Mass shootings, domestic terror, and armed shoppers (op-ed)
Is there any integrity on either side of any issue?
In early October Former Sheriff David Clarke, famous for his cowboy hat and infamous for labeling Black Lives Matter a terror group, faced a panel on NewsOne following the Las Vegas shooting.
First, Clarke and the host debated the particulars of gun control.
Then one panelist, Dr. Greg Carr, a professor of Africana studies, said if the Las Vegas shooter (a white man) shouted Black Lives Matter or Allah Akbar Clarke would have immediately called the culprit a terrorist, and Dr. Carr demanded to know if Clarke was willing to call this “act of white America” domestic terrorism. (Could you imagine if a white pundit said the 2016 Dallas police shooting, committed by a black man, was an “act of black America”?)
Dr. Carr’s concern about whether or not the incident was domestic terrorism would have been appropriate if the shooter was in police custody and authorities were determining the charges. But by the time of the NewsOne broadcast the whole world knew the shooter killed himself, no motive was established, and the investigation wasn’t complete. In other words it couldn’t have been labeled anything except a mass shooting. Clarke attempted to state these facts, but Dr. Carr interrupted and repeated if the shooter said Black Lives Matter or Allah Akbar Clarke would have called it terrorism.
Clarke told Dr. Carr he could ask all the hypotheticals he wanted but the reality was the shooter didn’t say those things.
Now, that reality wasn’t lost on Dr. Carr so why the insistence?
Dr. Carr, and many other practitioners of ethnic and gender studies, see the world through an oppressor/oppressed hierarchy. That world view obligates them to defend the “oppressed” (racial and religious) against charges they feel only apply to the oppressor or “white America”. (According to this world view blacks don’t have the power to be racist, so blacks don’t have the power to be terrorist either.)
Remember, Clarke didn’t just label BLM a terror group he said Black Lives Matter would eventually join ISIS. So what makes Clarke’s determination of domestic terrorism, even credible to Dr. Carr?
It’s not.
Dr. Carr was trying to get Clarke to place domestic terrorism on the proper tier of his oppressor/oppressed hierarchy, and if Dr. Carr got Clarke to do so, then Dr. Carr would have successfully defended the “oppressed” and confirmed his world view.
Now, one the flipside of the gun control debate are gun advocates that claim armed citizens can prevent mass shootings.
Recently, in Colorado, a gunman enters a Wal-Mart fired and fled. Three people were killed. There were shoppers that grabbed their own guns during the shooting, but none of the armed shoppers fired their weapons.
A police spokesman said, once the building was safe -- we started reviewing [surveillance video] as quickly as possible to identify the suspect and determine if there was an accomplice, but the video showed several people in the store with drawn guns. That forced investigators to watch more video footage and follow armed shoppers throughout the store in an effort to distinguish “good guys” from “bad guys”. Investigators went back to the “drawing board” several times as they struggled to pinpoint the actual suspect.
The police concluded in this incident well-intentioned gun carriers set the stage for chaos and stalled the efforts to capture the suspect.
It’s important to note that in 2014 the FBI reported that researchers examined more than 100 shootings between 2000 and 2012 and found that civilians stopped about 1 in 6 active shooters -- by tackling them, not shooting them.
But gun advocates insist armed citizens will prevent mass shootings.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 11/8/17
In early October Former Sheriff David Clarke, famous for his cowboy hat and infamous for labeling Black Lives Matter a terror group, faced a panel on NewsOne following the Las Vegas shooting.
First, Clarke and the host debated the particulars of gun control.
Then one panelist, Dr. Greg Carr, a professor of Africana studies, said if the Las Vegas shooter (a white man) shouted Black Lives Matter or Allah Akbar Clarke would have immediately called the culprit a terrorist, and Dr. Carr demanded to know if Clarke was willing to call this “act of white America” domestic terrorism. (Could you imagine if a white pundit said the 2016 Dallas police shooting, committed by a black man, was an “act of black America”?)
Dr. Carr’s concern about whether or not the incident was domestic terrorism would have been appropriate if the shooter was in police custody and authorities were determining the charges. But by the time of the NewsOne broadcast the whole world knew the shooter killed himself, no motive was established, and the investigation wasn’t complete. In other words it couldn’t have been labeled anything except a mass shooting. Clarke attempted to state these facts, but Dr. Carr interrupted and repeated if the shooter said Black Lives Matter or Allah Akbar Clarke would have called it terrorism.
Clarke told Dr. Carr he could ask all the hypotheticals he wanted but the reality was the shooter didn’t say those things.
Now, that reality wasn’t lost on Dr. Carr so why the insistence?
Dr. Carr, and many other practitioners of ethnic and gender studies, see the world through an oppressor/oppressed hierarchy. That world view obligates them to defend the “oppressed” (racial and religious) against charges they feel only apply to the oppressor or “white America”. (According to this world view blacks don’t have the power to be racist, so blacks don’t have the power to be terrorist either.)
Remember, Clarke didn’t just label BLM a terror group he said Black Lives Matter would eventually join ISIS. So what makes Clarke’s determination of domestic terrorism, even credible to Dr. Carr?
It’s not.
Dr. Carr was trying to get Clarke to place domestic terrorism on the proper tier of his oppressor/oppressed hierarchy, and if Dr. Carr got Clarke to do so, then Dr. Carr would have successfully defended the “oppressed” and confirmed his world view.
Now, one the flipside of the gun control debate are gun advocates that claim armed citizens can prevent mass shootings.
Recently, in Colorado, a gunman enters a Wal-Mart fired and fled. Three people were killed. There were shoppers that grabbed their own guns during the shooting, but none of the armed shoppers fired their weapons.
A police spokesman said, once the building was safe -- we started reviewing [surveillance video] as quickly as possible to identify the suspect and determine if there was an accomplice, but the video showed several people in the store with drawn guns. That forced investigators to watch more video footage and follow armed shoppers throughout the store in an effort to distinguish “good guys” from “bad guys”. Investigators went back to the “drawing board” several times as they struggled to pinpoint the actual suspect.
The police concluded in this incident well-intentioned gun carriers set the stage for chaos and stalled the efforts to capture the suspect.
It’s important to note that in 2014 the FBI reported that researchers examined more than 100 shootings between 2000 and 2012 and found that civilians stopped about 1 in 6 active shooters -- by tackling them, not shooting them.
But gun advocates insist armed citizens will prevent mass shootings.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 11/8/17
Comments
Post a Comment