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“A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws. In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America’s approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America’s gun culture.”  – Matthew Yglesias, We shouldn’t talk about Ferguson without talking about guns [via vox.com] [h/t DM]

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109 COMMENTS

    • I have an appointment with my dermatologist on Monday to inoculate all my firearms against this ravishing condition.
      .
      Thank you so much for the heads-up. It is this kind of activism that will certainly defeat this scourge in the months and years to come.

      .

  2. I would have thought that assaulting a police officer, attempting to disarm him, then coming back for Round 2 may be more to blame than “guns”. But YMMV

  3. “Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police.”

    Also on the part of criminals, would-be carjackers, home invaders, rapists, etc.

  4. I read this “article” read fantasy story, my take away is, 1. Police can’t be trusted and should be disarmed, 2. Private citizens can’t be trusted and should be disarmed, 3. Inner-city gangsters that commit 93% of violent crimes, are misunderstood victims, …….got it.

    • Progressives love police to the extent that they act for the Progressive agenda (e.g. locking up husbands/fathers on “domestic abuse” charges or criminalizing heterosexuality via “rape culture” crap). To the extent that police do things like create order or arrest thugs, they are hated by Progressives.

    • I don’t think it is anything special about guns that Matthew Yglesias gets it all wrong because he has demonstrated that he is a certifiable idiot in hundreds of articles on pretty much every topic he writes about. He is lucky the Left is dominated by similar idiots who lap up his drool.

  5. “A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary”.
    .
    But, a well-armed citizenry ensures a politeness that doesn’t require a better-armed constabulary.
    .
    Be a responsible CITIZEN. Not a sniveling slave!
    .

    • The officer used a handgun that is perfectly legal for everyone to own in that state. The argument simply holds no water when applied to the incident… unless the proposition is to ban all firearms.

      • The officer was on duty acting as an agent of government; acting primarily under privilege. The governing body could restrict what an officer carries and/or deploys while acting under privilege as an agent of government. So, while individuals might be able to posses and use a handgun; it is entirely possible for the agent of government to be restricted from possession and/or use of a handgun while acting as an agent.

        • Just cut to the chase and erroneously declare me a democrat, ISSIS loving, Bloomberg paid, MDM dating, spawn of Satan. A ranting string of vicious BS is your usual destination anyway lately. 😉

          (If, however, you would like to reset our communications and deviate from your latest modus operandi, I would be willing to engage. i.e. IF that is a serious comment seeking civil discourse then I will answer.)

  6. The % of criminals to honest citizens doesn’t change regardless of how widespread gun ownership is. The vast majority of guns in this country are in honest hands. If I was a cop that fact would give me some comfort, not create fear.

    Just because this doofus believes that all gun owners are violent criminal wannabes doesn’t make it so. Projection, methinks.

  7. I hate to say I told you so but I said it first. Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and the protests that followed have everything to do with gun control and the racial aspect is merely a means to rally the blacks. The liberals are astute at using the black community to achieve their goals.
    http://youtu.be/ZTT1qUswYL0

      • I hate Illinois Nazis too but when he says:
        “…the Jew is using the Negro as muscle against you”, I can’t help but think he has a valid point. Especially if you word it this way, to sound less racist: The liberals are exploiting the black community to sway public opinion to achieve their totalitarian goals.
        Of all the words in this phrase: “unarmed, black teen”, the only one that matters to the liberals is “unarmed”. “Black” and “teen” are included to provoke the mob. Had Trayvon or Michael Brown been in possession of a firearm, even a BB gun, neither case would have sparked national attention. Because guns are bad, even in the hands of innocent youths…even toy guns. Had John Crawford or Tamir Rice been unarmed, and guilty of a crime worthy of use of lethal force. We would have two different poster children of police brutality. Obama would reference Tamir in “if I had a son”.

        • Oh, yea, divide and conquer is as old as the human race, and pretty sure it pre-dates us by a good stretch. Just look at big cats hunting, they often push a herd towards other predators to help scatter it.

  8. Anyone else notice an increasing number of these anti-gun articles are lacking a comments section? I guess the authors are even bigger cowards than their articles suggest.

    • I feel ya. The only reason I read anti-gunner articles at this point is to admire the flame wars happening in the comments section.

    • Yep. The “educated elite” don’t like the fact out of a hundred replies, only a few support their ramblings. All the other comments tear their so called “reasonings” (otherwise known as feelings,) to shreds.

    • And it does not matter even if he was “unarmed.” That’s just the narrative repeated by people that do not understand the law.

      Ability, Opportunity and Jeopardy, which the standard that applies to both police AND everyone else does not imply the presence of arms to be met.

      I grew sick of this “unarmed” nonsense about 10 minutes after the incident happened. It just shows the blatant ignorance and/or willful manipulation on the part of anyone that mentions it.

