How Shameful Policies Increase America’s Gun Violence
This week, a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing asks the question, “what should America do about gun violence?” As usual, the primary focus is on guns rather than those who misuse them, but unfortunately both President Obama’s and Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s proposals will do little to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. There are 300 million guns in America, and, without a politically impossible and undesirable program of mass confiscation, it will continue to be quite easy for wrongdoers to get weapons in America. Perhaps, instead of trying to extract a thimbleful of water from that ocean of weapons, we should shift our focus to why so many Americans want to harm each other.
Studies of gun violence often use a compare-and-contrast methodology to find variables between nations that may explain a difference in violent crime rates. Many of the proposed causes for America’s uniquely violent culture — from video games to taking God out of schools — have little scientific backing and seem like irrelevant squabbles over tastes and preferences. Yet government programs that do real, measurable harm to our citizens and predictably push them toward gun violence are too often overlooked.
First and foremost is the oppressive and ineffective drug war that has destroyed inner-city neighborhoods and severely harmed the life prospects of millions of Americans, most acutely, young, African-American men.
As Prohibition-era America showed, banning a highly in-demand substance increases the violence surrounding that substance. When legal methods cannot be used to settle contract and other disputes, extra-legal methods (i.e., the point of a gun) will be used. Moreover, unsavory characters will tend to traffic the prohibited substances, further escalating violent business practices. These new businessmen also facilitate the illegal gun trade, brazenly ignoring assault weapons bans and other cosmetic limits on gun ownership. Those guns then flood the black market, giving easy access to would-be criminals and mass shooters. A 2001 Justice Department study found that 20 percent of prison inmates received their guns from a drug dealer or off the street. Comparatively, only 0.7 percent of the weapons were obtained at gun shows. Which “loophole” should we be focusing on closing?
Caught in the middle of this is the American citizen, particularly young, black males, who often grow up in inner cities that have more in common with war zones than suburban neighborhoods. The U.S. government’s “solution” to this problem has been mass incarceration on a level rarely seen in world history; with a prison rate currently six to 10 times the rate of any other developed country. In many American inner cities where the drug war is most earnestly waged, up to 80 percent of young African-American males have criminal records. These young men will endure a lifetime of legalized discrimination, and difficulty finding employment, often because they simply chose to put a prohibited substance into their own bodies.
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Stop laying off officers. Once criminals and potential criminals know there are few officers in street, they will have incentive to commit crimes. When will this state and nation learn that the more officers in streets the fewer crimes committed. We would have fewer crimes if we had more officers patrolling our neighborhoods. With recent deaths of 26 people gunned down, an urge has emerged to find gun violence solutions. I know funds and several ideas are being floated around. I hope these ideas and funds will rub on inner city programs to reduce this violence. For years Republicans ignored deaths of Blacks in inner cities – calling it Blacks’ problems. Now gun violence has hit predominantly White elite neighborhoods and everybody woke up. Dumb Republicans! Yes. They now recognize the problem of having too many guns with wrong people is not Black’s issue but also White’s problem. My proposed solutions: We must have more police officers in schools and streets. If these potential criminals meet or interact with police often they will think twice before advancing to commit crimes. For example if the lunar who killed 26 people had seen or interacted with a police officer, he may have changed his plans. Usually gun killers are physically weak and coward– they cannot fight with their hands. They resort to gun. Further, there should be cameras in all streets to scan anybody dangerous coming. If a criminal knows he is being watched, he will have less incentive to commit a crime. She or he knows he is being watched. Finally, I want to advice right-wing morons to stop defaming Blacks as killers. Killing can be in White neighborhood too.
WARPED MINDS…. are causing a lot of the violence, murders, gang wars, etc. As the shooters are firing up the schools, stores, offices, and streets — our ECO-SYSTEM is being attacked too by polluters.
We are a society that is headed for SELF-DESTRUCTION.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/climate-desk-greenland-and-69-feet-sea-level-rise
Too many of us don’t want to face how “unnatural” people have become…how so many have lost respect for Nature.