Gun Control Is a Reproductive Justice Issue: Some Thoughts for Mother's Day
Reader diary posted by Marysia
May 9, 2009 - 4:13pm
(crossposed at Nonviolent Choice, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com )
It happened again last week in my neighborhood, just a few blocks from where my family lives. I didn't hear the shots or the screams this time, but other times, I have. Sometimes it happens at night, but this time, it was in broad daylight. The toll was one dead, one wounded--both young Black men.
And not a word about their fates in the big media, though certainly there was among the distressed neighbors. Including the children who grow up here knowing every day what children shouldn't have to think about too much: that their lives could be cut short on purpose by someone else in an irrevocable instant. A sweet-faced young man my daughter grew up with died from a gunshot to the back of his head. He left a baby girl behind. As much as for him, we wept to see his overwhelmed parents, family, and friends at the funeral.
I could take you on a sad pilgrimage around my neighborhood and show you all the telephone poles, corners, stretches of sidewalk, and weedy vacant lots where fellow human beings, mostly young Black men, saw the last of this Earth because of gun violence. There is nothing left in these places to mark their premature and abrupt departures except for the sorrowful and outraged hearts of those who pass by and remember what happened there and there and there.
Every year in the United States, gun violence kills 30,000 human beings and injures another 70,000. Gun rights advocates like to say, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." So why is it that I've never met anyone in my neighborhood who agrees with this statement? So many of these killings and woundings happen regularly in neighborhoods like mine, to low-income people of color, often Black and Brown young men.
In other words, it's not the same world most gun rights advocates inhabit. They tend to be majority-white and far more prosperous and able to pay for lobbyists. I am speaking of those who manufacture and profit from the gun trade, and the hunters who (in this country anyway) kill animals primarily for sport and not substinence.
In casting the gun issue as a matter of individual rights and responsibilities, the gun lobby only fuels the criminalization and scapegoating of impoverished people of color, especially young men. Framing the issue this way has an unmistakable implication: better-off white people must know how to handle their guns responsibly, and low-income people of color must not--why else would there be so many more gun crimes and deaths in *those* neighborhoods? *Those* people got what was coming to them, didn't they?
This framing of the gun issue prevents Americans from taking up the collective responsibilities we have too long failed: our collective responsibilities to structurally alleviate poverty, classism, and racism.
These include our collective responsibilities to challenge the patterns of underregulated or unregulated marketing and distribution which have allowed the gun industry to systematically insinuate its way into inner-city neighborhoods. Geoffrey Canada, a noted child welfare activist from the Black community, has spoken up about the gun industry's conscious strategies for moving into the inner-city once it had saturated and achieved the maximum profit it could from the "sportsmen's" market.
In the inner city, it's human beings who get hunted with guns now, and in most cases legal guns. 88% of guns used in crimes were bought quite legally from the rampantly unregulated sectors of the gun market. And US-made guns flood the international trafficking in small arms, which is responsibile for the high rate of gun violence in other beset places populated by poor human beings of color, like the favelas of Brazil.
Every single human being killed or hurt by gun violence made it onto this Earth in the first place because a woman carried him/her for nine months, birthed him/her, and in most cases raised him/her. And many victims of gun violence are, or were, parents themselves.
The right to raise our children in a safe, healthy environment is a core demand of reproductive justice. Not surprisingly, this demand arises from the very communities of color most devastated by gun violence. As well as an obvious pro every life concern, gun control is a reproductive justice issue.
Gun rights advocates are also without exception the children of mothers, and many are parents themselves. Aside from the gun makers and those who hunt animals for sport, some honestly believe that the unregulated right of gun ownership is essential to protect themselves and their families.
What if they could see how much the lack of gun control undermines the ability of people in neighborhoods like mine to protect ourselves and our children? What if they could glimpse what we already have learned too often, the hard way: that guns constitute the falsest of hopes for personal security? That widescale disarmament is ultimately the best way to keep every mother's son or daughter, every parent, and every human being safe and healthy as can be?
"I am speaking of those who manufacture and profit from the gun trade, and the hunters who (in this country anyway) kill animals primarily for sport and not substinence (sic)".
Huh?
As for "...most gun rights advocates...tend to be majority-white and far more prosperous and able to pay for lobbyists.
