"Our Boys are Killing One Another."
Profound words from the Pastor of New York's Allen AME Church the other day when during a television interview I asked the prominent African American Pastor, the Rev. Floyd Flake, why he is supporting the highly controversial and polarizing Police Practice of "Stop and Frisk."(Which consists of the New York Police Department stopping mostly African American and Latino young men. Statistics show overwhelmingly the stopped subjects have done nothing wrong.)
The debate has raged on for months and is in Federal Court. Civil Liberties and alleged profiling vs. getting the guns off the street and cutting crime.
Flake, who happens to be a former Congressman and played a major role in rebuilding Southeast Queens, had no problem from his Washington days of working with his fellow Democrats, but Republicans as well. Relatively new to Washington at the time, he was able to deliver Federal buildings to the district.
I was in his office to talk about the Political Conventions, but my intrigue was still high regarding why he is backing "Stop and Frisk." After all several years ago, Flake-with a congregation of thousands, in a high profile situation, had been pulled over himself by the police.
"I am one of the persons as a Pastor, who have to face the families when one of these children gets killed." Flake said.
As Flake talked, I quickly thought back to about two weeks ago when I did the unthinkable while live on TV, I never thought it would happen. I almost broke down in tears while discussing gun violence.
I was caught off guard on RNN-TV when we aired part of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's weekly radio show, and the mayor's guest Tiffany Orr was very upset on the radio. A stray bullet took the life of her 13-year-old son Ronald Wallace Jr., and she was crying hysterically and screamed, on the radio:
"Too much violence is going on.
Too many Kids. He was only 13. 13!!That was my baby. That was my baby!!!
What do I do? What should I do now?"
It really hurts to see so many people, all across America losing their lives... Most recently Aurora, Colorado. Then, as Mother Tiffany Orr was crying on WOR radio about her 13-year-old son's shooting, more gun violence was literally happening near New York's Empire State building, but sadly such acts seem like they are becoming the norm.
As a society have we become immune to the violence? Rev. Flake has always had a way of connecting with his subjects. He continued:
So whether it's a 22-year-old who got shot in the head... whether it is a young lady who got killed because somebody was not invited to the party, broke in and killed her... or whether it's the kid that's four years old, three years old out in the park.
When I started in Journalism over 25 years ago as a radio reporter, I was sent at 6 a.m. to a housing project in Brooklyn where there was a drug-related shooting. I grew up in the housing projects myself in the Bronx, but this building, even I was afraid to walk into. A bullet had went through an apartment door killing a toddler. I was there at the kitchen table as the mother arrived home telling the grandmother, the child did not make it.
To witness the pain of a parent suddenly and tragically losing a child is almost indescribable. I will take that Brooklyn shooting to my grave. You never get used to it, and to this very day, the one story I can not cover emotionally as a journalist is the funeral of a young child, seeing the little coffins.
I have always felt that somehow I personally failed children of such tragedies. Of course there was no bond between us, but in death, I always felt a connection. That the young children can not defend themselves, or really speak up for themselves, and felt that somehow I was responsible. That as a journalist, I just didn't do enough to raise awareness.
Pastor Flake continued during our interview where his point was not to blame the police for "stop and frisk, but rather those committing the crime :
"The reality is, we can not sit on the sidelines and pretend that our problem is because of those who are trying to assist, and trying to drive down the crime, our responsibility becomes how do we position ourselves as a people, to deal with the reality that our own people are killing one another."
If you think I'm engaging in NRA bashing, or being overdramatic, exaggerating, or perhaps being sensational, consider one of the stories out of New York, that was in newspaper the same day I spoke to Rev. Flake. It wasn't on page one or even a major headline, but this was the caption in the New York Post.
"Boy, 4, still asking for his mommy after witnessing her shooting in Brooklyn."
I kept looking at the young woman's photo in the paper. She's identified as Fatima Gordon, 28, and she died screaming her boy's name after an alleged shooter on a bicycle fired several rounds at a couple of men in Brooklyn. I thought:
Did Fatima have time to stop and think about anything?
Did Fatima have time to protect her child from the bullets like a woman did in Brooklyn shielding kids from the bullets outside a bogeda corner store before she died literally on the street.
Or Did Fatima have time to assess her young life? Or wonder where were her protectors?
I have heard the arguments, guns don't kill people, people kill people.
But I have to agree with Mayor Bloomberg. What if that person didn't have the gun in the first place?
On the same day I looked at the New York Post regarding the shooting of the young mother, there had been another shooting... this one at a supermarket in Old Bridge New Jersey where one worker killed two employees and himself.
Here yet another headline that should scare every American. This time from the New York Daily News.
