“Gun rights advocates are often concentrated in southern, western, and rural regions, where official law enforcement is less present and individualistic notions of self-defense are common. But as I have noted, the people who pay the most in lives lost for our inability to regulate guns effectively are young black men living in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods. The racial divide on this issue rarely enters the debate over gun control, but it ought to. Is it morally acceptable to celebrate and protect a right that leads, predictably and consistently, to dramatically and disproportionately reduced life expectancies for young black men?” – Georgetown Law Professor David Cole in the New York Review of Books
Do you think this guy realizes just how racist what he’s saying is? Liberals have a paternalistic, condescending attitude toward blacks. Instead of blaming them for their behavior, they seem to think they are incapable of being responsible for their actions.
Why can the white gun owning public he blames for the accessibility of guns handle those guns responsibly, but young black men can’t? The accessibility of guns is not a causative factor for crime, obviously, because areas with high percentages of gun ownership don’t have corresponding rates of violence.
It’s not a gun issue—it’s a culture/population issue. Asking a population which is capable of exercising their 2nd Amendment right responsibly to sacrifice it because another population can’t is illogical.
Amen Jean Paul. Amen.
I was trying to compose a reply to David Cole, but anything I came up with sounded racist. You nailed it Jean Paul.
Good assessment of the real life situation. This guy should be putting his energy into figuring-out how to positively change the lives of “young black men (and women)” in urban areas so they can see there are better alternatives than drugs, gang warfare and murdering each other.
Of course, that would be challenging and hard work, and it’s easier to blame the Second Amendment and gun rights advocates to get attention from the gun hating News Media than to tackle the more difficult issue of helping people who really need it.
It’s ALWAYS easier to place and throw blame around than it is to offer solutions, or even try to fix the problem.
Is it morally right for David Cole to eat his cheeseburger when so many children are going to bed hungry at night, right here in America? Shame on him! Shame!
Actually, this ignorant moron has it backwards: Gun control laws are _inherently_ racist. The UK only got gun control because they were afraid of anarchists and Irishmen, and the US only got gun control because they were afraid of armed blacks.
Actually, they were afraid of armed poor people, many of whom were black.
Certainly it was racist, but it wasn’t exclusively racist.
Disarmament and destitution. Serfdom in the New Age.
This article pretty much nails down the dysfunctional matriarchy that the ghetto is.
http://therawness.com/myth-of-the-ghetto-alpha-male/
Indeed. Throwing gangbang/thug culture problem in with guns is disingenuous at best and (fill in favorite obscentiy) at worst. Worthless, filthy liberals shall take care of all of us, cuzz their so smart……for our own good. And they will do it through class, gender, race, etc…warfare. Divide and conquer.
BILL OF RIGHTS DRAFTED: WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT!
Yep.
+1
He completely ignores that the reason so many suffer in those urban areas is because those urban areas have strict gun control laws.
Cities with freedom recognized don’t have those problems.
“… a right [to bear arms] that leads … to … reduced life expectancies for young black men?”
First and foremost, the life expectancy of young black men in urban areas is a horrific tragedy.
That said, I reject the author’s assertion that the right to bear arms leads to reduced life expectancies for young black men. There are plenty of demographic groups with high firearm ownership/access rates that do not have reduced life expectancies.
Mainstream psychology, traditional conservative beliefs, and common sense all agree that children need to grow up in stable homes with stable healthy families to become socially and mentally healthy adults. Young adults also need opportunities to make a living. Unfortunately those factors are exceedingly rare in poor, urban areas. That, plus influences that glamorize gangster culture, has reduced the life expectancy of young black men.
+1
It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and frankly, irresponsible to say that if all guns were banned, urban violence would cease and the life expectancy of young Black males would rise.
What would be more effective would be dealing with the issues of generational poverty, lack of affordable housing, better education / schools, job training, etc. Of course, those solutions are more complicated than passing a law that says “GUNS R BAD”. God forbid we invest real resources of people, time, money, etc. into fixing our cities.
as an individual i have rights in this country. ask me to give up 1 or more of my rights when i’ve shown that i can’t be trusted to exercise that right. otherwise you have the right to stfu. thank you.
Yes.
Individual rights are not dependent on how some people or a general group of people decide to abuse it.
Jackass.
My guess would be that organized crime and illegal drug trafficking have a little more to do with the reduced life expectancy of young black males than white guys in the country and ‘burbs owning guns.
It’s often the case that when a person proposes a solution to any given problem, the implementation of the solution proposed would have little to no direct effect on them. They give nothing up.