Not true. This is the same thinking that Gore and Kerry had. There are many millions of people that own firearms that belong to no organizations whatsoever. This is why the focus on the big bad NRA fails. Millions and millions of gun owners neither belong to the NRA or hunt. They do however vote.
So it's just average votin' joes who, say, defend the right to own machine guns?
Or who are so against background checks for the types of gun buyers who act as a conduit for guns to get into neighborhoods like mine?
Check your facts please. "Machine guns" have been tightly regulated for decades and it's very expensive to buy one. You're referring I'm sure to ordinary semi-automatic rifles that just happen to look like their military counter-parts.
As far as background checks go, I do not feel the government needs to be involved in sales between private parties who buy and sell on occasion. This is totally different than a person who makes a living selling guns.
There is little to no credible evidence that criminals buy their guns from legitimate private sellers. They buy them on the black market and will continue to do so regardless of the background check laws.
Yes, but most of that "black market" is fed by unregulated and so called legitimate channels. There is a systemic issue here.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
To show how obsolete gun control is, look at this video of a homemade submachine gun that was built with todays garage tools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhbdW9SxEM Now imagine what digital fabricators and nanofactories can do!
Ta, Da! Your point has been easily refuted. But I bet later on, you will repeat the refuted point again just like a lying creationist would (ex. Kent Hovind).
Obviously it is possible to construct home-made guns but it is hardly an endeavour that your average teenager, anxious to prove his reputation, is going to have the skills, patience or equipment to do so. Yes, illegal factories could be made but, as with other illegal enterprises such as drugs processing, money counterfeiting etc., the police would crack down upon them.
I am not saying that gun regulation would entirely end gun crime but it seems obvious that if guns were not available legally they would be harder to obtain and, if there were fewer in circulation gun crime would be decreased.
This need not even entirely ban gun ownership - countries such as Britain have shown how strict background checks and regulation of the gun-types allowed (in general limiting handguns on grounds of ease of concealment and automatics or semi-automatics because of the scale of injury they can inflict) can result in considerably lower levels of gun crime but still allow hunting and target shooting.
So how's that police crackdown on Drugs going? Hundreds of billions of dollars in counting and yet it is ridiculously easy to get a dime bag of pot on the street. It is not an endeavour of an average teenager, but it is certainly easy for drug dealers and others in the underworld to make their own guns and sell them for profit.
Gun control is obsolete.
Vanessa Robinson, it is quite pathetic for lefties like you to rely on the STUPID DRUG WAR to bolster your arguments.
The reason that we have the second amendment is to make sure that we will not lose our other right to the government. The police are required to protect you and if you wish to have yourself and family protected it is your duty not someone else's. If you don't, can't or won't carry a gun or have one you can use to defend yourself or family that is not the problem of those of us that do carry and are willing to protect our loved ones. Criminals that use them in crimes will not give them up no matter what new law or laws you put in place, use the ones that we have in them and leave those of you that believe in the "right to keep and bear arms alone. By the way I do hunt also and it is for the food, learn the facts first before coming up with such cr*p. It is your choice be a citizen or a subject and there fore a target.
I didn't say american hunters never hunt for food--just that most will be not be forced into starvation without hunting.
don't citizens have a responsibility to look out for one another as well as for themselves? guns shred the fabric of trust in a community. do we really want a republic of "every one for himself" and fear and retaliation?
as for defending oneself--does really all boil down to gun ownership? there are plenty of other ways to fend off violent attacks before they happen, and to get out of them when they are imminent. self-defense is largely a matter of psyching out criminal minds, not a matter of having a gun in one's hand--that, by the way, an attacker can turn around and use to his own advantage.
there's no absolute security anywhere, not even from guns.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
Pro-choice and pro-2A here. We're also rural, and we hunt and fish. I have my CCW.
Virtually every household in our rural area is an armed household. Gun crimes are virtually unheard of...and the "fabric" of our "community" is perfectly intact.
Although personally i'm vegetarian and question whether humans have the right to eat other animals, i do recognize there is a difference between the way guns are used in communities like yours and communities like mine. I think a lot of gun control advocates do, too.
And thank you for disagreeing civilly.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
Not true.
Your words were "...the hunters who (in this country anyway) kill animals primarily for sport and not [sustenance]"
You weren't talking about being "forced into starvation" in your original post.
