Anyone else think itâs weird that black Americans are ten times more likely to be killed by a firearm than white Americans, yet when the media melts down about gun violence it isnât because of violence afflicting inner cities, but in the suburbs?
Our society has internalized racism. We view violence in black neighborhoods as natural, but also foreign, as if it isnât impacting real Americans, but the others. The current debate about gun regulation doesnât focus on the neighborhoods with the most gun violence but those with the least. It feeds into this narrative that what happens in black neighborhoods is too complicated to address or outside of our ability to solveâthereâs no appetite to solve the crisis of gun violence in those areas. Even though minority violence is a greater problem, itâs only when whites are impacted that the issue becomes an actual problem.
While it seems obvious to me that if you think your freedom from gun violence outweighs the freedom to own a gun, then the path forward for preserving gun rights is a licensing program and gun registry. Iâm reminded of the quote, âif we want things to stay the same, then things have to change.â FDRâs new deal was less an act of benevolence than an act to preserve the capitalist system against a growing American movement for communism. So, too it seems that if gun owners want to maintain the rights they have today, theyâre going to need to make concessions before the tides turn against them.
However, what I wanted to reflect on was the fact that we often maintain an ideology that is informed by racial prejudices that we are unable to detect. In learning that a recent investigation found that school shootingâs have actually decreased in the last twenties years, I felt the need to meditate on what I believe. While reading about this study, what stuck out is that school violence rates in the 90âs were mostly related to gang violence. As a supporter of gun regulation, the general narrative that gun violence is a major problem currently, was contradicted by the fact that all crime was higher in the 90s, and to learn that school violence was higher then came as a shock to me. This issue wasnât new, and the situation has been improving.
Why is it that this feels like a new problem? Could it be media coverage or the increased henious character of the atrocities? Itâs possible that these are factors, but inner city gang violence has always been with us, itâs always been henious and a focus of media attention. But, it always felt as if it impacted a second America that I wasnât apart of, and only when I saw the issue impacting people who shared my white skin did I finally feel like something needed done.
While this wasnât a concious train of thought that I had worked through in the moments leading up to my favoring gun regulations, after a time of meditation on the topic I can find no better explanation. These biases harbor in us all, but they are so engrained in our thinking that they escape our detection.
It would behoove us all to be more reflective on our motivations, indulging in critical introspection, in order to grow into more thoughtful human beings.
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