“Despite New York’s reputation as the safest big city in America, some residents are far more at risk of meeting a violent end than others,” Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agit-propmeisters proclaim in their email blast (posted below). “An investigation by the Daily News underscores that young black and Latino men die most often by gun.” Yes, well . . .
that Daily News investigation simply points out that some neighborhoods have more violent crime — and thus more firearms-related homicides — than others. Despite the incendiary headline, it does not highlight the race of the victims.
The Trace’s editor, however, focused on the fact that all of the victims in the article were black or latino, and immediately jumped-up on one of the antis’ favorite hobby horses: the lack of gun control is racist!
Which is, it must be said, the exact opposite of the truth. American gun control laws were born from racism. And remain racist.
The Trace fails to trace that connection. Instead, they sugar-coat the fact that it’s gang banging that’s causing all but a fraction of the firearms-related homicides in these high-crime neighborhoods.
Among the dead were young men caught up in cycles of neighborhood violence, like Lewis Encarnacion of East Harlem. As disputes between residents of different housing projects in his neighborhood mounted this past September, Encarnacion told a friend he feared for his life, and that he urgently wanted to tell his mother he loved her. He was shot and killed later that day.
Disputes between residents of different housing projects? Disputes? Is that what you call turf wars between young men thugs fighting to control the drug trade and other illegal activities?
It is if you promote gun control.