Also, while you are right that guns are not absolute security, they're a good tool to defend oneself, and one of the only ones you can use without being physically close (i.e. within arm's reach) of an attacker or potential attacker, which is a good advantage.
don't citizens have a responsibility to look out for one another as well as for themselves?
Yes, certainly. But I don't see how that's relevant to the gun debate. Is this a roundabout way of saying you think guns should primarily be in the hands of police?
Gun control is not a reproductive justice issue anymore than work to bring about a world in which women are forced to carry children they do not want to term is.
You're actually advocating "widescale disarmament" so we all can be safer? The founders were very clear that the people must be armed in order to keep the government in check. You are either willing to take a huge gamble on the freedom of future generations or are incredibly naive of history. Time and time again, citizen disarmament has lead to oppression and tyranny. Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Hitler, and countless other mass murders all advocated for gun control. How progressive.
So I'm just like Stalin et al because I want to alleviate the root causes of young people dying violent deaths in my neighborhood?
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
So I'm just like Stalin et al because I want to alleviate the root causes of young people dying violent deaths in my neighborhood?
No. You are nothing like Stalin.
You don't want to alleviate violence in the inner city. You want disarmament of small urban business owners and working class Americans in the small towns. You saw my reply to you that completely demolishes gun control, yet here you continue spouting the refuted points again just like I predicted you would. You are dishonest like Kent Hovind.
I don't want to alleviate gun violence in the inner city?
well, that's news to me. you really think i want all these unfortunate people--my neighbors--dead? you think i'm driven by hatred of 'good, white americans"?
just because we disagree, doesn't make me into a liar. or heartless towards my neighbors, just to make an ideological point!! sheesh!!
Repeating points that have been refuted is LYING!
You are no different than Kent Hovind. Saying the Earth is 6,000 years old and then repeating PRATTs to try to bolster that isn't "disagreement", IT'S LYING.
It's not just "good ole white Americans" you want to disarm and render vulnerable to your gangs. You want the Korean store owners, the Indian store owners rendered vulnerable too. You're not only a liar, you're a hater.
if the lives of black people are precious and irreplaceable, why wouldn't the lives of white, korean, indian and any other kind of person be precious and irreplaceable, too?
to love black people does not equal hating others--although this is an all too common argument against anti-racists.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
Yet you knowingly support policies that are favorable to innercity gangs and unfavorable to the targets of those gangs. That's definitely hateful.
every human being has way more to them than the very worst thing they've ever done. you know who i've heard that from the most?
people who work in ministry and social service with prisoners, including gang members and death row inmates--and decidedly not folks who are just getting conned.
to affirm this is *not* to condone gang violence or anything like that, or naively believe that criminals with sociopathic personalities should run around free. believe me, i have called the police on gang members fighting in my alley and dealing drugs on my block.
but you frame the issue in such a black and white, either or manner, there is no room for such a perspective as this.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
I'm sure you want violence reduced in your community.
We just think you're utterly confused about how it can happen. Get rid of guns, and violent criminals will just move on to using knives, as is happening in the U.K.
Criminals can still get guns in U.K. (the Mac-10 is a favorite) but they prefer weapons that don't make too much noise. The Yo Yo Yo gangsta driveby culture hasn't taken root in U.K., yet. Of course my video link shows that criminals can easily make their own guns if they wanted to. The homemade submachinegun I showed is similar to the homemade Luty design. This design was invented by a Brit.
Yes you are, one of the first things both the Marxists and the Facsists did was diarm the citizenry
In any case, it's a little ridiculous to suggest that advocating gun control makes someone a Nazi. Most western democracies have much stricter gun laws than the US, and much less gun-related crime. I don't particularly take a position on gun control in the US - although I don't get the appeal of owning a mini-arsenal - but I'm actually glad I live in a country where guns are regulated.
As far as the right to bear arms as a defense against government tyranny...well, I imagine the founders probably didn't anticipate just how massive and powerful the US military would get. The argument seems a little obsolete, at this point; I do not see how a civilian population, no matter how well-armed, could defeat an American military-backed government.
JMHO.
ETA: There is no need for anyone to lecture me on the second amendment, by the way; I am aware of it, and I'm also aware that the idea of removing or modifying constitutional rights is problematic.
Also, the racism being directed at Marysia in this thread is vile.
