Activist Nails It: It's Not the Police, It's Us :: 08/26/2020

Despite the prevalence of “Black Lives Matter” as part of the social framework these days, a whole lot of black people–particularly young black men–are dying. They’re being murdered at an incredible rate and have been ever since the riots kicked off following the death of George Floyd.

Yet there’s an important point to remember, and that is that the murders aren’t on the hands of police officers. Oh no, they’re not responsible for anything close to a reasonable fraction of a percent of those being gunned down.

However, an activist in Providence, RI knows precisely what’s going on.

Public safety and elected officials and community leaders on Friday decried the latest violence in Providence, which saw the fifth homicide in two weeks occur Thursday night.

“This is not law enforcement killing our children. It’s not them. It’s us,” said Cedric Huntley, Interim of the Director of the Nonviolence Institute, at a press conference Friday morning. “I’m not defending anybody — but I am defending the community. Our black and brown children are killing each other and that’s wrong. All I know is I go to the hospital and I see pain and suffering. That’s what I see.”

Other activists in Providence are ready to blame guns and everything else, but Huntley seems to grasp the problem better than most.

While the murder rate continues to skyrocket in pretty much every city in the country, we know mostly who are carrying out these crimes. These aren’t police shootings. I mean, the cops can’t even shoot back at a guy shooting at them without Chicago Black Lives Matter activists trying to justify looting, for crying out loud, so if these deaths were at the hands of police, we’d know it.

Instead, what we’re seeing is private citizens killing private citizens. And, like it or not, a lot of those deaths of young black men are at the hands of other young black men.

Regardless of the ethnicities involved, though, it’s not the police who are responsible for the upsurge in violent crime that has grabbed hold pretty much everywhere. Oh no, it’s us. Maybe not you and me specifically, but the people as a whole.

To be sure, everyone has a theory and more than a few dipsticks are thinking that because gun sales spiked, it’s resulting in this surge in violence, but they offer no evidence because post hoc ergo proptor hoc (aftere, therefore because of) fallacies.  That’s all they have.

Frankly, I don’t know precisely why everyone seems to have lost their freaking minds. I don’t know why our cities are becoming warzones. I have my own theories, of course, with most dealing with the lockdown, but I don’t know for certain.

But we do know pretty much who is doing it, and if certain factions in this country want more folks to take them seriously, they need to address the legions of murders carried out every day and not just the small handful of shootings that involve law enforcement.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He's also the host of Unloaded TV on YouTube. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/08/26/ca-mag-capacity-ban/