        • It is astounding how many people think that Wilson should have wrestled with Brown in some sort of made for TV fight sequence. Wilson is lucky to be alive. Sure, police brutality and overreach happens, but this wasn’t it.

  10. It seems like people seem to forget the Brown had stolen cheap cigars and then strong-armed the clerk out of the way. Brown would not have been gunned down by that police officer that day if he hadn’t. Brown probably thought he was tough shit, a real thug, but at the end of the day, he died from his own stupidity over a handful of swisher sweets.

  11. Matthew Yglesias is America hating scum and always has been. He is filled with nothing but hatred for free people, capitalism, private property ownership and the exercise of God given rights protected by the US Constitution. Just read any of his “writings”, don’t take my word for it.

    • +1 I’ve read very little of his stuff, but it was harebrained enough that I remember the name. He is not someone to be taken seriously.

      • And yet seriously he is taken. Pres Obola has praised him several times and Nanny Pelosi has quoted him as a factual source on the floor of Congress.

    • I think that he is the single most stupid and inane writer peddling political commentary extant.

      Anyone who takes him seriously should have their head examined.

    • Matt Yglesias is and always will BE an inflamed pustule on the rectum of humanity.

      Ray from Bloombergia
      NRA Life
      Soli Deo Gloria

  12. Including the words, ‘regardless of the facts of any particular case’ does not help your argument.

        • All sarcasm aside, the liberal elite aren’t that stupid, and don’t you forget it. The elites use the mob in a democracy to achieve power. That explains 85% of what happens in the MSM today.

          500 years ago, this type would have hung around the king’s court, seeking what scraps of power they could find. Then our illustrious Founders handed them a system they could play like a fiddle for their own ends.

        • “Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

          John Adams

    • That could be the new liberal motto, “Regardless of facts”. Come to think of it, it works for most of the media as well, “Regardless of facts, this is CNN.”

    • After reading his tripe, I do have to give him credit for acknowledging that what he believes is the best course for America just ain’t gonna happen. He acknowledges that blacks murder at much higher rates than whites but he doesn’t even seem curious as to why. Nor does he explore the fact that the most violent countries on earth are Hispanic countries with strict gun control. I’m guessing if he did explore this concept his solution would be more coddling and more welfare and the further disintegration of the black family. Which is the exact opposite of what needs to be done. In the late 40s a black male in his late teens was more likely to have a job than a white teen. LBJs great society destroyed that.

  14. I actually draw the opposite conclusion from the growing problem of police murdering citizens without cause -(and I don’t think the Michael Brown case qualifies fwiw.)

    the police aren’t at all “afraid” of the populations they’re abusing. That’s why it continues & seems to be growing. If the family, friends & community members actually went after the bad cops in a meaningful way, the problem would correct itself.

    • I have said this before too. Before the no knock raids will be outlawed (they already are but who reads the Constitution anyway), a cop breaking down a door has to be killed and the homeowner that shot him has to stand trial and be acquitted. I believe the last time I posted this, someone pointed to one such case. I guess it has to make world news then. Or several have to be justifiably killed. Or there has to be such an outrage that we are the ones marching in the streets. But you are correct. The government does not fear us. That is not the way this country was founded. The biggest challenge is, the pen is mightier than the sword and they control the press. We only have the sword and that is why they want to take them away.

  16. You know, it’s funny that Vermont has had constitutional carry for 100 years, and yet the police there have never had this problem …

  17. I’m coining a new term. There’s willfully ignorant but the new and improved version is willfully stupid(TM). Only applicable to anti-gunners.

        • “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
          .
          Ol’ Ben didn’t realize that under socialist rule, American blacks as defined by Jessie, Al, Barack, and the black population of Ferguson, MO, will not work hard at anything.
          .
          So how can they remain stupid?
          I ask you: How is this possible?!
          .

      • “Armed men are dangerous”
        That’s another interesting statement.
        .
        Hell. All men are dangerous, armed or not. And they SHOULD BE!
        .
        Be civil, Be polite, Be honest. Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you, Don’t be an a$$hole, etc., and you won’t have any trouble.
        .

  18. “A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence …”

    Every large male is armed — remember that violent criminals kill more people with their hands and feet than they do with rifles and shotguns combined.

    • Oh, that’s very very easy.

      Hot weather leads to short temperatures, therefore global warming is responsible for increasing rioting.

  22. If up-arming the public is such a threat to police, why has the number of police shot and killed in the line of duty declined to the lowest number (26) since before the War Between the States? If cops are actually frightened, there should be a reason, no? If there’s no reason, it’s not a fear, it’s a phobia.

    Mike Brown died because he was an enraged thug who tried to take out a cop. Nobody knows why Brown went insane that day, but it cost him his life.

    Too bad. So sad. Go burn your village down.

