Laura Washington is Back
And Nicki Fellenzer doesn’t hold back in giving her what-for. Rated PG-13!
Tag: Laura Washington
Here’s a Voice I Thought I’d Never Hear
I guess Bill Cosby‘s having an effect after all. Well, Cosby, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell and a few others are apparently finally beginning to have an effect. In a Fox Sports column, Kansas City Star sportswriter Jason Whitlock says what he thinks, replayed here in full for archival purposes:
Taylor’s death a grim reminder for us all
There’s a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same.
Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you’re a black man living in America, you’ve been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.
The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.
No, we don’t know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor’s death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it’s no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You’d assume a heart attack, and you’d know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.
Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there’s every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That’s not some negative, unfair stereotype. It’s a reality we’ve been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.
When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.
Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How’s that working?
About as well as the attempt to shift attention away from this uniquely African-American crisis by focusing on an “injustice” the white media allegedly perpetrated against Sean Taylor.
Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor’s victimhood by reporting on his troubled past
No disrespect to Taylor, but he controlled the way he would be remembered by the way he lived. His immature, undisciplined behavior with his employer, his run-ins with law enforcement, which included allegedly threatening a man with a loaded gun, and the fact a vehicle he owned was once sprayed with bullets are all pertinent details when you’ve been murdered.
Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player, made the radio circuit Wednesday, singing the tune that athletes are targets. That was his explanation for the murders of Taylor and Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams and the armed robberies of NBA players Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry.
Really?
Let’s cut through the bull(manure) and deal with reality. Black men are targets of black men. Period. Go check the coroner’s office and talk with a police detective. These bullets aren’t checking W-2s.
Rather than whine about white folks’ insensitivity or reserve a special place of sorrow for rich athletes, we’d be better served mustering the kind of outrage and courage it took in the 1950s and 1960s to stop the white KKK from hanging black men from trees.
But we don’t want to deal with ourselves. We take great joy in prescribing medicine to cure the hate in other people’s hearts. Meanwhile, our self-hatred, on full display for the world to see, remains untreated, undiagnosed and unrepentant.
Our self-hatred has been set to music and reinforced by a pervasive culture that promotes a crab-in-barrel mentality.
You’re damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men. When your leading causes of death and dysfunction are murder, ignorance and incarceration, there’s no reason to give a free pass to a culture that celebrates murder, ignorance and incarceration.
Of course there are other catalysts, but until we recapture the minds of black youth, convince them that it’s not OK to “super man dat ho” and end any and every dispute by “cocking on your bitch,” nothing will change.
Does a Soulja Boy want an education?
HBO did a fascinating documentary on Little Rock Central High School, the Arkansas school that required the National Guard so that nine black kids could attend in the 1950s. Fifty years later, the school is one of the nation’s best in terms of funding and educational opportunities. It’s 60 percent black and located in a poor black community.
Watch the documentary and ask yourself why nine poor kids in the ’50s risked their lives to get a good education and a thousand poor black kids today ignore the opportunity that is served to them on a platter.
Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever. There’s only one group of people who can change the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted. We have to do it.
According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.
The “keepin’ it real” mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There’s always someone ready to tell you you’re selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you’re selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.
The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.
In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next.
Mr. Whitlock is most definitely not another Laura Washington. You’ll notice he doesn’t blame the gun, or call for more gun control. He doesn’t blame the people who didn’t kill Sean Taylor. He points at CULTURE, “the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted” as the underlying cause of “when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there’s every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger.” Mr. Whitlock sees the same data Ms. Washington and Rev. Michael Pfleger do:
African Americans have plenty of motivation. According to a recent report by the U.S. Justice Department, nearly half the people murdered in the United States in 2005 were black. Most lived in cities and were felled by guns. While blacks make up about 13 percent of the nation’s population, they comprised 49 percent of all murder victims.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger knows the numbers.
But they reach different conclusions:
In June, Pfleger and (Jesse) Jackson were arrested for criminal trespassing during a protest outside a gun shop in a Chicago suburb. Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s, an African-American Catholic Church on Chicago’s South Side, has been crusading for stricter regulation of gun shops and manufacturers. Pfleger is in agony over the 34 school-age children in Chicago who were killed by gun violence in the first six months of 2007.
St. Sabina’s 2,200-member congregation is 70 percent female. Pfleger, who happens to be white, is recruiting the pastors at neighboring churches to get into the fight. “The church should be leading the path,” he says. “Women are much more vocal. I believe partly because of their sensitivity to the murder of children. Historically, women are much more progressive. That’s why churches are so vital, because women make up the main membership.”
