Having followed politics for the last 15 years, either as an observer or commentator, I've noticed what can only be characterized as a disturbingly racist trend relative to the gun control movement.
Modern incarnations of the movement are as old as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy - after which there was a tepid attempt to eradicate handguns from private ownership. These movements, while taking full advantage of an outraged American populace, failed to do more than ban or restrict guns in places like Washington, D.C., Chicago, Il and the town of Wilmette, IL, which had up until now, a complete ban on the possession and use of handguns by anyone except sworn law enforcement.
As the burning embers of the 1960s race riots gave way to the socioeconmic stagnation of the 1970s, the conversation of gun control was largely restricted to a few social liberal circles with nary a legislative action to punctuate it. There was no real "movement" as it were, to ban guns in any fashion, but gun crimes were raging throughout the inner cities. Gang warfare, cop killings, spree shooters - all outward symptoms of an escalating war on drugs that started under Richard Nixon. Washington, D.C., which banned handguns (and any loaded weapon in the home), fast became one of the most violent places in the United States.
Suburban America however, never took notice of any of this. To the average whitebread American family, Washington, D.C. may as well have been another planet, or at the least, on another continent, like the war torn African plains or the bullet ravaged streets of Lebanon. Crime, especially urban crime, wasn't something that was discussed in suburban America, unless it was to punctuate a joke about black Americans.
Then in 1981, something terrible happened. Another American president was shot by a determined and deranged madman. The assassination attempt of an arguably beloved American president provided not only the impetus for Sarah Brady to take over Handgun Control Inc, but spawned a series of new laws at both the state and federal level. In time, this would give way to the creation of the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.
Still, it took the high profile assassination attempt of a white American president to motivate any real change in the laws. Amazingly, gun violence was raging still in the inner cities, gangs grew even bolder with the introduction of crack cocaine and entire generations of city residents had phrases like 'drive-by' burned into their collective lexicons.
Suburbanite white America however, as it too often does, fell into a slumbering state of security. Aided by gated communities, family Therapists, Prozac and a supreme sense of superiority, gun crime was put back where it belonged - in the inner cities, among black Americans.
On April 20th, 1999, I was working as a Board Operator for an AM radio station in New Hampshire. I had my monitor tuned to the FM dial at the time when I heard the DJ stop the broadcast to tell the audience that 2 gunmen, who turned out to be Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher before turning the guns on themselves. The Columbine massacre was at the time, the Pearl Harbor of my generation and the bodies of the dead had barely grown cold before a revitalized gun control movement began to take shape.
Instantly, the country's 'gun culture' came under fire. The discussions of how many guns is too many guns began to dominate talk radio and indeed, American dinner conversations. Then, on mother's day, 2000, a hundred thousand or so mothers and other anti gun activists 'marched' on Washington, demanding still more gun laws. They cited the Columbine massacre as well as the shootings at a Jewish day care center in CA and other incidents as the reason they marched.
Yet among this crowd of mostly white, suburban 'mothers, very little outrage was paid to the decades of black youths, arguably a few generations, cut down by gunfire and gang violence. While there were a few exceptions, Mother's Day 2000 was largely a reaction to gun violence perpetrated by white kids, on white kids in those perfectly bucolic suburban settings.
Outrage towards the wholesale slaughter of minority kids in the projects, moivated by the insanity of the illicit drug trade? Not so much. That was again, relegated politically as a 'black problem.' Donna Dees-Thomases and other MMM organizers didn't have to say it, it was obvious that they were concerned only with their neighborhoods, their kids and their entitled realities.
Now, flash forward to the terrible events of February, 2011. A likeable Congresswoman is gravely injured by a madman and 6 bystanders, including a federal judge and a 9 year old girl lay dead in a supermarket parking lot. The reaction was as immediate as it was senseless - it wasn't the gunman, whose own life story is that of someone with severe mental illness, but it was that awful Glock, it was those awful 33 round magazines and of course, the awful NRA that was to blame.
The Giffords assassination attempt falls in line with nearly every other motivator for the gun control movement. White people beiing afraid of other white people. Never do they band together and express outrage when its a black kid who gets a bullet to the head. Never do they engage in a silly march when the stray bullet of a Crip or a Blood or a Latin King hits an innocent person. No, the gun control movement only comes about when a threat to the entitled white communities are 'in danger.'
Its not that surprising to any student of history; gun control has always had a racist history. In the United States, slaves were obviously prohibited from owning guns. During reconstruction, several of the Jim Crow statutes barred freed slaves from owing guns. Martin Luther King was even denied a gun permit after his home in Selma, Alabama was firebombed.
Across an ocean and a world apart, Adolph Hitler disarmed the populace, primarily however, German Jews. We all know how history played itself out after that. Slobodan Milosovich did the same with Serbian Muslims, Saddam Hussein to the people of Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.
Gun control is inexorably tied to racism - its very telling even in the modern context, where the true intentions of the movement reside.
