A new wrinkle in the gun debate. What if the good guy with the gun is black?
We do not know what actually happened in Minnesota in the incident where police officer Geronimo Yarez shot and killed Philando Castile.
Let me repeat that: the world will never really know exactly what Castile did and what Yarez saw. So we can describe what is being said but not what really happened.
Possibly we will learn more verifiable facts. Some contradictory and uncertain version of "the truth" will emerge, as the physical facts of bullets, videotape, and a dead body are studied, and as we evaluate the comments by Castile's girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and now the policeman, through his attorney: it was the presence of a gun that changed things from routine to tragic.
In my extended circle of Republican Rotarian Chamber of Commerce civic minded friends I am noticing a new fad emerging, something akin to getting a Harley. That is getting a handgun and a concealed carry permit. It is a little bit of bad boy empowerment combined with the notion of "being prepared."
The NRA and Republican politicians celebrate gun ownership and carry as a right and opportunity to protect oneself and serve the community: "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is by a good guy with a gun." Men like myself, well past middle age, far too old for any police or military role, now being addressed by store clerks as "sir", and having young women at the grocery checkout ask if we need help carrying purchases to the car, we get to be strong again by carrying a loaded pistol. We are once again able "to protect and to serve" in the event of trouble. As Trump said, if people were armed the bullets could have gone both ways. What could go wrong?
But it turned out that in Minnesota the gun didn't resolve trouble. It brought trouble.
As Diamond Renolds told the story on video while Castile lay bleeding to death, and as she repeated it on camera the next day, the policeman interpreted Castile's reaching for his driver's license as instructed as if he were reaching for a gun. She speaks in an animated tone, but is very decisive about the event. Castile was doing exactly as instructed and doing nothing wrong. Click Here. She describes the police stop. T
The attorney for Yarez has presented as the opening explanation in the officer's defense that his client was reacting to "the presence of that gun and the display of that gun. This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun."
This incident confounds the NRA's politics. The NRA supports police, except when police are thought to be complicit in gun confiscation, at which point the NRA referred to them as "jackbooted thugs", a term that caused George HW Bush to terminate his lifetime membership in the NRA. The NRA supports the right to carry firearms, openly or concealed. The NRA message is the current Trump message: a white man with a gun might protect himself from a "thug" or rioting black men in a race war, making him a hero rather than a victim.
But a black man carrying a concealed weapon changes the politics completely. Concealed guns are to protect someone against the black man with a gun.
The NRA has been silent, and called out on their silence. Finally, they issued a press release: no comment now.
The incident in Dallas had a similar problem for the NRA. A large black man was openly carrying a rifle at a protest march. Some might think this is both foolhardy and provocative. I do.
Still, this is a behavior the state of Texas adamantly defends.
After all, a rifle might be useful if there were a shooting incident and someone needed to defend himself and others. And it actually happened in Dallas, a shooting incident. But in a real life situation the presence of that gun became dangerous trouble. The "good guy with a gun"--a black man--was assumed to be a "bad guy with a gun". He immediately surrendered his gun, he was detained, and some 5 million people received tweeted photos of him as a suspected killer.
Ronald Reagan endorsed and signed gun control legislation. Why? Black Panthers were openly carrying military type weapons, exercising that constitutional right. It scared Californians. The wrong sorts of people were exercising 2nd Amendment rights.
People in America will disagree over whether policing is reasonable, fair, and unbiased. The GOP/Trump/NRA narrative is that police are doing a hard job trying to keep control of very disorderly people. As Rudy Giuliani observed, these people getting killed by police "aren't alter boys." As I wrote yesterday, my experience with police is different from the experience of some other people. I assume I will be treated fairly because that is my limited experience. I have been stopped 3 times in 50 years.
What really happened at that traffic stop in Minnesota? What presumptions and profiles might have informed each participant's behavior? Can an armed black man in civilian clothes be assumed to be the "good guy?"
Acording to the Associated Press:
"Court records show the traffic stop was at least the 52nd time that Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor, had been pulled over in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since 2002. He had been given citations for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt."
Say, what? He was stopped almost 4 times a year over a 14 year period? In what world of community and traffic policing--utterly unfamiliar to me--is a person detained by police in recorded instances that often, and yet apparently was not actually cited so that he still maintained a driver's license?
Let me repeat that: the world will never really know exactly what Castile did and what Yarez saw. So we can describe what is being said but not what really happened.
Possibly we will learn more verifiable facts. Some contradictory and uncertain version of "the truth" will emerge, as the physical facts of bullets, videotape, and a dead body are studied, and as we evaluate the comments by Castile's girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and now the policeman, through his attorney: it was the presence of a gun that changed things from routine to tragic.
In my extended circle of Republican Rotarian Chamber of Commerce civic minded friends I am noticing a new fad emerging, something akin to getting a Harley. That is getting a handgun and a concealed carry permit. It is a little bit of bad boy empowerment combined with the notion of "being prepared."
The NRA and Republican politicians celebrate gun ownership and carry as a right and opportunity to protect oneself and serve the community: "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is by a good guy with a gun." Men like myself, well past middle age, far too old for any police or military role, now being addressed by store clerks as "sir", and having young women at the grocery checkout ask if we need help carrying purchases to the car, we get to be strong again by carrying a loaded pistol. We are once again able "to protect and to serve" in the event of trouble. As Trump said, if people were armed the bullets could have gone both ways. What could go wrong?