Amen, Father.
Get those ladies organized, and watch out!
Pfleger and Washington blame the guns. Whitlock blames the culture. I asked Laura Washington a question a while back:
I venture to guess that the 2,200 members of St. Sabina’s are 70% female because there’s a distinct lack of older black males, in part because of the epidemic levels of violence have been ongoing for so long. But let me point out that the 34 school-age children who died in Chicago were not killed “by gun violence,” they were killed by young black men firing guns. Young men who live in those very communities. The sons and grandsons, the nephews and neighbors of those congregations.
Pardon my asking, Ms. Washington, but don’t you think all those churches and those women could be far more effective at reducing the truly horrific carnage if they addressed their efforts directly at the young men in question, rather than at the suburban and rural white men who are not?
Unsurprisingly, she didn’t respond. I think perhaps Mr. Whitlock might agree with me.
UPDATE: Read the commentary here. Perhaps Iraq is not the only place where attitudes are changing.
UPDATE: Jesse Jackson, of course, blamed guns:
“The loss of life from a senseless act of gun violence is a tragedy,” says Rev. Jackson. “Sean Taylor was a father, brother, teammate, friend to many and a loving son. He will be greatly missed.”
—
“Professional athletes have never known this level of endangerment,” Rev. Jackson said. “This is the struggle of this generation. We will be praying for new laws that will protect lives and the well-being of all.”
(*sigh*)
Laura Washington. (Again)
Say Uncle is right on top of this. It used to be said, “Never pick an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” Since the advent of the bit, the byte, and the pixel, this has become much less true. Still, Laura Washington is paid to produce her op-eds, and we “People of the Gun” have to respond and react on our own time and on our own dime. The “gun lobby” isn’t paying us (either that, or they’re in arrears for about twelve year’s worth of back pay to me.)
At any rate, she’s at it again, in another Chicago Sun-Times editorial calling for the election of a state representative who is running on a gun-control platform. As I have twice in the past, I sent her another email this morning:
Ms. Washington:
Since you declined to answer or even acknowledge the questions of my last email to you concerning your In These Times column “Let’s Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands,” I hold no hope that you will acknowledge this one. However, since I am one of those “People of the Gun” you blame Chicago’s violence on, and you’ve declared war against us, apparently, I feel required to continue to attempt diplomacy.
Your error on this topic is typical. You have mistaken two distinct cultures for only one. You are unable to distinguish between what has been called the “violent and predatory” culture from the “violent but protective” culture. You see only violence, and to you (and most urban residents) all violence is wrong, except (perhaps) violence done by uniformed officers of the State, and even there you are ambivalent.
Let me quote from a piece I read a long time ago that makes this point plainly:Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.
The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective). This is to ask: what is the difference between a street gang and the Marine Corps, or a thug and a policeman? In every case, we see that the good youths are guided and disciplined by old men.
I will ask again the questions I raised in my previous email:
How will prying open the “cold, dead hands” or shoving “tougher gun policies” down the throats of the “People of the Gun” – people you yourself have identified as almost exclusively suburban and rural white males, have ANY effect on the behavior of young, urban, black males who are part of the culture of “violent and predatory”? And, again, don’t you think all those churches and those women could be far more effective at reducing the truly horrific carnage if they addressed their efforts directly at the young men in question, their sons and grandsons, nephews and neighbors, rather than at the suburban and rural white men who are not? Does this not hold true as well for the legislature?
Or are these questions simply too difficult for you to face, making blaming the guns and “The People of the Gun” much easier?
Tilting at windmills, but someone’s got to do it.
Dear Laura:.
I read with interest your latest obloquy, Let’s Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands published at In These Times last week, and was inspired to once again put fingers to keyboard in response. I hope that you will again endure to read to the end, even though this is just one more of the “rabid responses” your plaints attract.
I was struck, at first, by the fact that the heart of your piece was on the topic of my first email to you – the grassroots response of those of us who (from my perspective) defend a crucial right of the individual; the fact that we respond spontaneously, in volume, and with our time and money, and your side’s obvious deficiency in this regard. I suppose I should feel honored.
