I have just finished rereading the remarkable book by Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake, which was published in 1972 and correctly predicted our Vietnam collapse the following year. Fitzgerald’s thesis is that we failed in Vietnam because we tried to take our definition for government and apply it to a country whose political culture was not only wholly different but had been developed and solidified over several thousand (not hundred) years.
I believe that a variation on Fitzgerald’s argument happens to explain our inability to do anything tangible to reduce what has become an endemic condition called gun violence which has cost us between 30,000 and 40,000 lives each year for the past thirty or more years.
And it also should be noted that since we have no idea how many people each year survive a gunshot wound but in many cases then experience a shortened lifespan, our understanding of the true dimensions of this problem is what Grandpa would call ‘nisht tachlis’ (read: not understood.)
One of the few things we do know about gun violence is that blacks are victims of fatal shootings ten times more frequently than whites. In fact, for all the talk about how the United States has a violent crime rate which is 7 to 20 times higher than any other OECD nation-state, the death rate for whites is around 2.5, whereas the rate for blacks is 23.5.
The average homicide rate in the entire OECD is 2.6, which happens to be the homicide rate for whites in the U.S. But let’s remember that the white population in the United States has somewhere between 300 million and 400 million guns sitting around within easy reach. In terms of per capita gun ownership, no other OECD country has a civilian arsenal even a fraction of that size.
On the other hand, we have absolutely no idea how many guns could be found in the households of American blacks, for the simple reason that legal black ownership of guns has always been a no-no with the cops. When one of those researchers does a telephone survey of gun owners and asks whoever picks up the phone whether there are any guns around their home, what do you think the response from most blacks is going to be?
No matter how you shake it or bake it, the problem of gun violence in the United States is a problem in the black community because fatal and non-fatal assaults are intra, not inter-racial affairs. But this problem doesn’t spread around like a viral infection, it’s a type of behavior which is taught or learned.
Where does this teaching and learning first occur? Where do you think it occurs?
The biggest problem facing my friends who do gun research in the stated hopes of coming up with a new or better way to reduce gun violence is that they focus virtually all their attention on new or revised regulations that can be imposed on gun owners by government agencies, particularly the courts and the cops.
Someone walking around the neighborhood waving a gun? Call the cops. Some depressed, lonely old man sitting in his living room holding a gun? Go into court to ask for an ERPO order to take the gun away.
That’s all well and good except for one, little thing. Why should black Americans trust either the courts or the cops? You think the black community doesn’t remember how the U.S. Public Health Service conducted experiments at the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, GA by secretly injecting black men with syphilis over the course of 40 years?
In 1997, Bill Clinton signed an official apology about this study and some money was coughed up by the government to pay off the subjects and families of a public health experiment that was right out of Doctor Mengele’s playbook before and during World War II.
Big friggin’ deal, okay? Not one medical researcher who was engaged in this horrific deceit saw the inside of a jail cell. Not one.
I would be a little more charitable towards my friends who do public health research on gun violence if I could see the slightest interest or intention for getting the results of their work into the consciousness of the community which needs to understand gun risk most of all.
Like you’ll find a copy of The New England Journal of Medicine lying around the barber shop where members of the black community convene on Sunday afternoon to shoot the sh*t about whatever needs to be shot.
Aug 27, 2023 @ 10:03:21
It seems to me that the fact that the gun violence problem is also a poverty problem (see my comment regarding that study in your previous post) and a racial inequity problem is the third rail of the discussion. You see, as you mention, lot of studies suggesting new laws when in fact we have plenty of laws but we still have Black people and poor and disadvantaged Hispanics (in my neck of the woods) disproportionately affected by person to person violence.
When we honestly approach the fact that we are two nations, one privileged and one relegated to the back of the bus, maybe we will make progress on violence, which is economic and social as well as out of the barrel of a gun.
Aug 27, 2023 @ 17:05:30
Not only are they mostly minority in poor living circumstances, but they ofter know one another (See Papachristos’ sociograms.
Aug 29, 2023 @ 23:51:49
Sorry Mike, but this has to be up there with so MANY stupid things you have written about:
“On the other hand, we have absolutely no idea how many guns could be found in the households of American blacks, for the simple reason that legal black ownership of guns has always been a no-no with the cops.”
You sure it isn’t that legal Black ownership of guns has always been a no-no with the Democrats?