    • As bad as the riots were, imagine if Darren Wilson was able to get his ASP out and started beating Brown in the middle of the street and this not having the desired effect, the two other responding cops had showed up to join in. Shades of LA and Rodney King. Damn if you do, damn i you don’t.

    • “…why has the number of police shot and killed in the line of duty declined to the lowest number (26) since before the War Between the States?”

      Same reason for the fall in military casualties, better body armor and (most importantly) much better trauma treatment.

  23. This is what you get when you mix an extremist ideological agenda with a poor educational system and a liberal corporate media machine = Zombie Sheeple, dedicated to the proposition that all events can and will be exploited to further the march to a Socialist Police State ….and all for the children of course.

  24. Blogs like Vox, Vice, and so on don’t hire writers based on their skill or research ability, they hire based on their ability to write articles to generate views and clicks.

  25. They’re worried about Cops who shoot unarmed citizens now, and their answer is to disarm the public and create a full fledged Police State? LOL. …Brilliant!

  26. “We shouldn’t talk about Ferguson without talking about guns”
    Nonsense, we shouldn’t talk about Ferguson without talking about the trug culture in low income areas. Starting with lack of respect, lack of emotional control, lack of impluse control. Watching the out of control step father yelling over and over “burn this MF down, burn this bi*ch down” was a prime example of why the young man shot ended up with an attitude that got him killed. He was a tug, influenced by a trug step father. Walking in the middle of a neighborhood street is thug behavior, bullying a store clerk almost half your size & stealing is thug behavior, taking a hostile attitude with a police officer is thug behavior. The young man did not develope an attitude that day or on his own, it started many years earlier watching the adults who raised him. It’s on them, not the shooter and not gun “culture” Frankly this young man, when a child, deserved better parenting, sad he did not get it but as a responsible gun owner, I take no blame!

  27. A theme is starting to developing in the main stream media. That theme is anyone other than Mike Brown is responsible for his demise. That line of thought is now being kicked around to explain the riots. Anyone other than gang members and felons must be responsible for this carnage. I can’t believe the NRA hasn’t been blamed yet.

  28. NOT TRUE!

    The lying, scheming anti-gun voters and politicians are to blame. They own this and many more violations against law abiding citizens.

    Their twisting of facts is clearly demonstrated by the fading away of many supposed eye witnesses that weren’t even at Michael Brown’s attack.

    Their lying about the stats involved in gun control, or laws they supported and voted for, speak volumes about their responsibility. They should be forced to wear the T-shirts claiming credit for trying to disarm their, by proxy, victims!

  29. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America’s thug gangsta culture.

    Fixed it for you, Michael Yglesias.

    Next time put more than a microsecond of thought into the utterly worthless bullsh!t you write.

  30. Michael, you’re really reaching.

    I am a Dad who lost his Grandpa to a robber in his pharmacy in the 1940s.

    The militarization of the police is because they were given this stuff. They couldn’t afford to buy it!

    Cops still aren’t out of their cars taking care of their communities.

    Our problem is our education system is 27th in the world. Let’s talk about that.

    Our problem is we are eating foods that are high in poor calories. Let’s talk about that.

    Someone sold the lower and middle class’s jobs off shore.
    This issue is colorblind. Let’s talk about that.

    Happy Thanksgiving

    • “Someone sold the lower and middle class’s jobs off shore.
      This issue is colorblind. Let’s talk about that.”

      The blame for that lies on the shoulder of the shopper who chooses the cheaper of two (or more) products.

      To illustrate: Last year I was out with my pop at Loew’s here in town. He needed some black electrical tape. There on the shelf was 3M brand electrical tape for about 3.50. Next to it was made in China brand X for 75 cents a roll.

      My pop was 8 years old when Pearl Harbor kicked off WW2. As long as I have known him, he is ‘Buy American’ if possible.

      He reached down to pick up the 3M tape. He hesitated, and then chose the made in China for 75 cents.I didn’t blame him for that choice. It was simply far cheaper.

      American consumers are choosing cheaper. For the most part, I don’t blame them.

      You want to know who sold those jobs overseas? Look in your own mirror.

      • Ya know, it is a global economy, and nothing is going to change that. For a long time we slapped hefty tariffs on imported goods, then we stopped. Hmmm, wonder what the connection is?

      • It’s always been this way since the beginning of international trade. Read up on Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage and the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem for all you need to know. In reality the long run produces a lower marginal cost for everyone that participates even though it may cause short term displacement for some.

  31. tl;dr Yglesias is a well known nitwit, and Vox is flashcards for progtards.

    This article is good practice for tearing down simple-minded progressive reasoning but dont expect to change minds of the true believers in the Cult.

    Thats like trying to teach a pig to dance. Pigs cant dance. And all you end up with is pig$hit and mud all over you, and a pissed off pig. Its also not Vox’s business model.