“in southern, western, and rural regions, where official law enforcement is less present and individualistic notions of self-defense are common”
You know, if that was all I read from his article, I would think he was fighting to keep the government from drafting a one-size-fits-all gun legislation because people in certain areas dont have access to police. Reading further, he just shows how ego-centric and narrow minded he is by pretending that everyone lives in the same environment he does (which is probably loft over central park) and shares his desire to become an unarmed victim.
I do live in an urban environment and I do have a desire to not be reliant on police intervention. That’s why I protect myself where I can. I have friends that are black and have their CCW because urban living is inherently dangerous. The refuse that this guy is spouting would actually make black men less safe, and in fact all people less safe. He can’t see the forest for the trees.
Liberals are absolutely obsessed with race.
Minorities have fared terribly under Obama – even worse than under Carter. Liberals are quite anxious to ensure that minorities don’t figure this out, to have them remain “clients” of the Democratic party. Without them the Dems would win far fewer elections – hence, shifting the blame on those OFWGs in the South, clinging to their guns.
In their day, there were some great Democratic politicians, who were more interested in doing the right things for the country than clinging to power. Sadly, those types of Democrats, at least on the national stage, seem to be long gone.
So the “Gun rights advocates” in “southern, western, and rural regions” are shooting “young black men living in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods”?
And as for the racial divide he’s talking about, he only brought up “young black men”. Unless “gun right advocate” is a race, of course.
Yes but he wrote it wrong. What he meant to write is “Is it morally acceptable and even laudable to recognize the right of innocent people to defend their lives against evil people?” A right that is systemically by the politicians in “in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods?” The answer is a resounding yes.
Alternatively David Cole could suggest regulating young black males but that would be racist and probably require photo ID which is also racist.
GS,
Last night, I took the Oregon CC class at Wholesale Sports on 82nd Avenue. It was very interesting and even somewhat eye-opening since it focused on Oregon. The instructor was a local police officer for many years and involved in three fatal shootings.
And those young black men are killed, overwhelmingly, by other young black men. Most of these young men however are not innocents, they are by-and-large members of gangs involved in a ground war for territory.
But Jean Paul has it exactly right–condescending to a group by saying they are not responsible for their actions is a disgusting attitude.
Is freedom morally justified? Yes. What causes the racial divide? I don’t know for sure — but it can’t help that 1/3 of black men will spend time in prison, mostly due to the War on Drugs. Maybe we should look at that? Sometimes freedom is the solution, not the problem.
Right now unemployment among young black men is around 50%. When there is no hope for change or a direction for a way out, crime and everything that goes with it flourishes.
I have seen this in the Palastinian territories as well, all bet the main driver their is a twisted religious one.
Also his notion that it is because police are so far away is bogus. Just the other day an elderly wan was beaten in her garage in Oakland. Neighbors called 911 repeatedly and it took 30 minutes for help to arrive. 30 minutes in an urban area.aybe the people of Oakland should start thinking like those I’m rural areass? Oh and the citizens filled the hall to complain to the police chief too! Because you known it is their job to protect them and all. They didn’t quite get it. They are the first responders. The police are janators to mop up the mess afterwards.
The whining craven Libtard media is screaming for Common Sense Gun Control
Buy a shovel boys, and start digging
“Is it morally acceptable to celebrate and protect a right that leads, predictably and consistently, to dramatically and disproportionately reduced life expectancies for young black men?”
— Yes.
Another Girlie Man from the Liberal Northeastern Academic Intelligentsia heard from. They produce this garbage strictly to impress other members of their Intelligentsia. Now go away and shut up.
They all have that perpetual, smug look of self-importance. It’s normally worn by people who are working beyond their level of competence and failing miserably. But they comfort themselves in the belief that no one knows it but them.
I love pseudo-intellectuals that hail from those “enlightened” regions. I dont know what tickles me the most: their utter ignorance completely devoid of any rationality (the antithesis of the scientific method that i know they were taught) or their propensity to venture into the real world with their “education”, get bitch slapped, then come crying back to their university to teach.
So we just want to remove the tools that young urban blacks use to kill each other and call it a day? Might it be more productive to understand why they are killing each other before trampling our rights? What about other poor urban residents that actually do follow the rules and are prevented from defending themselves from those that don’t.
“Gun rights advocates are often concentrated in southern, western, and rural regions, where official law enforcement is less present and individualistic notions of self-defense are common. ”
False. There are a LOT of gun owners stuck behind the Iron Curtains in California, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, New York,and most of New England.
“But as I have noted, the people who pay the most in lives lost for our inability to regulate guns effectively are young black men living in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods.”
