the definitions of racism, outrage about white deaths but silent about black deaths?
Years ago after Sandy Hook Diane Feinstein called for the confiscation of all guns. Of course she meant confiscation of law abiding citizens guns. Not one person in the media or from the right asked Diane how she proposed to get the guns out of the hands of the gangs that have been terrorizing black communities for decades.
According to FBI statistics, in 2020 at least 9,713 blacks were murdered. In the past 30years tens of thousands of blacks were murdered in the inner city. Where is the outrage? Isn’t it racist to ignore these murders? Where is BLM, Antifa and the woke people when they are needed the most. More importantly, where are the Democrats who claim to be the party of the minorities? They control the House and the Senate. Why aren’t they screaming to stop these murders. Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Oh, wait a minute! They make their livings off the misery of black people.
Yes. It is racist to ignore black-on-black murders, because the innocent people in those neighborhoods need help stemming the bloodshed. Like all of us, they want to be left in peace to live their lives and not have to throw their babies in the bathtub when gang gunfire breaks out.
Mass shootings in schools and workplaces seems to be a white phenomenon, and nobody has any qualms about saying so. Street murders by gun is largely (though not exclusively) a black phenomenon. That needs to be equally emphasized, because pretending otherwise does not help Americans of any color.
"Mass shootings in schools and workplaces seems to be a white phenomenon." Regardless of how the Media spins it, mass shootings seem to be becoming less exclusive to white people. The NYC subway shooter was black, as was the Tulsa hospital shooter. The Uvalde shooter was hispanic.
Workplace shootings at Hartford Distributors in Connecticut, at Rite Aid Distribution Center in Maryland, Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, and at the Washington Navy Yard were committed by black shooters. Workplace shootings at Fort Hood and at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California were committed by Muslim Arabs (as was the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Florida and the grocery store shooting in Boulder, Colorado). A workplace shooting at the UPS facility in San Francisco was committed by a Thai man. The school shooting at Virginia Tech was committed by a South Korean.
So the Media's insistence that mass shootings are a white phenomenon is disingenuous.
Not fair, Celia. You dug up the research.
Well, I saw a statistic that about 22% of mass shootings were committed by blacks (higher than their population percentage), but I didn't trust it because of the tendency to lump gang violence in with mass shootings (to make it look like there are more than there actually are).
So I decided to look at *actual* mass shootings, the way most of us understand the term: a shooter intentionally firing at multiple people in a single location for reasons that are unrelated to any other criminal behavior (e.g., drug deal gone wrong, gang warfare, etc.).
I also excluded "assassination"-style shooters, who go around killing targets at various locations over a period of time. If you add in those, you have the D.C. area pair and the L.A. shooter as notable black examples.
Wonderful comment!!!
Though eminently well-documented, this is not widely understood. Cops are doing their job (mostly) and making arrests. Prosecutors / DA's need to prosecute every violent crime, every gun law violation (and any sort of malfeasance one could possible do with a gun is already a crime). I wonder why big money leftists have taken such an interest in DA's (like the one in NYC and the recently removed one in San Francisco) who are soft on crime? They WANT chaos, it aids their march towards power.
T R...seems to be the sick part...buttered-up thru the Media. To be forthright, the media must ease-up on the " you have not advanced because of Whitey" proclivity. More MLK , Sen Scott and Walker. Less of the substance from the assembly fluttering "Racist".
It adds to their march towards Socialism.
Exactly. Prosecutors have, for decades now, been in the habit of dropping gun charges and any sentencing enhancement for using a gun to commit a crime. As a result, those who have demonstrated the propensity to shoot or threaten to shoot people end up back on the streets in a short time, instead of being locked up for a very long time.
I would be in favor of INTENSE sentencing enhancement for the use of a gun to commit a crime; say, for example, an automatic ten-year enhancement, on top of whatever penalty they get for the crime they committed. If the gun criminals were locked up for long periods, there would be fewer of them on the street.