The second point of interest you pronounced in your piece was that we “People of the Gun” as you term us (a term we have since embraced as only the speed of the internet allows), are largely suburban and rural white males. Regardless of the smattering of vocal urban males, females, and people of color who make up our number and are welcome among us, your observation is largely correct. (If you’re interested in the female “People of the Gun” among us, I would be more than happy to forward you a number of web addresses.) Here’s a hint, though: you really should de-emphasize the networking capability of the NRA. They are far too slow and cumbersome a group, and tend to be dragged along behind the leading edge which is made up of the gun blogs and gun boards on the internet. I dare say that most of us don’t visit the NRA’s web site very much. I know I don’t. You are stuck in the mindset that some monolithic organization must lead people in the desired direction. I assure you, it doesn’t work that way any longer.
I was struck thirdly by your citation of the Justice Department report that blacks, who make up only 13 percent of the population, constitute 49 percent of the victims of homicide.
I was struck, because most people avoid mentioning this fact which has been the case for quite a while, and I am loath to do it myself in most discussions on the topic of gun control because, like a corollary to Godwin’s Law mentioning race in any internet discussion almost immediately devolves into accusations of RACISM™! and the discussion quickly crashes to a halt. But since you brought it up, if you’ll do further research you will discover that about half of the perpetrators of homicide are also among that 13 percent of the population. In fact, they are far less than 13 percent. They are most definitely not suburban and rural white males, they are a very tiny, very identifiable demographic: Young. Urban. Black. Males. And they kill each other and the innocent at a rate six times that of the rest of the population. You are absolutely correct that “African Americans have plenty of motivation” to address this problem. They’ve had this motivation for literally decades.
But whose throats do you want to shove “tougher gun policies” down? Whose “cold dead hands” do you intend to “pry open”?
And just how, exactly, will doing this affect that much smaller than 13 percent demographic in any way, shape, or form?
Allow me to quote the final paragraphs of your column:
The Rev. Michael Pfleger knows the numbers. In June, Pfleger and Jackson were arrested for criminal trespassing during a protest outside a gun shop in a Chicago suburb. Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s, an African-American Catholic Church on Chicago’s South Side, has been crusading for stricter regulation of gun shops and manufacturers. Pfleger is in agony over the 34 school-age children in Chicago who were killed by gun violence in the first six months of 2007.
St. Sabina’s 2,200-member congregation is 70 percent female. Pfleger, who happens to be white, is recruiting the pastors at neighboring churches to get into the fight. “The church should be leading the path,” he says. “Women are much more vocal. I believe partly because of their sensitivity to the murder of children. Historically, women are much more progressive. Thats why churches are so vital, because women make up the main membership.”
I venture to guess that the 2,200 members of St. Sabina’s are 70% female because there’s a distinct lack of older black males, in part because of the epidemic levels of violence have been ongoing for so long. But let me point out that the 34 school-age children who died in Chicago were not killed “by gun violence,” they were killed by young black men firing guns. Young men who live in those very communities. The sons and grandsons, the nephews and neighbors of those congregations.
Pardon my asking, Ms. Washington, but don’t you think all those churches and those women could be far more effective at reducing the truly horrific carnage if they addressed their efforts directly at the young men in question, rather than at the suburban and rural white men who are not?
Again, if you’d care to discuss the topic further, I remain:
Your Humble Servant,
Kevin Baker
(Let’s see if she responds to this one.)
Do It Again, Only HARDER!.
Say Uncle points to another Laura Washington piece on gun control. It seems Ms. Washington wants to “energize the base,” since in her previous jeremiad she stated that she wanted to “get organized and shove tougher gun policies right down their throats.”
One of those throats, obviously, would be mine. Now she wants to “pry open those cold dead hands.”
Guess whose?
Say Uncle has done a masterful job fisking her op-ed (and I’ll get back to that), and Ahab has some things to say about it, as does Sebastian, and Countertop, and Alphecca. Since Ms. Washington states in her current piece, “Whenever I write about the plague of gun violence, I get a huge blowback from the gun lovers of America,” I thought I’d do my part as well.
Before I do that, though, allow me to bask in the pleasure that Ms. Washington took what I told her in my first email to her, and wrote an op-ed from it. I wrote previously:
Ms. Washington, you note in your piece: “(I)t seems the gun control advocates have been outmatched. Abigail Spangler acknowledges as much. Spangler is the founder of ProtestEasyGuns.com, a Virginia-based group that has been spearheading a slew of anti-gun protests around the nation.
“Gun control activists, she wrote me, ‘are TRYING HARD but they are seriously affected in state after state by lack of funding and contributions.” She recently met, she says, with the leader of Virginia’s only gun control group. “He says they may not even be able to afford any lobbyist at all soon in Virginia!'”