Mandatory Pool Fencing in all backyards around the nation must also be a Reproductive Justice Issue, because more children die from drowning than by firearms.
Anyway, I hear firearms rights advocates called "shrill" and "nutty", but this anti-rights piece takes the cake. Filled with false assertions such as "guns constitute the falsest of hopes for personal security" (Go read Civilian Gun Self Defense Blog for true news reports of armed self defense), "collective responsibilities to structurally alleviate poverty" (I read that anywhere in the constitution as an enumerated power of the Federal Government, and poverty is relative, our poor are the richest poor in the world), and of course any plausable connection between supposed "reproductive Justice" (whatever that means. Maybe a right to unregulated spawning of as many broodlings as one wants without reguard to supportability with the expectation others will pay to sustain them?). The article is loony.
Now the issue of mandatory pool fencing is not one from where I live, where kids mostly opened fire hydrants or little plastic wading pools. But if it's a systemic cause of kids drowning, then, yes, it is a reproductive justice issue. Any structural problem that impairs the ability of parents to raise children in a safe and healthy environment.
There are planty of ways to defend oneself without resorting to a gun. but when one is so consumed by fear and paranoia that a gun seems indispensible to save one's own hide, the abundant possibilities for nonviolent defense against violence go by the wayside.
as for:
"a right to unregulated spawning of as many broodlings as one wants without reguard to supportability with the expectation others will pay to sustain them"
why does this sound so much like the very enduring and pernicious stereotypes in US culture about people of color and low-income people who supposely just breed oh so fecklessly and irresponsibly at the expense of the public purse?
if this is indeed where you're coming from, then no wonder you feel your right to an unregulated/underregulated gun industry has absolutely nothing to do with the violent deaths of poor people and people of color...i would prefer to think not, but sometimes i wonder if people whose views on guns come from this sort of attitude towards human beings of color and people in poverty (not all gun advocates, though, just some0 regard gun violence as a means to keep those undesired numbers in check...
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
There are plenty of ways to defend oneself without resorting to a gun.
Do tell.
ahunt, i highly recommend these:
--the book safe passage on city streets by dorothy t. samuel
--gavin de becker's books the gift of fear & protecting the gift
--the insights of the women's self-defense movement.
ideas on nonviolent or minimally violent (punching, kicking, etc) self-defense vary.
but what they all have in common, it seems, is an emphasis on understanding the minds of attackers or would be attackers in order to:
--avert an attack in the first place (for example, by understanding the strategies that perpetrators use to identify and "test out" potential victims).
--if an attack happens, to be prepared to psychologically disarm the attacker so that physical harm to oneself and others involved in the situation is averted or minimized.
an example of the latter:
one time a man came up behind my husband and stuck what he claimed to be a gun into my husband's back. my husband wasn't sure if it was, but he went along with the claim and emptied his wallet for the man instead of clinging defensively to it and escalating the attacker's aggression.
then the assailant protested that my husband "only had" 40 dollars--"all that trouble for nothing!"
but instead of assaulting my husband further because of this disappointing (for him) outcome, the man eased away and did not threaten or harm him further.
my husband credits this to something that his meditation practice prepared him for. he was flooded by a sense of mercy that another human being would be in such misery, whatever it was all about, as to feel it necessary to commit such a deed against another person.
this mercy did not weaken my husband but gave him power in the situation, because the attacker picked up on it and it de-escalated his aggression.
and then my husband reported the incident to the police.
the only thing lost was the 40 dollars, which our family really did need. and the man probably used it to no good end--he had that certain desperate vibe of a robber who robs to fund a drug habit.
but better to lose that money than my husband's life or the life of someone else equally human despite his crime or his probable drug habit, the attacker.
different self-defense strategies work for different situations. but even if you feel you need to carry a concealed gun for self-defense--it could be a last resort, there is so much else that might work instead, before it comes down to pulling out the gun.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
Oh Good Heavens Marysia, I did not mean to give you the impression that I am some kind of a gunslinger, and I certainly take care to follow common sense precautions and avoid dangerous situations.
But quite simply, and in the paraphrasing the words of the late Mike Royko, the people who would break into my home to do whatever they please are unworthy of consideration. Odds are good they are 100% fiends, and I possess the skills, plan and werewithal to make them 100% dead, if necessary.
