Anyone who has ever taken a statistics class quickly learns that percentages are useless without numbers, and numbers are useless without percentages. Take, for example, the 2020 CDC statistics on gun-related deaths and injuries. California had 3,449 gun-related deaths or injuries, while Kentucky had 902. That is a mouth-gaping statistic until you realize that California has a population of 40 million and Kentucky has a population of under 5 million. About 8.5 per 100,000 die or are injured by guns in the home state of Nancy Pelosi as opposed to 20.1 per 100,000 in Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul land. So, statistically, your chances of avoiding gun violence are better in California than in Kentucky. Despite the racist meandering of Arizona, Senate candidate Blake Masters (not kidding), who thinks mass shootings are the result of too many black people with guns, “It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly,” Masters said.
Ironically, black people in California made the open carrying of long guns illegal. On May 2, 1967, the then governor of California, Ronald Reagan, was hosting a group of eighth-graders on the lawn of the State Capital. Reagan was a staunch supporter of the NRA and open carry in California—enter the Black Panther Party. Approximately two dozen members of the Black Panthers drove up to the capital with long guns and pistols in plain view to protest legislation proposed by Republican Don Mulford—whose bill would restrict loaded firearms and repeal open carry in California. The GOP, who balks at the teaching of inconvenient American history because “the division” will make little Biff uncomfortable, is perfectly willing to tell Karen, beware, black people want to kill you.
The Panthers were barred from entering the capital building, and their “invasion,” as the Sacramento Bee newspaper described it, ended up in a counter-protest with Reagan on the lawn. The specter of black men carrying guns—legally, so alarmed Reagan that he reversed his open carry stance, adding, “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
Stats and facts do not phase the GOP; if one mentions too many guns, they say there are not enough shooters. If you say too many bullets, they scream Chicago, which is the euphemism for black folks. This is an apostasy of Saint Ronnie’s orthodoxy because the Republicans of today have more allegiance to the legend and myth of Reagan’s friend John Wayne—let’s meet by the jungle gym and see who has the faster draw, an eighteen-year-old with an AR-15 or Quinta Brunson sitting behind her desk at Abbott Elementary. Each of the nineteen dead kids at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, had nineteen good guys with guns who stood by and listened to the screams and pleas of parents, calls for help from the children, and gunfire. Yet those 19 kids and two teachers are being buried day after day, re-traumatizing their loved ones who are reliving the horrors.
Using the logic of a five-year-old, Republicans and conservative Democrats—who say no law will stop every mass shooting is absurd. If you subscribed to that nonsense, let’s abolish all laws because none of them are perfect. What was perfect were the dreams and hopes of children not given a chance at realization because adults love their toys more than our children.
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