Modern incarnations of the movement are as old as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy - after which there was a tepid attempt to eradicate handguns from private ownership. These movements, while taking full advantage of an outraged American populace, failed to do more than ban or restrict guns in places like Washington, D.C., Chicago, Il and the town of Wilmette, IL, which had up until now, a complete ban on the possession and use of handguns by anyone except sworn law enforcement.
As the burning embers of the 1960s race riots gave way to the socioeconmic stagnation of the 1970s, the conversation of gun control was largely restricted to a few social liberal circles with nary a legislative action to punctuate it. There was no real "movement" as it were, to ban guns in any fashion, but gun crimes were raging throughout the inner cities. Gang warfare, cop killings, spree shooters - all outward symptoms of an escalating war on drugs that started under Richard Nixon. Washington, D.C., which banned handguns (and any loaded weapon in the home), fast became one of the most violent places in the United States.
Suburban America however, never took notice of any of this. To the average whitebread American family, Washington, D.C. may as well have been another planet, or at the least, on another continent, like the war torn African plains or the bullet ravaged streets of Lebanon. Crime, especially urban crime, wasn't something that was discussed in suburban America, unless it was to punctuate a joke about black Americans.
Then in 1981, something terrible happened. Another American president was shot by a determined and deranged madman. The assassination attempt of an arguably beloved American president provided not only the impetus for Sarah Brady to take over Handgun Control Inc, but spawned a series of new laws at both the state and federal level. In time, this would give way to the creation of the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.
Still, it took the high profile assassination attempt of a white American president to motivate any real change in the laws. Amazingly, gun violence was raging still in the inner cities, gangs grew even bolder with the introduction of crack cocaine and entire generations of city residents had phrases like 'drive-by' burned into their collective lexicons.
Suburbanite white America however, as it too often does, fell into a slumbering state of security. Aided by gated communities, family Therapists, Prozac and a supreme sense of superiority, gun crime was put back where it belonged - in the inner cities, among black Americans.
On April 20th, 1999, I was working as a Board Operator for an AM radio station in New Hampshire. I had my monitor tuned to the FM dial at the time when I heard the DJ stop the broadcast to tell the audience that 2 gunmen, who turned out to be Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher before turning the guns on themselves. The Columbine massacre was at the time, the Pearl Harbor of my generation and the bodies of the dead had barely grown cold before a revitalized gun control movement began to take shape.
Instantly, the country's 'gun culture' came under fire. The discussions of how many guns is too many guns began to dominate talk radio and indeed, American dinner conversations. Then, on mother's day, 2000, a hundred thousand or so mothers and other anti gun activists 'marched' on Washington, demanding still more gun laws. They cited the Columbine massacre as well as the shootings at a Jewish day care center in CA and other incidents as the reason they marched.
Yet among this crowd of mostly white, suburban 'mothers, very little outrage was paid to the decades of black youths, arguably a few generations, cut down by gunfire and gang violence. While there were a few exceptions, Mother's Day 2000 was largely a reaction to gun violence perpetrated by white kids, on white kids in those perfectly bucolic suburban settings.
Outrage towards the wholesale slaughter of minority kids in the projects, moivated by the insanity of the illicit drug trade? Not so much. That was again, relegated politically as a 'black problem.' Donna Dees-Thomases and other MMM organizers didn't have to say it, it was obvious that they were concerned only with their neighborhoods, their kids and their entitled realities.
Now, flash forward to the terrible events of February, 2011. A likeable Congresswoman is gravely injured by a madman and 6 bystanders, including a federal judge and a 9 year old girl lay dead in a supermarket parking lot. The reaction was as immediate as it was senseless - it wasn't the gunman, whose own life story is that of someone with severe mental illness, but it was that awful Glock, it was those awful 33 round magazines and of course, the awful NRA that was to blame.
The Giffords assassination attempt falls in line with nearly every other motivator for the gun control movement. White people beiing afraid of other white people. Never do they band together and express outrage when its a black kid who gets a bullet to the head. Never do they engage in a silly march when the stray bullet of a Crip or a Blood or a Latin King hits an innocent person. No, the gun control movement only comes about when a threat to the entitled white communities are 'in danger.'
Its not that surprising to any student of history; gun control has always had a racist history. In the United States, slaves were obviously prohibited from owning guns. During reconstruction, several of the Jim Crow statutes barred freed slaves from owing guns. Martin Luther King was even denied a gun permit after his home in Selma, Alabama was firebombed.
Across an ocean and a world apart, Adolph Hitler disarmed the populace, primarily however, German Jews. We all know how history played itself out after that. Slobodan Milosovich did the same with Serbian Muslims, Saddam Hussein to the people of Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.
Gun control is inexorably tied to racism - its very telling even in the modern context, where the true intentions of the movement reside.
![[popcorn]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/043.gif "Popcorn [popcorn]")