You see before the Civil War, Southern Democrats were mostly White men living in the South who believed in Jacksonian democracy. After the Civil War in Colfax, Louisiana, there was an election and white Republicans won. These Democrats—who are the white supremacist party at the time—then were going to attack the seat of democracy in Colfax, Louisiana, and oust those who won the election. The Black militia was called upon to protect this bastion of democracy, but they were outgunned. They didn’t have enough ammunition, and they were overwhelmed by the number of White fighters. It was a slaughter. About a hundred Black people were killed, many of them after they had surrendered, because White attackers had set the courthouse on fire where the Black militia had taken up to protect themselves.
During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward. Then at the start of the 1880s, a substantial number of Blacks were moving to big cities in the South trying to find more freedom in them. As the decade progressed, White city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans which lead to Jim Crow laws being passed by Democrats.
So Mike, are you sure we have absolutely no idea how many guns could be found in the households of American Black, for the simple reason that legal Black ownership of guns has always been a no-no with the Democrats?
Aug 30, 2023 @ 19:16:35
Stop pretending the Democrats and Repuplicans didn’t swap seats back in the Civil Rights era, when the Republicans adopted their Southern strategy, articulated so eloquently by Lee Atwater.
Aug 30, 2023 @ 22:37:23
Interesting in that Atwater was questioned in a 42-minute interview about the implicitly racist aspects of the “New Southern Strategy” carried out by the Reagan campaign and how Ronald Reagan gets to the George Wallace (Democrat) voter. This is the same Alabama George Wallace (Democrat) who had been in political office in one form or another since 1946. The same George Wallace with the preoccupation with race based on his belief that Black Americans comprised a separate and inferior race. When in 1958 after losing the Democratic primary for governor Wallace said, “Seymore, you know why I lost that governor’s race? … I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again.”
This Southern strategy was simply a strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against Blacks. This was helping the civil rights movement along with dismantling the Jim Crow laws in the 50’s and 60’s passed by Democrats. This strategy successfully contributed to the realignment of many Whites, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party.
So what Atwater may have been saying in this 1-minute 39-second snippet of a 42-minute interview is that the Republican party is not interested in saying, “nigger, nigger, nigger” and if you hear the full interview he was talking about, “All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he’s campaigned on since 1964, and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.”
Sep 01, 2023 @ 13:33:44
““All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he’s campaigned on since 1964, and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.”
You left gun control out of that cluster.
Otherwise, great explanation!
Maybe you can help me out by explaining why that exceptionally anti-racist Ronald Reagan joined with the NRA to support the Mulford Act in California, after the Black Panthers began their totally legal “copwatch” operation, and later came armed to the California capitol in 1967. The Mulford Act can well be considered to be the beginning of California’s present gun control environment, so it’s not unreasonable to wonder why a Republican governor was among its champions.
What was so special about the Black Panthers adhering strictly to the law? Were there other factors involved in the decision?
Sep 01, 2023 @ 16:29:25
Ronald Reagan was a registered Democrat until 1962 and was voted governor as a Republican in 1966 the same year the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland, CA.
I was a young man living in Fruitvale, Oakland, CA at the time and I just happen to have a good understanding and insight of what was going on in Oakland at the time. Believe it or not, I even had several interactions with Bobby Seale, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party. I worked less than a mile from where Oakland police officer John Frey was shot and killed by a Black Panther on 7th Street (close to the Black Panther’s headquarters) in 1967 and I remember it well.
You see the Black Panthers were known by most of the Oakland residents of trying to incite violent confrontations with the police. They openly advocated the killing of police officers. At the time, Californians were legally able to carry firearms openly. The Panthers took advantage of the law and while doing their “legal ‘copwatch’ operation” would openly carrying their firearms while following police around town as they patrolled the city.
Don Mulford, a republican from Oakland, and at the request of many Oakland leaders, law enforcement and residents introduced the Mulford Act. The Bill passed the California legislature by over two-thirds. Oh, and by the way, 3 Democrats co-sponsored the bill.
As in most states California requires at least two-thirds votes to override a governor’s veto. So even if Reagan wanted to veto the bill he didn’t have the votes.
You may be correct in that this act just may be considered the beginning of California’s present gun control environment.
Sep 02, 2023 @ 08:39:46
“Ronald Reagan was a registered Democrat until 1962”
Reagan was publicly embarrassed into registering as a Republican after speaking at a Democrats for Nixon rally. He endorsed Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956. He also had endorsed Nixon in 1960. Then, after changing his registration, he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He had previously stated his intentions to switch from Democrat to Republican, but his Republican handlers thought he was more useful as a Democratic influencer, changing the votes of Democrats who were on the fence. To say the least his bona fides as a Democrat were sketchy.
Sep 02, 2023 @ 09:36:00
And this has something to do with “There’s Something Missing in the Public Health Discussion About Gun Violence” how?