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#WearOrange Is the New Abandonment of Black Communities
Thursday was Gun Violence Awareness Day, and its proponents encouraged people to #WearOrange as a show of support for new gun control legislation. What legislation, they don’t say. They take it as given, though, that guns are the problem. That reducing gun ownership is the way to reduce gun deaths.
Violence isn’t morally worse when committed with a firearm; murder is just as much an outrage and tragedy, regardless of the weapon used. But, for the sake of argument, consider the gun-control premise that “gun violence” is a meaningful distinction as we investigate some facts. There are about 32,000 firearm-related deaths in the United States each year (the total has been declining), of which approximately 21,000 are suicides and 11,000 homicides. But there is more to the story: American homicide and suicide rates differ greatly by race and sex. Among whites, 77 percent of gun deaths are suicides; among African Americans, 82% of gun deaths are homicides. If my math is right, black men are nine times more likely to be the victim of gun-related homicide than white men, or women of any race.
And we know some things about these homicides. First, most of them are intraracial. According to DOJ statistics from 1980-2008, 84 percent of white homicide victims were murdered by whites, and 93 percent of black victims were murdered by blacks. Second, there are racial disparities in the circumstances of homicides. For example, blacks constitute over 60% of drug-related homicide victims and nearly two-thirds of perpetrators. And third, much of the violence is concentrated in our large urban centers. Drug-related and gang-related killings are overwhelmingly urban phenomena, and guns are used disproportionately in gang-related homicides (see DOJ link above).
It’s difficult to find current data on gun-related homicide rates by city. However, as of 2006-07, New Orleans (60.2 percent black in 2010) had 62 gun-related homicides per 100,000 residents, 15 times the overall US rate of just over 4 murders per 100,000. Detroit (83 percent black), had 36. Baltimore (64 percent black), 30. Oakland (28 percent black), 27. Newark (52 percent black), 25. St. Louis (49 black), 24.1. Richmond (51 percent black), 23. Washington, DC (50 percent black), 19.
A public official who wants to reduce gun violence, and save black lives, should know where to start: The lawlessness in our inner cities. That’s where the gun crime is, that’s where the victims are.
But Obama’s Department of Justice has not made enforcement a priority. According to statistics compiled by the National Rifle Association, federal gun crime prosecutions have fallen 40 percent under his presidency (well outpacing the overall decline in gun crime); this trend has even been acknowledged by Mother Jones. Or consider that, while gun control advocates blame the carnage in Chicago on straw purchases in states with looser gun laws, prosecution of straw purchasers is exceedingly rare. BATFE officials admit that “charging straw buyers falls towards the bottom of federal prosecutors’ priority lists”.
Indeed, instead of stepping-up enforcement, Obama’s DoJ has racialized what should be individual justice, using the spurious logic of “disparate impact.” In the wake of organized mob violence in Ferguson and Baltimore, the DoJ has elected to scrutinize police departments that deploy resources in predominantly black neighborhoods, and blamed racism for higher black incarceration rates. The administration has backed the end of New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy, designed to take illegal guns off the street, because blacks were searched disproportionately. As President Obama has been pursuing an initiative to grant clemency and pardons to “non-violent drug offenders,” the beneficiaries have included quite a few convicted of gun crimes.
Predictably, destigmatizing criminality has led to an increase in violent crime. But this then puts the Left in a quandry: Whom to blame? They have recast the actual perpetrators as victims of a white power structure. This leaves them in the silly position of assigning responsibility to the guns, which have no agency. Rather than do the hard work of prosecuting violent individuals, Democratic politicians — including our nation’s chief law enforcement officer — resort to cheap words. They blame the NRA and lawful gun owners, and preen about the need for unspecified new laws even as existing laws go unenforced.
Meanwhile, inner city gangs and predators kill more black victims, catching both other criminals and innocents in the crossfire. And no amount of orange clothing or hashtag activism will make them safer.
Published in Culture, Domestic Policy, Guns
There is a vague perception among people I know that mass shootings are on the rise (two people separately told me they happen “at least once a month”) and worse in the US than in other countries. Figures don’t bear this out, but MSM and social media feed the myth.