At my age and in my physical condition, flight and unarmed self-defense is out of the question, and in the event of an imminent physical attack, pardon me if I use the fastest and most effective means of "stoppage."
Have I ever been in a position where it was necessary? No. Have I been in a position where the implicit threat of of aggressive response was effective. Yes.
sorry if it sounded that way--i am in no wise mistaking you for a trigger happy gun carrier.
you asked what were the forms of self-defense i had in my mind, so i just listed them and gave an example of one that worked for my husband.
i am a petite person and have several disabilities, so i too am concerned about being assaulted by someone larger and physically stronger. but a lot can be done to prevent harm by psyching out the attacker. i have gotten out of some scrapes this way, uninjured.
as for the character of those who break into others' homes--no, it does not tend to be stellar. but still, violent self-defense needs to be an absolute last resort. why hurt anyone if it can at all be avoided?
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
Snerk.
Well, I'm wildly middle-aged and not inclined to put up with much from anyone.
Seriously, Marysia, I'm sorry you have had to endure what you have been subjected to on this thread. As profoundly as I disagree with you, please, please do not associate the average 2A supporter with the posts here. The majority of us are packing Grandma's shotgun, and a significant minority regard venison as "God's red meat."
thank you, and please don't worry, i am not mistaking you or other civil, thoughtful gun advocates with those who have nothing better to offer than gratuitous personal insults in the way of argument.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
"...but even if you feel you need to carry a concealed gun for self-defense--it could be a last resort..."
I believe that most people who rely on firearms feel that is is just one additional piece of "safety equipment", and one that should only be used in the gravest extreme.
Sounds like another person has finally stepped into the light of reason with respect to the usefulness of firearms in self defense, albeit a bit grudgingly. Welcome! I think you find that your beliefs about armed self defense and individual freedoms are not disparate from most armed civilians.
I find your obvious reluctance to embrace gun ownership to be a bit perplexing. After all, human history is replete with reproduction being forced upon women, as women had no practical way to resist rape or other coercive means of reproduction. Certainly the light of reproductive justice is not the cause of that gleam in the rapist's eye. Only in 1836 did women finally begin to have the option to resist attempts at forced reproduction, with the production of the first practical repeating handgun, Colt's revolver. While early handguns were often large heavy and unwieldy, small, lightweigh,t easily concealed and carried, modern firearms give the modern women the true final say about when and with whom she chooses to reproduce, especially in the face of a male who might be willing to disregard her wishes.
As far as non-lethal defense options when faced with a deadly weapon: Florida State University Professor Gary Kleck has spend 30 years researching issues surround gun control. Professor Kleck is a self-described liberal, card-carrying member of the ACLU, and a lifelong registered Democrat. After careful review and research into self defense and gun control issues, he is also now decidedly pro-gun. He states that intellectual honesty in the face of the data allows him no other choice. His published research clearly shows that, when faced with an armed attack, the best way to die or get seriously hurt is unarmed resistance, followed by offering no resistance at all. The safest (for the victim, that is) course when faced with an armed attack is armed resistance with a firearm. In other words, and statistically speaking, nice guys who don't resist finish last, while mean guys and gals who resist criminal aggression with a gun in their hands have the best chance of going home to their families that evening.
I bid you welcome to the large and growing mass of people who feel that self defense with a firearm one possible option when faced with a criminal assualt and I hope most sincerely that if you are ever faced with the ultimate reproductive injustice, rape, that you will be well prepared to defend your life and your rights.
Cheers!
The second amendment was put in place to protect the citizens from a tyrannical government as was stated above. Think about where all these shootings that have been happening lately are...They are all in GUN FREE ZONES. This means that law abiding citizens are not going to have a gun them, but a criminal doesn't care. They want a target that is not going to fight back. That is exactly what these GUN FREE ZONES offer....nonresistance. Criminal has a gun...everyone else...nothing..It's already been stated that the police don't have to protect you from anything. I for one will protect myself. Average response time for a police call 6 min..average response time for a gun...spit second you choose. I will protect the Constitution of the United States of America from foreign and domestic enemies.
a lot of the gun criminals are at the end of a supply chain that begins in perfectly legal but unregulated channels. these channels exist with the full blessing of the gun industry, which profits immensely in this way.
in countries where such channels do not exist, where the gun industry does not have the government in its pocket, the rates of gun violence are so low, they put the US to shame.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
On the creation vs evolution threads, there is a term called P.R.A.T.T. This points to fallacies such as the thermodynamics fallacy that creationists use to repeatedly make points that were already refuted.