'Amid Chicago crime wave, 17-year-old shot a block away from President Obama's house in the Kenwood area.""Chicago has been hit with a recent surge in violent crime, that in recent weeks has included two shootings of young men within blocks of the Obama household."
Many of us respect the second amendment and the right to bear arms, but folks we have got to do something, and demand more of our elected officials to combat guns, and certainly assault weapons.
Our Children deserve better.
Follow Dominic Carter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Dominictv
Gun ownership has gone up
Gun laws have loosened
Violent crime, including homicide with a firearm, have gone down
It's gun control we need, it's gang control. And gangs will always be able to get their hands on anything they want. The "war on drugs" is a failure, but you think a war on guns will somehow work?
It makes me think the problem is not guns, but something else. And let's not blame poverty either. There are poor people all over America and the vast majority manage not to shoot each other.
Dominic Carter
http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Sexually-Abused-Men-Is-Your-Husband-One-of-Them/7
I think the reason there are so many violent criminals is because gangs train them. I cannot think of any way to eliminate the gangs that would not evoke even greater horror, but think about this. Would anyone who would commit a murder with a gun -- who would risk the lives of innocent bystanders -- would any such person be morally above doing a burglary, mugging or even a rape if he were able? If police cannot even keep the streets free of murderers, how can we trust them the protect us from burglars, muggers and rapists?
So long as the state allows so many violent criminals to exist outside of prison, the last thing I would do is anything that makes it harder for us to shoot rapist, muggers and burglars.
But if you want to get tougher on criminals, on murderers, or on gang members in general, I'll support you. We need to think of ways to increase the likelihood that anyone who attempting an unjustified shooting is himself shot down on the
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarterevents.homestead.com/
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarterevents.homestead.com/
Those citizens make life difficult for all of us, and it's not fair. Thank you Rich7553
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/
1) Repeal the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (that's more than just the Second Amendment), and
2) Impose a graduated tax on gun ownership with penalties for misuse.
Draft Amendment and Legislation are on the bottom half of mjbarkl.com/run.htm .
--Mike Barkley, Candidate for Congress, was 2012, now 2014, CA-10
Doesn't that sound a bit harsh, plus congress WOULD never go for it.
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/
Let's be real here; Mexico has even more strict gun regulations than even what you're supporting, and yet the drug warlords are causing so much blood to flow in the streets of Ciudad Juarez that the Mexican army needed to be sent in. The problem isn't the guns, it's the drugs and the gangs, and once we examine the author's own example of Tiffany Orr's son's murder, we can see this fact all over again because this was a gang related shooting as well:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/teen-arrested-in-killing-of-13-year-old/
It's one thing to want to protect our children from harm, but willfully ignoring the evidence like this only creates a never ending cycle of desperately creating more laws that won't work out in the hopes they'll fix the prior laws that didn't work. You're not being part of the solution. You're being part of the problem.
My legislation allows you to keep your guns. It will get a bit more expensive if you don't keep it down to a reasonable quantity or if you misuse your possession.
--mike
All this nonsense about "stop the gun violence" is emotional, illogical, namby-pamby idiocy. You can't "stop" it. You can only reduce it, and only by arming potential victims. As soon as the word gets around in the criminal "fraternity" that it ain't healthy to prey on citizens in any given area, the violent crime rate in that area goes DOWN.
Buy a clue. Please.
I hear you, but that sounds like the wild West days.
I also ask you respectfully, why should any citizen be able to walk around with as many guns as they would like? Why should citizens be allowed to have Assault Weapons? To hunt deers?
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/Links
The FBI murder statistics do not differentiate between types of rifles. There are about 100 million rifles in the United States. In 2009, the last year in which numbers have been reported, there were 13,636 murders. Guns were used to murder 9,146 people. Hands and feet were used to murder 801 people. Blunt objects were used to murder 611 people. Rifles were used to murder 348 people, and that is all rifles, of which assault rifles are only a small fraction. Assault rifles are used so infrequently in homicides that many police departments almost never see them; in 2009, there were nine states that did not have a single murder committed with any rifle.
So why the focus on the so-called assault weapons?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/celeste-fronsman-murder_n_1864157.html?utm_hp_ref=crime
What are these gun control proponents trying to say, here? Yeah, this victim suffered horribly from being raped and burned to death, but it's a good thing she wasn't shot or else she'd really be in trouble? If a criminal wants to kill someone else they're going to find a way to do it, gun laws or no gun laws. The author isn't stupid so he certainly has to know this...but it's obvious he has a personal political agenda so he doesn't care.
