“Combine Stand Your Ground mentality with concealed carry laws and what you have is constantly simmering danger for all people of color, for two reasons: 1. Most people, as the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence points out, “carry biases against racial minorities beyond their conscious awareness.” 2. Being armed intensifies one’s fear alert. The coalition notes that, according to a study by Notre Dame psychology professor James Brockmole, “Wielding a gun increases a person’s bias to see guns in the hands of others.”
“I return to a man bleeding to death inside a convenience store as his 5-year-old son looks on. Markeis McGlockton’s death was a tragedy born of fear and, in all likelihood, racism – both of which were legally armed. Our legal and political systems lack the will to take on guns any more than they are willing to take on war. Indeed, I note in passing that the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act has just been signed by the president, its bipartisan approval hemorrhaging another $717 billion for military spending next year to perpetuate violence at the global level.
“What this says to me is that the nation’s first priority is not people’s safety so much as the protection of their right to be afraid.” – Robert C. Koehler in The Right to Be Afraid [via commondreams.org]