Ms. Washington, the citizenry will offer an opinion to anyone. Opinions are free. But activism costs money – and the anti-gun side has shown that the hearts and wallets of the general public are not really into it. Ask any hundred random people on the street if they favor stricter gun laws and most likely the majority will say “yes.” Ask them what the current gun laws are, and they won’t be able to tell you. Gun rights activists can. The gun control side of the argument has been supported for decades with money from foundations, perhaps the largest contributor being the Joyce Foundation. Look them up. Those of us who believe in the right to arms are the true grass-rooters, and there are far more of us than the mere four million that the NRA claims as members. As someone once put it so pithily: “Poor Lefties; they’ve been playing on astroturf so long that they don’t know grassroots even when fed a mouthful of divot.”
In the current piece she writes:
Through organizing, the Internet, and plunking down plenty of cold hard cash, the gun lobby has proven it is ready for primetime. Meanwhile, its opponents are languishing in the wee-hours of late-night local cable.
Right. The Violence Policy Center, the Brady Center, IANSA, the Second Amendment Research Center of Ohio State University, the Harvard School of Public Health, the…. Well, you get the idea.
Gun control advocates should piggyback on the success of online activist groups like MoveOn.org and MeetUp.com. These efforts have raised millions to promote political candidates and the antiwar movement. The money is there. Barack Obama, for one, has raised over $17 million on the Internet. Marches and protests are fine, but it is imperative to devise a response that is sophisticated and symmetrical to the gun lobby’s tactics.
She realizes her side needs money, but I don’t think she knows the mailing address for her grant application to the Joyce Foundation.
ANYWAY, back to Say Uncle’s fisk. In it, he uses one of my favorite “Uncleisms” – “Gun control is what you do instead of something.”
Ms. Washington makes two statements that I think are crucial to understand about the topic, but that almost no one on either side ever addresses. To wit:
The gun army, made up almost exclusively of white men from suburban and rural areas….
and:
According to a recent report by the U.S. Justice Department, nearly half the people murdered in the United States in 2005 were black. Most lived in cities and were felled by guns. While blacks make up about 13 percent of the nation’s population, they comprised 49 percent of all murder victims.
I am reminded of the truth of the first point every time I go to the range. While Zendo Deb, Denise, Tam, Bitter, KeeWee, Breda, and hundreds if not thousands of women, not to mention black men like Kenn Blanchard and Walter Williams, are members of the “gun army,” the overwhelming majority of us are white males, mostly suburban or rural.
But very nearly half of the victims and perpetrators of violent crime are less than 13% of the population. A very identifiable less than 13%.
Young. Urban. Black. Males.
In fact, the level of violence committed by and upon this tiny demographic skews America’s violent crime rates markedly, as I pointed out in Questions from the Audience? back in January of last year.
But whose throats does Ms. Washington want to shove “tough new gun policies” down? Whose “cold dead hands” does she want to pry open, in the apparent belief it will somehow affect the problem she herself identifies?
If you misidentify the problem, it’s no surprise that you misidentify the solution, but it’s more than a little exasperating when the other side points right at a crucial datum, and continues to make the same error. It leads one to suspect either a logical disconnect, or an ulterior motive.
“Gun control is what you do instead of something” indeed.
“Be consoled that you are winning the battle.”
(From that email from Laura Washington.) Want to know why we’re winning? Because we have turned away from the gun control path taken by the Brits. We have not allowed ourselves to be marginalized and politically silenced through the death-by-a-thousand-cuts.
And because too many people are willing to think for themselves about the question of guns and gun control. While anecdotes are not data, people like this woman pop up all over the country each and every week:
They’ve found a body in the woods. Again. Another missing girl, woman, sister, mother, friend strangled, stabbed, shot, raped, mutilated, dismembered and tossed in the brush, in a ditch, beside railroad tracks, in a dumpster, in the ocean like so much garbage. The details don’t really matter. They were all guilty of nothing more than perhaps smiling at the wrong man, speaking to the wrong stranger, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, not being wary enough while going about their daily lives, not realizing that they were prey, that someone was watching them, following them and thinking violent thoughts about them.
The photographs their loved ones give to the police are all eerily similar..a sideways smile, a dream behind the eyes. They could be me, or you, your best friend, your neighbor or your mother. And then the body is found and the coroner talks about needing dental records, about decomposition, about DNA. I can never get over the horror of it, those women, their thoughts and hopes and precious temples of flesh so quickly turned to nothing but scraps of meat and bones and if never found, nothing. Forgotten, except for the whispered hometown legends about the girl who got lost, disappeared without a trace.