To anyone who refutes this, please explain to me how gun control would have saved this woman's life, 'cause I can certainly explain how a carry permit would have.
No personal political agenda on my part. I just don't want innocent people to continue to die. I agree, that the criminal element out there is horrible, and alot of it is from urban communities. What type of monster rapes and burns someone to death! But are you willing to at least look at that guns might be a problem?
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/Links
Are YOU willing to at least look at that it's a drug problem rather than a gun problem? I live in a rural town where literally everyone has a gun and yet there hasn't been a murder here in living memory. I myself had a revolver for thirty years and it never harmed anything but a paper target, until two drug addicts broke into my house and stole it to trade for heroin. It's probably out on the street in a major city somewhere now, so you tell me, what was added here that made a thirty year peaceful situation instantly dangerous, guns or drugs? These addicts came from upper middle class white families so it certainly isn't race or poverty.
In case you still can't separate fact from fiction, here's a news story of someone high on PCP laced marijuana stabbing a 6 year old child to death as he slept in his bed. Please tell me how more gun laws would have saved this child's life, here.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/national_world&id=8797309
When a person is right, they are right. You are correct.
Dominic Carter
http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Sexually-Abused-Men-Is-Your-Husband-One-of-Them/7
I looked through the article Jack. Doesn't changed anything I said, but I did check it out my friend. Thank you for posting it.
Dominic Carter
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/Links
Enjoy:
http://easybakegunclub.com/forum/thread/564/Chicago
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/
Over 92% of deaths by illegal use of a firearm are by career criminals, gang members, and suiciders.
Not the continued fantasy that gun control reduces violence.
As noted the abysmal failures Chicago, NYC, including England, Australia, Canada.
Registration failures like CoBIS costing Taxpayers in MD, NJ, NY $44 Mil over 11 years and proving that yes, 2 firearms were indeed stolen, nothing else, defunded in 2012.
Canadian registry over $2 billion, traced 47 firearms to prove yes they were stolen and solving no violent crimes either, 50% compliance, long gun portion defunded in 2012.
Unless you can rescind Haynes vs US 390, 85, 1968 & the 5th amendment and make 85% of the gun control laws actually apply to felons.
Not the continued fantasy that a gun is the root cause of violence.
Unless you can prove a gun is responsible for creating 1 parent families with 6 kids and 6 different daddies, poverty, drug abuse, greed, lust, gangs, schooling, avarice, etc, etc, etc, etc all those lovely traits, situations, and frailties that make us human and drive the violence?
Think of the revenue from taxation, change the DEA to a controller of said new tax source and distribution, undercut the cartels and make billions, and introduce quality control to make it safer, make a minimum age for use like drinking.
Mankind has been getting high in one form or another since they day we began walking this planet and addicition rates wont change because they are legal so save the immoral arguement for others, repeal of prohibition deprived the mob of millions in revenue, cant prove such a move would not do the same today with drugs.
Violent criminals aren't obeying laws against assault, robbery, rape and murder - what makes you think that they will obey yet another gun law? All gun control does is disarm the law abiding and gives crime a better risk/reward ratio (criminals less likely to get shot by their intended victim). Gun control = OSHA for criminals.
http://dominiccarter.brandyourself.com/
Of the remaining half, something on the order of 70% are felons shooting other felons - most of this is related to the drug trade. It's high time we accept that the war on drugs isn't working. We spend >$25 billion/year and we intercept only 10% of the drugs. Just like alcohol prohibition, it is a waste of money and creates a black market that gangsters will happily occupy. Legalize drugs and put drug dealers out of business.
Will continue in next post...
So what about the minority of gun deaths that aren't suicides or narcotics related? Look at our mass shootings - with only 1 exception, every one of these mass shootings in the last 60 years has taken place in gun-free zones. We also know that concealed carry tends to lower violent crime. Why? It goes to risk/reward. Criminals, like everyone else, prefer not get shot. Lawful concealed carry makes violent crime a poor tradeoff - many will not risk getting shot for the $100 someone might have in a wallet/purse. Whereas when there is no such risk, that $100 seems a lot more enticing.
Interviews with felons bear this out - they are more fearful of an armed citizen than they are the police. They know that odds of being caught are low, and even if they get caught, they may not be convicted, and even if they are convicted, they do a few years, and then they're back out. Contrast that to targeting the wrong victim (i.e., a concealed carrier), where they may not live to see tomorrow.
We've tried gun control and it is an utter failure. The UK, which the antis love to point to, boasts a violent crime rate ~4x higher than the US. Similar story within Europe - the countries with the strictest gun control have much higher murder rates than the countries with the least gun control.
Let's try something different, and the foregoing suggests some alternatives.