And then there is the fact that, as Heather McDonald has demonstrated, we are seeing a “Ferguson Effect”. Violent crime, while still well below historical levels, has spiked across the country this year.
I find the following video pretty interesting. There are many voices that are heard when it comes to buying votes and community organizing, but not these voices.
You won’t find these individuals on MSNBC, CNN, or any other major media outlet. Black voters are seen as objects, not as individuals that can no longer let their children go to a playground to play. Chicago and other cities have abandoned their cities to gangs. Rage Against the Machine, but not in the way you might think.
Among the books that has most affected my thinking is Gang Leader for A Day, written by a UChicago sociology grad student who embedded himself in a gang in the mid-1990s. What I found most infuriating and heartbreaking was the behavior of certain community leaders who used their positions to benefit themselves and their friends at the expense of those they ostensibly served.
It’s sad, but when you factor out the gang violence and suicides, the US gun death rates actually compare quite favorably with those of many other countries with far stricter gun control. Of course, you don’t hear that ever discussed because the media narrative loves to paint America as a violent place filled with gun-toting psychopaths. Beyond the blighted urban zones where the gangs reign supreme, American cities are really much safer than advertised.
Why, though? Why would black leaders such as Obama, Holder, Lynch, and so many big city mayors and councilmen do this to their own people? It’s been like watching a slow motion train wreck since well before Ferguson! Since Ferguson, things have sped up. The race hustling going on among progressive elites is leading to less policing and more violent crime.
Whatever we think of Democrat idiocy, these are not stupid people. They know more gun laws only affect law-abiding people. They know (gun) violence is a moral issue, not a material one. They know the chilling effect on law enforcement can only embolden criminals. So, I’m left asking myself, “Why??” And the only answer I can come up with is something wicked.
I wonder whether this might be why policymakers and politicians are so sanguine about pushing for ineffective feel-good legislative nonsolutions. They don’t live with the actual violence. The closest they come is when the victim is someone they can relate to — Gabby Giffords, say, or white children in Newtown, or a university professor.
They do not fully identify as Black/other minority. They are Progressives first and always. If a few of the little people get killed, what is it to them? Those victims are tools for the greater good of the Progressive cause.
You have to break a few eggs, I guess…
It’s like the debate over raising the minimum wage. When it was implemented, its own most fervent supporters admitted that it was both a sop to unions and a deliberate attempt to keep blacks out of the workforce by preventing them from underbidding.
In their more honest moments, they admit that this has little to do with crime, and everything to do with control. They do not want Americans to own guns.
With Progressivism, it’s not the people that matter at all. If they did, all the Socialists in the world would have, early 20th century, gone “Dear heavens this is a disaster!” and abandoned it then and there.
I agree they are not stupid, but psychology is brutal. My wise brother taught me: Faced with a difficult or complicated problem, most people comfort themselves by substituting an easy one. Then there’s a silver bullet they can hope for.
The real problem is a difficult one, in part because it requires us to acknowledge and confront evil. It requires us to accept the unfortunate reality that disparate impact may not be something we can remedy. It requires placing blame on individuals, who may include people we know and care for.
It’s much, much easier to blame “society”, “racism”, “guns”, and other abstractions.
Have to disagree on that. The people matter greatly, that’s why they’re so keen to purge all the defective ones, and enslave the rest. It’s all for the Greater Good of future humanity. You can only have a better future if you control the past and weed out the inferior types.
Son,
In fact, the BLM Ferguson protest events have caused the cops to back off covering the inner city areas. Thus, the murder rate went up in the area where black on black violence is at the max and constitutes over 90% of black deaths.
Just another day in the neighborhood.
Regards,
Jim
That was the aforementioned Ferguson Effect. Heather MacDonald writes on that in her latest book and in a recent Imprimis release.
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The People matter but individuals do not.
You would think so, but in fact it doesn’t work that way. Ask any cop about “stiches for snitches” or a “Bronx Jury”. One of the reasons so few murders in Chicago get solved is the lack of cooperation with police, despite anonymous tip lines etc.
This website is really popular for Chicago murder stats.
The only thing Prez Omega has ever done that I liked was agree to the bi-partisan effort to release non-violent drug law offenders. So he’s not totally responsible for it but at least he went along.
