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Debunking the ‘gun control is racist’ smear [View all]
Old, but well worth a read, considering.
Debunking the ‘gun control is racist’ smear
Prior to this summer, you would have had to explore the darkest corners of the gun rights movement to find anyone openly exclaiming that “gun control is racist.” This assertion—and the corollary allegation that the civil rights movement succeeded not because of disciplined nonviolence, but because African Americans were willing to take up arms against their oppressors—emanated mostly from obscure right-wing and libertarian websites like LizMichael.com or The Campaign for Liberty. The most-cited proponent was Clayton Cramer, a software engineer with a not-so-subtle agenda (that paved the way for Rand Paul), who has written that: “Racism is so intimately tied to the history of gun control in America that we should…require that the courts use the same demanding standards when reviewing the constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.”
(snip)
There’s a good reason why few African-Americans associate guns with “freedom” and “liberty.” The national U.S. homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000 people. Among blacks, it’s 20.9 per 100,000. That’s four times the national rate and seven times the white rate. In 82% of black-victim homicides in which the fatal weapon can be identified, it’s a gun. And 73% of those gun deaths are inflicted by handguns.
Charles Lane has said that, “Firearms pose threats to modern-day urban dwellers—crime, suicide, accidents—that may outweigh any self-defense they provide. Unlike 19th-century rural Americans, we can call on professional police.”
Otis McDonald might not agree, but certainly other African-Americans in his community do. Annette Holt, whose 16 year-old son was shot and killed on a Chicago school bus while shielding a fellow student from harm, called the McDonald v. Chicago decision “a slap in the face to all of us who have lost children to gun violence.”
Then there is the Chicago City Council, which voted unanimously to approve the city’s strict, post-McDonald gun laws. Robert Farago was blunt in his assessment: “Not to put too fine a point on it, Chicago’s new handgun-licensing laws are inherently racist.” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre ranted about “defiant city councils” that seek to “nullify” McDonald with regulations that are akin to “the poll tax or the literacy test.” Both men failed to mention that 20 out of the Chicago City Council’s 50 members are African-American.
Read More: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/debunking-the-gun-control-is-racist-smear/
Prior to this summer, you would have had to explore the darkest corners of the gun rights movement to find anyone openly exclaiming that “gun control is racist.” This assertion—and the corollary allegation that the civil rights movement succeeded not because of disciplined nonviolence, but because African Americans were willing to take up arms against their oppressors—emanated mostly from obscure right-wing and libertarian websites like LizMichael.com or The Campaign for Liberty. The most-cited proponent was Clayton Cramer, a software engineer with a not-so-subtle agenda (that paved the way for Rand Paul), who has written that: “Racism is so intimately tied to the history of gun control in America that we should…require that the courts use the same demanding standards when reviewing the constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.”
(snip)
There’s a good reason why few African-Americans associate guns with “freedom” and “liberty.” The national U.S. homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000 people. Among blacks, it’s 20.9 per 100,000. That’s four times the national rate and seven times the white rate. In 82% of black-victim homicides in which the fatal weapon can be identified, it’s a gun. And 73% of those gun deaths are inflicted by handguns.
Charles Lane has said that, “Firearms pose threats to modern-day urban dwellers—crime, suicide, accidents—that may outweigh any self-defense they provide. Unlike 19th-century rural Americans, we can call on professional police.”
Otis McDonald might not agree, but certainly other African-Americans in his community do. Annette Holt, whose 16 year-old son was shot and killed on a Chicago school bus while shielding a fellow student from harm, called the McDonald v. Chicago decision “a slap in the face to all of us who have lost children to gun violence.”
Then there is the Chicago City Council, which voted unanimously to approve the city’s strict, post-McDonald gun laws. Robert Farago was blunt in his assessment: “Not to put too fine a point on it, Chicago’s new handgun-licensing laws are inherently racist.” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre ranted about “defiant city councils” that seek to “nullify” McDonald with regulations that are akin to “the poll tax or the literacy test.” Both men failed to mention that 20 out of the Chicago City Council’s 50 members are African-American.
Read More: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/debunking-the-gun-control-is-racist-smear/
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