But that can't happen for the same reason that prosecutors end up dropping gun charges: the results, in practice, appear to be too "racist."
You're absolutely right! Do politicians and the academe think these young black men care about the second amendment; the NRA? Those arguments are a distraction from the real issues that (sshhh!) can not be discussed. We also have the disenfranchised white middle class overly medicated kids with mental disorders raised by parents and, in many cases, grandparents. These folks live in fear and denial and suddenly everyone is shocked when disaster strikes. It brings me very little solace to compare our stats with that of El Salvador and Guatemala.
It should be, if you are convicted of a crime involving a gun, life without parole.
I agree completely. Let out all the people who are locked up for merely possessing drugs (our utterly failed "War on Drugs" and put the violent criminals in there instead.
Back a few decades, firearm “enhancements” were added to sentencing, such that in my state the commission of a felony while armed added 5 years without possibility of “good time” in prison. The point was to deter gun usage. But the pendulum has swung so far that criminals using guns aren’t even being prosecuted in some places. Anyone who supports such policies, and votes for such politicians, has blood on his/her hands.
Precisely. Prosecutors won't charge people with gun crimes, because the resulting sentencing enhancements look "racist" when applied.
Agreed!
Spot on. So, here we are. Most murders are happening in Democrat-run urban areas. These policies won't change.
Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the land and that hasn't stopped the murders. Of course, it doesn't help having an idiot for a mayor.
The policies will NEVER change as long as those areas are run by Democrats. I'm not even convinced that Republicans have the cujones to make the necessary changes, should they somehow be elected in those cities. We need LEADERSHIP, and there is none to be found.
The gun-grabbing Dems have students' blood on their hands by never allowing or encouraging serious protection at our schools just as they protect themselves with armed, trained personnel and sophisticated entry doors & procedures.
The interviewee David French does not see any reason to worry about tyranny in America. (If this is the well-known "conservative" fellow, he appears to spend most of his recent writings worrying about MAGA people.) I would have agreed with him maybe until 2008, when our president elect said he would "fundamentally transform America." The results are in and America is fundamentally transformed and it is scary as hell for non-criminals and non-woke.
I'm with Celia with one exception. No life if committing a crime with a gun. Here in Los Angeles if I shot an intruder in my bedroom, I'd be in jail for life. Otherwise, there is a great deal of frankness on this issue with Celia and so many others.
Your statement about wounding or killing an intruder in your bedroom, and thus facing prison for the rest of your life, Dennies, may be true in other states, or was true years ago in California.
One problem with the internet is that most of us have passed on urban legends or propaganda that we may think are facts.
I also thought the firearm laws in California made it a crime for citizens use a gun in a self defense or the Castle law situation.
But the long ago newspaper reporter that still occupies a part of my rapidly aging brain twitched and forced me to examine the actual law in your state.
Here is a link to a web page that provides easy to understand language about current the law in your state:
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/legal-defenses/self-defense/
However, the gun laws in your state include draconian restrictions that make it nearly impossible to use a hand gun to protect you or your family during a home invasion.
"According to the California Attorney General, the safest way to store a gun is with a state-approved firearm safety device and by keeping the weapon in a locked container. Owners should also ensure that the firearm is not loaded. Finally, people should store their guns and ammunition for these guns in different locations."
It's 0'dark thirty and two thugs crash through your bedroom door.
You and your family would be dead before you could even begin to comply with the storage requirements.
A firearm that is not loaded is less dangerous than a brick. And thus while you may not go to jail for life, you might still run afoul of your state's "sensible" gun laws.
It sounded strange to me that you could not defend your home but I believed it because it was after all California which is probably the bluest state in the Union, the home of fruits, nuts and flakes.
It is strange, LonesomePolecat, because California does allow deadly force when you fear for your life or believe you will be seriously injured.
