The Racism of Gun Control and How Laws Target Culture: A Response to The #AltonSterling Shooting

Preface: I wrote this prior to the shooting of the 5 police officers in Dallas (http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/us/dallas-police-shooting-live-updates/index.html). I do not support this kind of prejudiced violence - or violence in general. Police officers are not innocent, but we cannot expect to change anything through violence. Fighting fire with fire will always result in more fire. Common sense will tell you that. And with that out of the way, I give you my first real blog post on Steemit:

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In light of the latest police shooting of Alton Sterling, a week after the Orlando massacre, millennials have once again taken to twitter to express their disapproval of the police. If you haven’t heard what happened, you can find the whole video here (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/alton-sterling-killed-police-video/). The police were responding to a 911 call talking of a man brandishing a firearm outside the store where the incident occurred. When they arrived, eye-witness accounts say that the police were immediately hostile. Alton was given no reason for his arrest, and refused compliance, so the officers began to detain him. Finding the gun in his pocket, though nowhere near his hands, they shot him 5 times point blank in the chest. Say what you want about his criminal activities, personality, other run-ins with the law - this man was executed without question. Five shots to the chest of a detained man is fucking overkill, don’t you think?

So, why was this man killed? Was it because he was black? Probably. Was it because he was resisting arrest? Also probable. Perhaps it was a combination. But what was really telling in my opinion was the officers’ conduct in response to the discovery of Sterling’s firearm. I’m going to go off on a tangent for a bit, so bear with me here. As Americans, we have guaranteed in our Bill of Rights the inalienable right to bear arms. That being said, we have certain policies in place that limit certain people from bearing them. When someone is convicted of a felony, for example, that person’s right to vote and their right to bear arms are immediately stripped. And at first glance, most people would think this makes perfect sense, because why would anyone ever want a convicted felon to have either of those things? But it’s not that simple - and it never is.

The story I want to relay to you begins on a hot summer day in the month of June, 1971. On this day, President Nixon signed into law the infamous federal war on drugs. For the next few decades the war raged on as our prisons quickly filled to record-breaking populations - and when I say record breaking, I mean worldwide percentages. On top of this, from the point of view of any school of economics, it is a fact that banning drugs can just barely reduce the use of drugs. Drugs are inelastic goods, meaning an outright ban can really only increase prices, meaning enormous profits for black market firms. These incredible profit margins motivate dealers to take the risks of operating in an underground market without police or regulation, forcing dealers to take the law into their own hands. This policy has blood and war literally written all over it, so why in God’s holy name would Nixon, with all of his advisors at hand, ever decide that this was a good idea? The answer was recently revealed to the public when a Harper’s Magazine reporter interviewed John Ehrlichman, Watergate co-conspirator and domestic policy advisor to Nixon (https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/).

Ehrlichman had this to say:

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

By criminalizing the drugs of choice associated with black communities and anti-war protesters, the Nixon administration was able to disproportionally arrest them, disenfranchise them, and take away their right to bear arms. Political rebellion, as well as the very real possibility of actual armed rebellion were stifled as activists in both communities were arrested and taken to prison. They were silenced.

So back to Alton Sterling. How the hell could this possibly have to do with Tuesday’s incident? Stereotypes my friends. The drug war has gone on long enough that black communities are left in shambles. All-out gang warfare with illegal weapons is rampant, illegal drug use is rampant, the police continue to lock fathers away in prisons - and the public school system surely doesn’t help with any of this, causing countless problems on its own. With all this in mind, the police simply assume that if a black person is carrying a gun, it is illegal. Not only that, but they assume that since they are carrying that supposed illegal weapon, they must be some kind of violent criminal - as opposed to a human being who is conscious of his or her safety. Black people cannot bear arms anymore without the risk of being shot and killed by their government! That being the case, that stereotypes and generalizations greatly influence the fate of citizens, do black people really have the right to bear arms?

Further, with all of the gun regulations in place and being proposed, it is becoming harder and harder for minorities to buy guns legally. Especially in the blue states, where a license to carry can take months if not years to be granted and bureaucrats require loads of paperwork to even apply, black people simply cannot wait. The bad neighborhoods they’re confined to have no respect for gun regulations - the violent criminals will have weapons and will use them, regardless of law. So, we have a situation where guns are bought illegally by otherwise law-abiding citizens for their necessary self-defense. Yet another way for the police to arrest people in the black communities. One might say, however, that gun shows provide an easy work-around for these citizens, but I would say these have their own barriers. Although it may be easier to buy a gun at these shows, they tend to charge exorbitant prices for their firearms - usually a few times the normal market price. Black communities, being generally of lower socio-economic status, and it being many hundreds if not thousands of dollars cheaper to purchase a weapon illegally, just like anyone else will weigh the risks and benefits. Living in these places, it's very possible that over the next few months you'd become the victim of a violent crime - would you wait for permission? Further, you wouldn’t want to pay the ridiculous prices for gun-show weapons when you have to put food on the table for your family. Why would you not buy the gun illegally? It’s cheap, it’s instant, there is a very slight risk of getting caught due to police never showing up, and is it not worth it for the peace of mind it provides? As you can see, guns are de facto banned in black communities - but that doesn't stop the black market. We have this problem, and it’s all thanks to the racist concept of gun control.

Back to the main topic at hand. Although Alton Sterling had an illegal firearm, the police officers had no way of knowing whether it was legal or not. They approached him with hostility, not telling him what he was being arrested for. He never reached for his gun, so as far as they should’ve assumed, he was an American citizen legally carrying a weapon for his own protection in a bad neighborhood. But no, he was black. They simply felt it in his pocket, shot him five times, and left him in a pool of his own blood. Had it been a white man, I’m confident the officers would’ve assumed the gun to be legal and registered. They would’ve approached the man with politeness, notified him of the suspected crime, and asked for a lawful search. They would've caught him, but he would've survived - and not to mention he would have been given a significantly lesser sentence. Instead, they saw a black man matching the description, and continued with hostility. I want to be clear though, white privilege is not the source, but a symptom of a government that legislates without regard to the multitude of American cultures. I therefore do not blame white people or culture itself, but rather the force of government imposing the usually less-noble cultural values upon it’s citizens.

Guns are necessary tools for the free individual. If black communities do not take up arms, and exercise their rights peacefully in full public view, they will continue to be harassed by the police. And to be clear, I do not mean to victim blame - I fully blame the police. But if change is what you’re after, please consider this. An unafraid, armed populace is the greatest fear the police have, and it’s the only way we can keep them in check. I urge the black communities to hold open-carry marches. I urge them to exercise their rights wherever possible, and I urge them to stay peaceful. The government will listen, but only when they are shown that the people are in charge, and won’t stand for anything but complete subservience of government agents. It’s time to abolish the exploitation of the black communities by politicians, corporations, the banks, and the drug cartels through their culture-targeting and cultural-shifting legislation. If this message somehow makes it across the internet, I hope that the people reading it will listen and act. And if you, the reader, decide to act, there is no doubt that I will be right alongside you, just as long as you remain peaceful.