But it turned out that in Minnesota the gun didn't resolve trouble. It brought trouble.
As Diamond Renolds told the story on video while Castile lay bleeding to death, and as she repeated it on camera the next day, the policeman interpreted Castile's reaching for his driver's license as instructed as if he were reaching for a gun. She speaks in an animated tone, but is very decisive about the event. Castile was doing exactly as instructed and doing nothing wrong. Click Here. She describes the police stop. T
The attorney for Yarez has presented as the opening explanation in the officer's defense that his client was reacting to "the presence of that gun and the display of that gun. This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun."
This incident confounds the NRA's politics. The NRA supports police, except when police are thought to be complicit in gun confiscation, at which point the NRA referred to them as "jackbooted thugs", a term that caused George HW Bush to terminate his lifetime membership in the NRA. The NRA supports the right to carry firearms, openly or concealed. The NRA message is the current Trump message: a white man with a gun might protect himself from a "thug" or rioting black men in a race war, making him a hero rather than a victim.
 |
| NRA press release |
The NRA has been silent, and called out on their silence. Finally, they issued a press release: no comment now.
The incident in Dallas had a similar problem for the NRA. A large black man was openly carrying a rifle at a protest march. Some might think this is both foolhardy and provocative. I do.
Still, this is a behavior the state of Texas adamantly defends.
After all, a rifle might be useful if there were a shooting incident and someone needed to defend himself and others. And it actually happened in Dallas, a shooting incident. But in a real life situation the presence of that gun became dangerous trouble. The "good guy with a gun"--a black man--was assumed to be a "bad guy with a gun". He immediately surrendered his gun, he was detained, and some 5 million people received tweeted photos of him as a suspected killer.
 |
| Black Panthers |
People in America will disagree over whether policing is reasonable, fair, and unbiased. The GOP/Trump/NRA narrative is that police are doing a hard job trying to keep control of very disorderly people. As Rudy Giuliani observed, these people getting killed by police "aren't alter boys." As I wrote yesterday, my experience with police is different from the experience of some other people. I assume I will be treated fairly because that is my limited experience. I have been stopped 3 times in 50 years.
What really happened at that traffic stop in Minnesota? What presumptions and profiles might have informed each participant's behavior? Can an armed black man in civilian clothes be assumed to be the "good guy?"
Acording to the Associated Press:
"Court records show the traffic stop was at least the 52nd time that Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor, had been pulled over in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since 2002. He had been given citations for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt."
Say, what? He was stopped almost 4 times a year over a 14 year period? In what world of community and traffic policing--utterly unfamiliar to me--is a person detained by police in recorded instances that often, and yet apparently was not actually cited so that he still maintained a driver's license?
Election Context
From the point of view of Hillary's team, the Minnesota case confirms a grave problem of systemic racism. Plus, the NRA is made to look hypocritical. That's good for Hillary, right? Not necessarily. Hillary's team is already sold on racial prejudice and grievance. Hillary's problem is that she is running as the continuity candidate. We have had a black president for 8 years and she is running as his successor. Therefore, the incident tells a story that is uncomfortable for white voters. It shows that liberal politicians and policies don't work. Racial strife is as bad as ever, and what more could we do than elect a black president?
Worse, the incident suggests something ugly and intractable: white people are in fact guilty of racism, and few white people want to integrate that notion into ones conscience? This is Minnesota in 2016, not George Wallace's 1950's Alabama. The problem is us. Apparently--maybe--even people we need to entrust with our safety--policemen--are actually carrying out racist profiling and policing.
Hillary's message is an uncomfortable one: maybe we are, indeed, more racist than we thought and we need to change ourselves. It sounds like a scold.
Trump has an easier message: Policemen are good, all except a very few "bad apples." Bad guys are bad and good guys are good and generally they are color-coded for easy distinction. People like you are good. Bad guys look different. All this multicultural stuff is PC and watering down what we really know deep down, that other people--unassimilated Mexicans and other immigrants, crafty foreigners, Muslims generally, and disorderly protesters of all colors, and the liberal friends of those people--are making America dangerous and are pulling us down. Trump says he isn't racist--the Mexicans and the blacks love him--it is just that he is saying the the simple truth, that there are a lot of illegals and thugs and terrorists out there and Trump will name them and protect real Americans from them. There is a war out there and he is on our side against them. There is nothing wrong with you, Trump says, except that you have elected weak leaders.
3 comments:
The thing is, Trump never says exactly what he's actually going to do. He generalizes everything and lets the listener fill in the blanks. He's more of an ink blot than anything else. Seek what you want and you will find it. That's how scam artists work. They lead you willingly to your own destruction. All said, he's very good at that.
Peter, your insights are remarkable. If only folks read this blog post as greedily as they read the instructions inserted in the spanking-new AR-15 submachine gun case. I (almost) kissed the computer screen when I read the words: "Concealed guns are to protect someone against the black man with a gun." I have a feeling that the black sniper on the roof of the Dallas parking garage, picking off white cops might be America's wake up call since the slaughter of kindergartners didn't move enough folks.Just as crazy whites have second amendment rights, so do crazy blacks. What does American society wish for more since it can't have both -- everybody including blacks toting AR-15s or responsible gun laws?
Yes, Thad is a tough read. Got to read it slowly, maybe going back to read it again to absorb it all. Sort of like reading fine print.
Post a Comment