False. Most of the young black men living in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods are killing each other by willing choice. Its an unintended consequence of government welfare programs that destroy nuclear families. I can count on 1 hand the number of black friends I have who grew up knowing both parents. Most, including myself, were raised by their moms & grandparents.When there’s only one parent in the household, and she’s gotta work 40 hours , quality parenting can be somewhat lacking. As such you have millions of people in the ghetto with no parental guidance being taken under the wing of criminals , who unlike everyone else are the ones with the power, the money, the women, and the neighborhoods’ respect. The outcome is predictable.
Even if the liberals’ fantasy came true and every gun in the world vanished, you’d have a record number of knife and car bomb deaths in the ghetto. Street gangs would start teaching recruits how to build Molotov cocktails instead of pulling triggers, and then where would the libtards be?
Fighting to outlaw knives, then baseball bats, then crowbars, then monkey wrenches, then tree limbs and bowling balls, then cobblestones and concrete.
By saying gun rights citizens are located in west, south, and rural areas, and law enforcement is implied to be better, and more prevelent in presumaby the other areas, why are these young black males dying in all the areas where the pro-gun people, and laws, aren’t?
Is it morally acceptable to celebrate and protect a right that leads, predictably and consistently, to dramatically and disproportionately reduced life expectancies for young black men?
The premise of the question is absurd. The right that the professor bemoans doesn’t lead to the death of young black men or anyone else. He might as well blame emphysema on respiration and advise us all to hold our breath.
What kills YBMs is other YBMs, raised in a culture that glorifies violence, drugs and gangs. I recognize that it would destroy the leftist shibboleth of perpetual black victimhood if Cole actually placed blame where blame is due, but it doesn’t take any degree of genius to see that taking a gun away from me or you would not make YBMs any safer.
Where does academia find these pencil-necked, pea-brained shallow thinkers?
I have said to numerous anti-gun acquaintences that the government could ban the ownership and/or possession of all firearms and the only people affected would be the law-abiding gun owners. Either they would be forced to hand over their guns or become instant criminals. In either case, those who are already criminals and using guns in their criminal endeavors would remain unaffected by those new laws. What’s one more charge of illegal gun ownership when you have already committed murder? The antis don’t want to hear this, and choose to ignore this logic at every turn.
I am not morally responsible for the choices of others who are not my children. It’s that simple. The responsibility for crime lies solely with the criminal.
But looking at the opening there, I have to wonder if banning large cities wouldn’t be the more pragmatic solution. I wouldn’t support that, either. We have the right to live wherever we can make a living.
It’s too easy to blame guns and race than the real issues of poverty and crime (which nobody seems to have a good solution for).
Ten years ago I left a polluted urban hell for a blissful rural nowhere: green, clean and lots of hospitable folks. But since the economic crash as well as the downfall of the main local industries, crime and poverty here has skyrocketed, and with that drug use (especially meth, and then heroin started getting more popular). This gave us more armed criminals (locals) as well as gangs coming up from the south. Then you have the desperate addicts, and the violence that comes with meth psychosis. So: armed robberies, home invasions, assaults, shootings… Oh, and lots of stabbings. And the occasional baseball bat attack for variety. (Did I mention the paradise I’m talking about is in CA?) Race: 80% white, the rest Native, Asian and Hispanic, very few African Americans. Most of the non-white crime is from import drug gangs drawn by the market, and that’s not much. The rest (the vast majority) is all vanilla-on-vanilla. (One guy eviscerated a buddy alive when he was high, another beat a toddler to death. One of my female coworkers got jumped by a homeless guy while she had her baby in her arms. Just a random sample.)
I moved my family up to WA, but I still work here and get to enjoy the entropy. I have a CCW in WA, but don’t feel the need to carry there. In CA, I can’t get one, despite the fact that my female coworkers (who can’t get one either, ’cause they can’t prove “need”) have walked in on armed (and vanilla) trespassers at our worksites on multiple occasions. (See how good those CA gun laws work?)
I’m also old enough to remember when the scariest armed gangs (that instigated a lot of these weapons bans with their fondness for Tommy Guns and Sawed Off Shotguns) were Italians (me), Irish and Jewish.
Rambling… Sorry. These “Blame the Tool” guys get my BP up, especially when they think they’ve got the secret to easy utopia.
Sorry to hear about your circumstances, but at least you’re aware of the situation and have taken steps to protect yourself and your family. What part of rural CA are you stuck in? Somewhere in the Central Valley?