How fragile we are.
Every time I hear another one of these stories, I decide that this will never happen to me. That I will not be a victim. A man will never understand the fear a woman has walking across a dark parking lot alone. How it may be a risky thing to take a walk by yourself around your own neighborhood. How no amount of judo or karate will make a difference if you are a small female person and there’s a large male person who’s running after you or, God forbid, has gotten close enough to put his hands on you.
I have two defenses. #1, listen to that internal warning alarm and pay attention to my surroundings and the people in it. #2, get my concealed carry permit. I’m halfway there.
“Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
Women, this is for you too. Don’t be afraid of protecting yourself. You really are worth it.
Every day people realize that they bear primary responsibility for their own protection, and that depending exclusively on the police or others is unrealistic. They consider the options, and then many of them consider a gun. Education is the key. People fear what they do not understand, and can be convinced of anything in their ignorance. Knowledge is empowerment:
I come from a long line of awesome women. Brave and bold and clever…and not the least of these my own mother. I took her shooting at the range today. She was tiny bit apprehensive at first and jumpy at the sound of the guy shooting the .357 next to us, but after a quick lesson on gun safety, loading, and lining up the sights, she got right in there and started shooting. After her first 10 shots, she put down the gun, turned around and had the most immense grin on her face. It was a beautiful thing.
I’ve decided that it is now my task to convince every girl I know to come to the range and and shoot with me. If my 60-something, breast cancer survivor mother can shoot (and hit the target!), anyone can. And should.
Amen! (H/t to Say Uncle for the initial link.)
Like Water Off a Duck’s Back
Say Uncle pointed to a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed yesterday by columnist and journalism professor Laura Washington. I won’t reproduce the whole piece, but here’s a taste:
Gun lovers disarm control advocates
August 27, 2007
LAURA WASHINGTON Sun-Times columnistIt looks like the petulant, gun-toting NRA stalwarts have won the first round.
Last time, I used this space to ask where you stand on the issue of gun control. A torrent of e-mails later, it’s clear: Gun-control advocates were outgunned, four to one.
The gun lovers were legion, robust and vitriolic. Many of you told me to go places where the sun doesn’t shine and the temperature is way too hot. Yet, if you believe public opinion polls, that reaction is an anomaly. For instance, last April, ABC News polled adults nationwide, and asked: “Do you favor or oppose stricter gun control laws in this country?” Sixty-one percent favored them, 36 percent were opposed, and 3 percent were “unsure.”
CBS News asked, “In general, do you feel the laws covering the sale of handguns should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?” Two-thirds of respondents nationwide opted for “more strict.”
What is the problem with the advocates of gun control? Why are their voices not being heard? They are consistently cowed and overmatched. Gun violence is out of control, yet the gun lovers are ascendant.
You think we’ve got problems now? Just listen to Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential aspirant. At a recent Conservative Political Action Conference, he bragged, “I’m not a newcomer to the NRA,” the New York Times reported on its political blog. “I was the first governor to have a conceal-carry permit, so don’t mess with me.”
Huckabee, mind you, recently made a flashy second-place showing in the Iowa presidential straw poll.
Do you want to be standing in line for gas, popcorn or a gallon of milk and find yourself next to someone who’s packing heat? If he takes the White House, we can all go shopping for embossed leather holsters and pearl-handled pistols. I’ll be looking to accessorize that with rhinestone-studded boots.
You know, the usual Reasoned Discourse™ we’ve come to expect from our opposition. Please, RTWT. (And yes, I do know about the Zogby poll.)
Instead of fisking her piece, I thought I’d drop her a nice email (and copy the paper’s letters-to-the-editor while I was at it. What the hell, worth a shot.) Here’s what I sent:
Ms. Washington:
I read with interest your op-ed in the online edition of the Sun-Times, and I had some comments to make. I hope that you will see this epistle in the volume of email I am sure has been forthcoming since your little jeremiad was published. Provoking an outpour of response was, I am sure, one of your intentions. Let me apologize in advance (though it is not really my place) for those who will shower you with invective and vitriol. We on the side of the right to arms have been fighting against a decades-long slow-motion hate crime,1 and it tends to wear on our patience. I understand such responses, but I cannot countenance them.
I am eternally fascinated by people who see themselves as “gun control advocates.” I find them fascinating because they epitomize to me the phrase “cognitive dissonance.” The fact that you write from Chicago, one of the epicenters of “common-sense gun control” only adds to my fascination.
