“An anti-violence organization recorded 52 anti-LGBTQ homicides in the U.S. in 2017,” an email blast from The Trace reports, “the most it’s ever recorded in a single year. 53 percent of the victims were killed with guns.” Hey! Not “by” guns! Well done Bloombergians! And if you think about it . . .
53 percent is just over half. A fact — if a fact it is — that indicates that the LGBTQ community needs to pay attention to something other than guns. In terms of threats headed in their direction, I mean. In terms of countering a threat, they should pay a lot of attention to guns. As in tooling-up.
Clicking over to the report by the anti-violence org in question — the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) — we learn that the study calls the LGBTQ people shot and killed in 2017 victims of “hate violence homicide.”
We also learn that police shot and killed three of the firearms-related LGBTQ homicides cited. Are we to assume that those police shootings were motivated by “hate violence”? A citation would help there . . .
The NCAVP study also reveals that 32 percent of victims knew their killer. Again, do we know for sure that the killer murdered their victim because they were LGBTQ? I mean, that is the point of this report, yes?
You and I know it’s not the means that’s important. It’s the murderer’s intent.
More than that, we know that all Americans have a natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. We The People of the Gun lament the loss of any innocent life, regardless of race, color, creed or sexual orientation. We encourage all LGBTQ self-identifiers to exercise their gun rights in their own defense. That is all.