And here you are, taking the same tactics from the Kent Hovind and Duane Gish playbook. YOU ARE DISHONEST MARYSIA. Repeating PRATTs is an act of DISHONESTY. You repeat the same lie EVEN AFTER I SHOW A VIDEO VIVIDLY SHOWING THE FUTILITY OF GUN CONTROL! Even after I mention digital fabrication and nanotechnology trends!
in countries where such channels do not exist, where the gun industry does not have the government in its pocket, the rates of gun violence are so low, they put the US to shame.
You mean like Brazil and South Africa? You are dishonest.
Demography determines crime rates.
In Switzerland almost every adult male is a member of the military reserve. That means that they are required by Law to have in their homes MILITARY grade automatic rifles and ammo,
And not the pathetic look like a military rifle, semi-automatic faux-assault rifles but the real thing.
So your premise is invalid and the violence is not caused by the prevalence and assesibility of weapons, but is cultural
You can't persuade me that all of the deceased young men, of whatever color, would still be alive had there been no guns available.
Human beings are clever, inventive and innovative. It they choose to kill, they will find the means.
And please, don't even start to assert that it's somehow the fault of white people if people of color choose to blow one another away. If you choose to cast yourself as a victim, then that's exactly what you'll be. It's a shame, but if that's the best thinking you can do, I suppose you'll have to live with the results.
but when it's just fists or sticks or even switchblades, a lot fewer lives get taken away.
yes, when people of color commit crimes against one another, there's an inescapable element of personal responsibility. but it's the majority-white gun industry and gun lobby that profit off the big market that ends up through legal channels in the inner city. it's wealthy white people who fuel the drug trade behind so much of the violence. don't they have blood on their hands, too?
if you are someone who "got out of the hood'--what about everyone who still lvies there, for whatever reason? no one deserves to be unsafe in their own neghborhood. there is an element of victimization here that's quite real and unfair.
and i'm not talking about 'victimhood thinking" or abdicating personal responsibility and self-reliance. my young black grandson is going to learn that he has the responsibility to be a compassionate, dignified, and concerned person no matter what indignities and brutalities get thrown his way. i am also involved in community gardening which is a way to grow food security, beauty, and peace oneself in concert with others.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
Poor urban white people manage their guns safely, why can't blacks? The answer's quite simple, the gun violence(half of which is suicide and so can't be considered gun violence since it's been proven time and again that access to guns does little to nothing to the suicide rate) is nothing more than a symptom. Treating symptoms is at best a stopgap measure, one that may harm the patient more than help. Moreover, to actually cut off the supply of manufactured guns you would have to utterly violate, at minimum, the second, fourth, fifth, ninth, and tenth amendments. Since this is the US, not communist fucking China, that's not the way things go. Since one cannot violate those amendments, even if one were to completely ignore the 2nd amendment any gun control that is otherwise constitutional will be highly ineffectual at best. Basically, things would be the same as they are now, except none of the guns would be legal, which means you would inevitably have people who are otherwise law-abiding but who would refuse to disarm themselves at the tyranny of the majority being thrown in jail(or dying along with quite a few cops/troops). Thus, there is no benefit to gun control other than it being a feel good measure by people too afraid to address the issues.
Ravenshrike, it is amazing how these gun ban charlatans blame poverty for the random gang violence of the black community. How come impoverished white communities lack such rates of crime? How come penniless Asian immigrants that come to the U.S. have crime rates less than that of Whites? Even impoverished hispanic immigrants have crime rates that are less than the black community! The black community must own up to this serious problem and take responsibility for this and stop blaming other races for their problem of random violence. This blame game will only ruin race relations even further. Why do I call people like Marysia, charlatans? I showed a freaking video of a homemade submachine gun that completely falsifies their notion that gun bans reduce gun availability. I even mentioned technological trends in decentralized digital fabrications that make moot any of their gun control points. What do they do? They repeated their refuted point over and over again like a religious flat earth zealot who's been shown the Apollo spacecraft picture of Planet Earth!