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/legal-defenses/self-defense/
Move to Texas. We have castle laws. You shoot an intruder here in Texas, the police drag the body out and shake your hand for ridding the streets of another scumbag. It has always puzzled me how the left love criminals and ignores the victims. I've seen videos of left-wing nut cases outside of a prison in tears because a murderer is going to be executed. I have never seen a lefty consoling the murdered victims' family. Remember a few years back in San Francisco when an undocumented Democrat shot and killed young woman who was out walking with her father? The SF jury acquitted him. I was stunned but I didn't say "unbelievable" because after all it was SF.
Thanks Lonesome and Dennis Mills. Los Angeles is what it is. I Have lived my entire life here except 10 years in San Diego. I know it much better than most. I live in a guard gated community in the hills above Beverly Hills. Our HOA has gone to unprecedented lengths to keep the community safe, but I have spoken to the deputy police chief of the entire San Fernando Valley, which our community is a part of, and his senior officers. I have spoken to senior officers in the worst part of LA, South Central LA (used to be called Watts) because I go there for a non-profit I am on the board of. I simply know enough to invest my time, energy and money in Nevada where we now have a second home. If the democrat Karen Bass is our next mayor, LA is done for the foreseeable future.
What part of Nevada is your house? If I were to move from Texas, it would be to the Tahoe part of Nevada. Most of the lake is in California. I would never buy there. California taxes are too high and the inmates are running the asylum.
Alas, I fear that you are right about the problem for certain areas of the country where self-defense is not considered a legitimate use of a gun. Perhaps that would have to be part of the package.
Yeah Celia, when?
To be honest, I'm a little afraid of drawing too much attention to myself. I'm a participant on Quora, but I'm not a "big name," and I prefer it that way. I know too many people on that forum who have gotten actual death threats. I post a lot about Harry Potter there, and I know people in that fandom who have gotten rape threats for daring to like Snape.
Although I'm aware that most people who make threats online are just "big talkers," we've seen all too recently that some are quite willing to carry through with their threats. And law enforcement does not take these threats seriously enough, despite the fact that they clearly SHOULD.
Yes. Celia is one of the most sensible people here.
*blushes* Thank you!
TY, hadn't thought of it that way. Probably true, or at least part of the truth.
The problem can be solved, although it will take a couple of generations. Eliminate policies that Democrats have established over the last 50+ years that are destroying families. Fatherless families are a HUGE problem, especially in urban areas.
Neil...so right, but to point to the truth, they'd be Racist.
We need brutal honesty and brave people willing to be called names as a result. Courage is contagious. ✌️💜🙏🇺🇸
That would help the woeful HS and college graduation rates, which would lead to natural resolution of the equity issues, and is far preferable to the ridiculous DEI programs.
Yes we have a black violence problem and a mental health problem.
you best me to it . i know 100's of gun owners they have lots of weapons , not one has ever committed a crime why should they suffer for a few insane people with short fuses and no control over their emotions ?
I live in a town where there has been no murders in 50 years. Next door is another town where the last gun homicide was 80 years ago. Yet, there are people in these communities pushing to pass ordinances banning various types of firearms, and enact red flag laws and other restrictions on lawful gun ownership.
So far, they've been voted down, in part because the town governance is afraid of the expensive lawsuits that would result, should they enact one of these dumb laws such as was passed in that town in Illinois.
The most recent murders in our town were committed with a pillow (in one case) and an electric cord (in the other). The last gun murder (still unsolved), dates to 1999.
Clearly you need pillow control including perhaps a Red Flag law to take pillows out of the hands of potentially dangerous users.
In both cases, a 20-something male murdered his own mother. No sign of a father in the picture in either case.
We do need courageous people willing to be the first to say the unpopular truth. Courage is contagious. ✌️💜🙏🇺🇸
With a special focus on the explosion in homicides in 2020.
I don’t think she is scared she left the Ny Times because her voice was shut out
I think that Bari Weiss is still on the liberal side of the fence, albeit slowly waking up. Someone should take her out target practicing or hunting, and maybe she'll start to be more pro-2A.