Cognitive dissonance has been defined thus:
“When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn’t seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn’t executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as ‘escalation of failure’.)”2
Or, as I phrase it, “The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only harder!” We see this behavior in gun control advocates all the time. There’s always a “loophole” to blame. Always a “next step.” But “gun control” never improves crime rates, never reduces homicide rates. Never. Gun control advocates always – without exception – predict “blood in the streets” and “wild West shootouts” when “shall issue” concealed-carry legislation makes progress in state legislatures, but this never happens. Never. Somehow this data fails to make a dent in the “gun control” mindset. The strategy constantly fails, but the ideology cannot be questioned. Do it again, only harder!
Ms. Washington, you note in your piece: “(I)t seems the gun control advocates have been outmatched. Abigail Spangler acknowledges as much. Spangler is the founder of ProtestEasyGuns.com, a Virginia-based group that has been spearheading a slew of anti-gun protests around the nation.
“Gun control activists, she wrote me, ‘are TRYING HARD but they are seriously affected in state after state by lack of funding and contributions.” She recently met, she says, with the leader of Virginia’s only gun control group. “He says they may not even be able to afford any lobbyist at all soon in Virginia!'”
Ms. Washington, the citizenry will offer an opinion to anyone. Opinions are free. But activism costs money – and the anti-gun side has shown that the hearts and wallets of the general public are not really into it. Ask any hundred random people on the street if they favor stricter gun laws and most likely the majority will say “yes.” Ask them what the current gun laws are, and they won’t be able to tell you. Gun rights activists can. The gun control side of the argument has been supported for decades with money from foundations, perhaps the largest contributor being the Joyce Foundation. Look them up. Those of us who believe in the right to arms are the true grass-rooters, and there are far more of us than the mere four million that the NRA claims as members. As someone once put it so pithily: “Poor Lefties; they’ve been playing on astroturf so long that they don’t know grassroots even when fed a mouthful of divot.” 3
Ms. Washington, our side is winning because we can see reality. We are not blinded to a flawed ideology. The ideology you operate under is expressed best as “Guns are baaad, mmmmkay?” This ideology springs from an inability or unwillingness to see a difference between “violent and predatory” and “violent but protective.” You see only “violence” and violence offends you. From this inability you mistake the tools of violence to be the cause of violence, and from that error comes the desire to eradicate the tools. But this does not address the actual cause. In other words, “Gun control is what you do instead of something.”4
When disaster strikes and civil society breaks down, when the government proves unmistakably that it cannot protect everyone, everywhere, all the time, then some people have an awakening – and they go to a gun store or a Wal-Mart and try to buy a gun.
And that’s when they discover just what the gun laws really are.
And many become gun-rights activists because, as one woman put it when she found out she had to wait a week for a gun while being stalked by an ex-boyfriend, “I’ve been against guns and violence my whole life.”5 She and those like her were responsible for that interminable week wait. She finally understood the difference between “violent and predatory” and “violent but protective,” and wanted protection – which the law denied her for a full week.
Some of us are “gun lovers,” Ms. Washington. I am, unashamedly. But many, many more simply want to be able to choose how to defend ourselves. That is a choice you wish to deny us out of a belief in a flawed ideology that you cannot bring yourselves to recognize.
I’d love to discuss this topic with you further, but I seriously doubt you’ve bothered to read this far.
Thank you for your attention, however much of it I was able to garner.
(Footnotes not in original).
Somewhat to my surprise, she replied:
Dear Mr. Baker,
Thanks for your comments on the gun control column. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.
Be consoled that you are winning the battle. And yes, I did read your entire letter.
Best, Laura
=================================================================
Laura S. Washington
Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor
DePaul University
Contributing Columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
Senior Editor, In These Times
The fact that she responded was surprising. The content was not.
I sent her a short reply:
Dear Laura:
Thank you for your gracious reply, and for taking the time our of your obviously busy schedule to read my missive.
Water off a duck’s back, eh?
My sincere condolences,
Kevin
But wait! There’s more! Phelps had a beautiful response of his own that I hope he sent to her. I urge you not to miss it.
Footnotes:
1Dr. Michael S. Brown
2Steven Den Beste
3Tamara K
4Say Uncle
5Seraphic Secret
Credit where credit is due.
UPDATE: Commenter Kevin P. notes that he maintains (an EXCELLENT) Wikipedia page on the Joyce Foundation and their funding efforts. Way to go, Kevin!