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Guns don't kill black people, other blacks do
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August 16, 1999 |
According to an NAACP press release, African-American males between the ages of 15 and 24 are almost five times more likely to be injured by firearms than are white males in the same age group. "Firearm homicide has been the leading cause of death among young African-American males for nearly 30 years," it stated. Am I alone in seeing this as an absurd act of political desperation by the civil rights establishment? What's next? Will Irish-Americans sue whiskey distillers, or Jews the gas company? That last analogy only works, of course, for those who think the Holocaust was a self-inflicted wound. In fact, black leaders have already accused white and Korean liquor vendors of "invading" black communities and intoxicating their inhabitants. Boycotts have followed these charges, and anti-white, anti-Korean race riots as well. But who forces alcohol down reluctant throats? And who makes guns shoot in ways that victimize blacks more than whites? How can the NAACP even make the comparison between gun deaths of blacks and whites, if not as a racist insinuation that whites are somehow the cause of those "disproportionate" violent deaths, just as whites are the implied cause of nearly every other social pathology that afflicts the African-American community? David Horowitz David Horowitz's column appears on the News site every other Monday.
In the sociology of the left, including the NAACP, there cannot be a wound the black community inflicts on itself that is not ultimately the responsibility of malicious whites. To think otherwise would be to "blame the victim." Only mean-spirited conservatives (like me) would even think of doing that. The fact is that while blacks make up only 12 percent of the population, they account for 46 percent of total violent crime and 90 percent of the murders of other blacks. It is they, not whites or gun manufacturers, who are responsible for the disproportionate gun deaths of young black males. Firearms don't kill people. Sociopaths do. It takes a human brain to pull the trigger. If young black males abuse firearms in an irresponsible and criminal fashion, why should the firearm industry be held accountable? Why not their parents? Why not themselves? Unfortunately, as a nation we have become so trapped in the melodrama of black victimization and white oppression that we are in danger of losing all sense of proportion. If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus? Why do all those black Haitians want to come here? To be oppressed? In the grips of a politically inspired group psychosis, we find it natural to collude with demagogic race hustlers in support of a fantasy in which African-Americans are no longer responsible for anything negative they do, even to themselves.
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