    Here’s more info:
    http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/08/how-vox-makes-us-stupid/

    Note: Follow the money. Founded by Jerome Armstrong, a Dem political strategist and early in the progtards online effort, and Markos Moulitsas, of Kos Kids fame. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Media

  32. Well, shit, son, took you long enough! If only you had this revelation before your buddies burned half the businesses in Ferguson down, maybe we could’ve disarmed the country in time….

  36. The people I know that want to outlaw guns are people that will never own one themselves. Im assuming that the author is one of them. One of the over civilized over educated in this society that willingly put themselves in a defenceless position. There are no classes at college in wisdom 101.

  38. So, to sum up the liberal media’s message to the black community (from what I as an outsider, on both fronts, can understand)

    “don’t arm yourself for protection from criminals because guns! instead you should just call the police who will immediately shoot you because black!”

    …wait what?

  39. Its a damn shame that poor store owner didnt have a gun. He could have prevented all of this.
    You’d have thought after the first round he would have armed himself, but nope! What happened to him. He got his store looted and completely ruined.

  40. Writers with the political inclinations of Matthew Yglesias find themselves having to work overtime, attempting, via their focus on guns, to regain the high ground. They have lost it. They claim guns, not thug culture, is the problem. They forget that for the ghetto, guns are just the New Knives. Neither money nor guns are the problem. Culture is the problem.

    The claim that ever more taxpayer money is what is needed hasn’t panned out: Detroit, during the Model Cities program (1966-1974) received the 2012 constant dollar equivalent of $3,000,000,000. The result? Judge for yourselves. And that was but one program. Medicaid, AFDC, and many others poured billions and billions of cash and in-kind income into ghetto-type neighborhoods between 1965 and today. The money is dissipated by the culture into which it flows. It isn’t about race. Chinese-Americans appear physically very different from Euro-Americans, but thrive to the extent their family culture is one of respect for learning and hard work.

    The greatest lie I observe in the poorer groups of urban America is this, that education, the gaining of understanding and skill needed to do valuable work, somehow flows from money and staff stuffing learning into a child’s brain, not from burning the midnight oil. In reality no group we can readily identify as unusually successful built its human capital value by sitting in front of ever more teachers. On the contrary, and obviously, they built that value by opening their books, reading carefully, working problems, and facing examinations as a valuable motivator and challenge. Teachers can be enablers of learning. They cannot generally overcome the culture a child lives within, the culture of his peers’ families. Disrespect in the classroom doesn’t help, either. “Burn this bitch down!”? Or, rob your neighborhood store. Or slam a cops car door on him as he tries to get out. The problem isn’t race. It’s culture.

    • Very well said. May I add calling black culture “culture” when it’s NOTHING more than lowlife criminal thug life is supremely insulting to good honest black folks. Witness the “pastor” of the gentle giant’s church blaming the KKK for burning his church down. after he baptized big Mikes step-daddy…yep the same lowlife screaming to burn this town down. Reap what you sow…

    • RD. No argument from me about your comments. One thing I question, tho, is how much of that money actually made it to the neighberhoods that really needed it? How much was siphoned off for other uses? I cannot believe that people like Al and Jessie and a whole lot of faceless, nameless, .gov drones did not dip deep in that cash flow and lined many an off shore account with the funds.

  41. You can still have a murderous police state without the serfs and subjects being armed. Examples include the Soviet Union, Communist China, Khmer Rogue Cambodia, Nazi Germany, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and a host of others.

  42. My favorite part of the article was when it quickly devolved into “white people are racist”. That’s when I got the feeling that this guy was just another full-of-shit, liberal dumbfuck who wouldn’t live by half the shit he preaches.

    • ” He is lucky the Left is dominated by similar idiots who lap up his drool.”
      .
      Lucky? No!
      .
      He depends on it! It is his livelihood.
      .
      Without it he would not exist.
      .
      .

  43. Today’s quote of the day is brought to you by Matthew Yglesias, a hypocritical douche who enjoys dual-wielding shotguns while wearing Punisher t-shirts.

  44. If this author were any dumber he’d be a rock. It’s another ultra liberal amalgamation of contrived hypotheses and the ever popular correlation=causation leap that’s used as a foundation to build their argument, while, of course, any argument that’s pro 2A is made by idiots, and declared summarily invalid. They are the king of all they survey, as long as it’s a land comprised of logical fallacies. I fail to grasp how people of this ilk navigate life displacing every shred of logic they encounter with unmitigated emotional turbulence. Mindless word drool….

    • Gun culture is also to blame for childhood obesity, the housing crash, erectile dysfunction, and the second Ice Age. (Fret not, ’tis only sarcasm)

  48. Brown was a thug who attacked a cop. He nearly bet the cop and got his gun. Gun culture has shit to do with this. Its more liberal bull shit.

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