I was born in Oakland, CA myself, but my family moved to a sleepy suburb of Seattle, WA when I was about 4 when dad got a job offer. I never asked what were the reasons as a kid, but now that I’m older, I know they were definitely concerned with both crime and the education system. They’ve never looked back, and I’m happy enough here in WA to raise my own family here. It helps that firearms laws here in WA are definitely better than CA.
All of our extended family that used to live in Oakland has left for surrounding cities like San Jose or Castro Valley. The irony of this is that my grandfather, a WW2 veteran, had originally moved the family from Mississippi to California back in the 1950s because he feared racially-motivated violence (they were 1 of only 2 Chinese American families in their small town in MS).
Sounds like Humboldt County, which is pretty liberal on issuing CCWS, as are Shasta, Tehama and Trinity. And with the realignment law dumping all the meth heads back into the area, it is getting easier and easier. Maybe it is time to apply!
What’s that, Lassie? A racist, pompous idiot in academia, being covered by the media?
The “conclusions” he draws are about as surprising as… well, I can’t think of anything less so.
Why do we allow the left, the brady campaign, et al, to shape the terminology. We must begin to go on the offensive ourselves. It is racist to disarm the law abiding black men and women in these high crime urban areas essentially turning them into gun free zones. Gun free zones are morally unacceptable as they result in the deaths of so many law abiding citizens. We must enable and empower the population with the ability and training to arm themselves and discourage the criminal elements from thinking they have a free fire zone and a target rich environment to terrorize.
“Gun rights advocates are often concentrated in southern, western, and rural regions, where official law enforcement is less present and individualistic notions of self-defense are common. ”
yes that is correct. I think youre starting to understand…
“But as I have noted, the people who pay the most in lives lost for our inability to regulate guns effectively are young black men living in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods.”
ohhhh….sorry. you were so close but no cigar. you fell flat on your ass. Because it is logical for my rights to be infringed because other people that live in completely different circumstances than me cannot stop killing and pillaging one another. Logical *facepalm
“The racial divide on this issue rarely enters the debate over gun control, but it ought to. Is it morally acceptable to celebrate and protect a right that leads, predictably and consistently, to dramatically and disproportionately reduced life expectancies for young black men?”
What right is that? freedom of speech? freedom from unreasonable search and seizure? its not about “racial divides”, its about disproportionate education and poverty, not to mention cultural values. Without delving into the despicable viewpoint of real racists, tribalism is very real and very apparent in the United States: want more examples? post-apartheid South Africa is another.
you want to solve the problems for the young black men you claim to have sympathy for? start by reinvesting into education and infrastructure, stop the fruitless war on drugs (tell those scumbags at the CIA to stop selling crack to predominantly black neighborhoods in the US), and allow sensible, law abiding citizens to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their families.
“THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS ARE NOT CONTINGENT ON THE REASONABLE EXCERCISE OF THOSE RIGHTS BY ALL CITIZENS”.The good professor seems to be suggesting that in order to save a segment of our society we should all give up our rights.Personal responsibility is not part of his program except perhaps for his students.
Based on his comment regarding the proximity of law enforcement to the citizenry in certain areas of these Unites States I can’t help but believe he doesn’t get out of DC very often if at all.Is this guy training future SCOTUS Justices? The very notion does not bode well for our nation.
I’m surprised Ralph didn’t harangue this guy for his writing skills. In filing briefs with a court, an attorney is ethically obligaed to discuss not only the authority that supports his arghument, but the authority that does not. And this guy misconstrues Heller BIG TIME. All nine justices concluded that there was an individual right to bear arms, not just five, although it is true that the four dissenters concluded that it was an individucal right to bear in the context of service in a militia (the logic of which has always escaped me). The only authorities he relies upon, like Winkler, are partisan, and the only study he cites (which concluded that more guns = more crime) was a nonacademic hit piece–the academic studies (as Lott has explained) either show a decrease or no change in the crime rate when guns increase. He implies that NY’s tough gun laws have resulted in a decrease in crime–but this is just an inference unsupported by evidence, and the evidence suggests that the crime rate is down nationwide. There is no evidence to sugget that gun bans reduce crime. The reason is obvious to all but this Ivory Tower intellectual–most gun violence is perpetrated by YBMs who are too young to legally possess, using guns illegally obtained, i.e., a segment of the population that ignores all gun laws anyway (to say nothing about the laws that ciminalize murder and illegal discharges of weapons).
When I started the article, I anticipated something passingly academic, especially from a professor at a well-respected law school. Instead, I found a poorly researched, poorly argued hit piece. I admit it: I didn’t make it to the end.