But the key word is non-violent. Now I learn from your post that they are not in fact non-violent, that they’ve hurt people with guns?
We have way, way, too many people in prison. I do not think prison should be used except for those who hurt other people. Property crimes: electronic manacle and restitution. People who just want to make a few hundred dollars “muling” controlled substances back and forth: maybe a fine, and use of electronic manacle till it’s paid off.
I grew up with guns, in a hunting and target-shooting family. And I believe the Founders intended that all citizens should have the right to arm themselves in order to guarantee a “free state”; that is, to resist domestic tyranny if the need arises. I like and agree with your post, SoS!
And I’m ‘ na look into this–there are so many non-violent people in prison as casualties of the misguided “war on drugs” that they should be able to release quite a great number of inmates before they get to those who employed weapons, of any kind, against people.
As you look, you are likely to discover that these are common myths. Our prisoners overwhelmingly in prison for serious crimes, not low-level drug offenses. But it serves the narrative to claim otherwise.
My impression (could be misinformed) is that that’s how things used to go in NYC before Giuliani. But once he poured officers into the high-crime areas, residents learned that the police presence was real and persistent. They began to trust that they would not be abandoned to the wolves, and cooperation improved. Even today, the city’s crime rate is far below that of other large cities.
I’m not so sure that they (progressives) are not stupid, in the sense that they understand the consequences of gun control, the minimum wage, or Obamacare. They certainly can’t see these consequences before the fact, even if just a little thought would suffice to see them, and they can’t even see these consequences after the fact.
For example, they deny that the rise in shooting deaths has anything to do with the Ferguson effect. They deny that the minimum wage leads to black youth unemployment. They deny that Obamacare isn’t working as advertised and covering everyone while making health insurance cheaper for everyone.
Whoever coined the term “disparate impact” committed a travesty against both black gunmen an their black victims. They are essentially saying that their crimes don’t count, and neither do their victims. Outrageous.
Just because they deny it doesn’t mean they don’t know it to be true, which is where the wickedness comes in.
I can think of two prominent examples: When Obama was asked in a 2008 (primary?) debate whether he would raise taxes (always “on the rich”) even though he knew the federal revenues would decrease as a result. He said he would and something about “fairness.”
Also, more recently, Jerry Brown signed a law while admitting in a public statement it would cause harm (was it minimum wage? I don’t remember the specifics).
I think SoS was getting at their motivations when he commented on their “preening” and the desire to simplify so as to offer a solution. But, it’s their tenuous relationship with the truth I find worrisome and tooconvenient to theirambition.
That’s probably true for some progressives, but my personal experience with quite a few well-educated (Ph.D. type) progressives is that they really don’t believe the world works the way conservatives know that it works, and that evidence, such as the collapse of Venezuela, doesn’t seem to effect them. They think the mainstream press is eminently fair. They are not wicked. They just have something missing in their brains.
Yes, it’s that relationship with truth. I also know many well educated liberals who are not themselves wicked. They are neither stupid nor malicious. But, they do seem blinded by their moral vanity to believe falsehoods, despite all evidence to the contrary. Call me superstitious, but that seems to be the influence of evil, if not its direct manifestation.
In the above comments, I was speaking specifically of the political elites (Obama, Holder, Lynch), though. They know the truth, but they distort it in order to gain and maintain power, no matter what the cost to the little people within their own identity group. I find that wicked, straight up.
You won’t get any arguments from me about those people.
YES! This is what drives me absolutely nuts. I’d be okay with them advocating for new gun laws, even, if they would only show the kind of concern, care, gnashing of teeth and weeping that the problem of crime in inner-city black communities actually deserves. But they don’t.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but if I was elected president, I’d say something like “I pledge to you, my fellow Americans, that within four years the murder rate among black Americans will be the same as the murder rate among white Americans.” (I’d mean it, too. The job of the government is to protect its people, and our government is doing a crappy job).
This is good—can I quote him too?
I just thought of something. This could be turned into a reporter’s debate question. “Mrs. Clinton, given that it is the first duty of government to protect its people from harm, and given that an African American male is eight times as likely to be murdered than a white male—a disparate outcome by any definition— will you make a pledge tonight that during your first term in office, you will reduce the murder rate among black Americans?” (or something like that—feel free to improve it).