When you divide people of color into the "good, model" minorities and the "bad" minorities...well, that's an analysis that people of color generally find to be quite counterproductive and scapegoating....
almost all communities of color face problems of poverty and violence, and ranking different groups according to whether or not they are "good" in white-determined terms does not do anything to help with the problems.
why do you assume that blackfolk just sit around blaming "big bad whitey" instead of getting off their rumps and solving their own problems?
every day i bear witness to black people facing their problems with courage and mercy and resourcefulness. i don't think, for example, the black people who try to intervene and de-escalate gang violence when it sounds to be in the offing--who personally put their own lives on the line for the sake of others and for the whole community--are sitting on their lazy rumps blaming big bad whitey for anything. and there are many, many other examples. it's more the order of the day than the exception.
however, poverty in the black community is an outcome of pernicious institutions and social policies that are directly descended from slavery. as important and essential as individual bravery and resourcefulness and heart are, there is still a system of discrimination that grinds even very strong people down or wearies them beyond measure. that doesn't make gun violence right by any measure, but that does make it more than an issue of individual black people's characters.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
"a feel good measure by people too afraid to address the issue"?
there is nothing "feel good" or "too afraid" about, for example, seeing a young person stretched out in a casket, cold and dead, as i have, or listening to young people shooting at each other on a summer's night and calling the police and hoping they get there before anybody dies.
you may not agree with me about the solutions, but kindly please refrain from these attempts at character assasination.
Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com
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By Wendy Norris on March 15, 2010 - 7:00am | 2 comments
The Vanishing Anti-Choice Democrat: Rethinking the Party's Strategy
By Amanda Marcotte on March 15, 2010 - 7:00am | 14 comments
Have You Thanked an Abortion Provider Today?
By Robin Marty on March 15, 2010 - 7:00am | 50 comments
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West Virginians For Life Skirts Lobbying Laws, But Courts Publicity
By Megan Carpentier on March 12, 2010 - 9:00am | 2 comments
Get Real! He Said He'd Wait, But He Won't Stop Asking
By Heather Corinna on March 12, 2010 - 9:00am | 0 comments
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Banning Abortion: The First Step Toward Theocracy
By Amanda Marcotte on March 11, 2010 - 8:00am | 132 comments
On Stupak and VBAC: Women's Reproductive Choices As Bargaining Chips
By Rebecca A. Spence on March 11, 2010 - 8:00am | 2 comments
Today
- Do Pregnant Women Have the Right to Refuse Surgery?
- Midwives Barred From California Hospital
- "Slow Death by Rubber Duck:" What We Don't See Can Hurt Us
- "We're Not Dolls! Don't Play With Women's Lives"
- The Ethical, Spiritual, and Moral Foundation of the Abortion-Provider Community
- (VIDEO) Why Health Reform Must Protect Private Insurance Coverage of Abortion Care: A Mother Speaks Out
- Adulthood and the Right to Make Our Own Choices
- Roundup: The Great Debate Is Not Much of a Debate
- When Choices are Forced
- Illinois Court Reviews Parental Notification Law
Discussions
- Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage
- Banning Abortion: The First Step Toward Theocracy
- Pro-Choice Candidate Will Challenge Stupak in Primary
- The Ethical, Spiritual, and Moral Foundation of the Abortion-Provider Community
- The A Word
- Have You Thanked an Abortion Provider Today?
- Pregnant Nicaraguan Woman Denied Treatment for Metastatic Cancer
- Sex: What Is It?
All Time
- Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage
- Get Real! What Does Sex Feel Like?
- Ten Things To Do Before You Have Sex
- Get Real! The Great No-Orgasm-from-Intercourse Conundrum
- You Tube Wins Debate: Age Appropriate Sex-Ed Discussed
- HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion
- Slutty Girls and Stupid Boys: Today's Abstinence-Only "Education"
- Obama's Late Term Abortion Comments Ignore Stark Realities
- GOP Playbook Useless in Health Care Fight
- Home Delivery Video
An Illinois court reviews a long unenforced parental notification act.
National Republic accidentally argues against their own abortion regulations, and a banana a day may keep HIV away.
"Under the Stupak Amendment, my baby would have died," says Tiffany Campbell, mother of three from South Dakota.
RH Reality Check Blogroll
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