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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By John T. Bennett
Guns are responsible for violence in the same way that pencils are
responsible for bad test scores. Those of us who embrace the notions of
character and accountability would say that the person himself is
responsible for how he uses his gun. If an individual or group tends to use
guns in a murderous manner, then we point to defects in character and hold
those individuals or groups fully accountability for their actions.
However, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has a different idea:
he recently asked a church to consider "federal gun laws that facilitate the
flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers, across this country, that
are killing black and brown children." So laws should be blamed, to some
significant degree, for minority violence. This may come as a surprise to
those with a more traditional view of free will and human dignity.
McCarthy made his remarks at the St. Sabina Church, with Father Michael
Pfleger and the congregation in approval. It's always tempting to evade
responsibility and blame society for individual failings. But that
temptation carries a serious price, especially when community leaders and
public policy strip people of their responsibilities. Claiming that gun
laws cause violence in the black community is a shameful attempt to shift
responsibility.
Shifting responsibility is a natural but dangerous reaction to the black
crime rate. Different racial groups experience the problem of gun violence
differently: the firearm homicide rate is at 18 per 100,000 members of the
population for blacks, and 1.5 per 100,000 for whites, according to the
liberal Brady Center. Even the white rate is over 50% above the gun
homicide rate in other Western nations, but the contrast is not nearly as
extreme as the contrast among racial gun violence rates in America.
Of course, the culture of any given community will determine its level of
violence, with gun laws making a minor difference at best. The devastating
cultural changes impacting society -- and the black community in particular
-- during the 1960s are largely to blame for the violence we see. Political
scientist James Q. Wilson summed up that cultural change perfectly, saying,
"[P]eople abandoned the idea that self-control was the standard by which
life should be led." The current conditions on the South Side and in
ghettos around America are a direct result of generation upon generation of
excuses -- wrapped up in social-science garb, righteous indignation, and
racial sensitivity -- but excuses all the same. The young men committing
violent crimes today have been steeped in generational irresponsibility, and
Chicago's police superintendant has kept up the flow.
Our urban areas have since the 1960s been awful and desperate places for
both the underclass and anyone else unlucky enough to run into the
underclass. This is the downside of diversity and multiculturalism. Living
in a multicultural society creates a conflict for many, especially liberals
. When minorities occasionally fail and wreak havoc, we have a tough choice
society" is shorthand for the society whites have created. Many people,
even nominally educated ones, will jump at the chance to chastise society
for the failings of individuals or groups. That approach offers a cheap
sense of moral superiority, wrapped in false compassion, and appeases the
neurotic desire to be liked by groups that are not succeeding, which is a
hallmark of liberalism.
Pandering is another element of liberalism, and Superintendant McCarthy's
speech certainly had a dash: at one point he said that "everybody's afraid
of race" but that he wasn't afraid of talking about the subject, as if he
were there to say something bold. How did he show that he wasn't afraid to
talk about race? By going to a liberal black church and blaming a black
social problem on white racism.
McCarthy heaped on, saying that the accessibility of firearms in America is
an extension of "government-sponsored racism" that goes back to the days of
slavery and Jim Crow. That's right: it's racist that some blacks don't know
how to use guns without slaughtering each other en masse. The alternative
viewpoint is that cultures based in accountability and self-control will
thrive in conditions of Second-Amendment freedom, while that same condition
of freedom will be difficult for cultures that, say, tend to make excuses
for their failings. The more a group depends on the government, the more
that group will define its own agency and free will as being dependent on
that government, and the more that group will debase itself while waiting
for the government to take responsibility for the group's own conduct.
But McCarthy had even more to say: there has to be "a recognition of who's
paying the price for gun manufacturers being rich and living in gated
communities." So top it off with a dash of class envy. McCarthy and white
liberals in general all know that they can make gullible people swallow
anything if they mix it in with a bit of class envy. This is a case in
point: McCarthy is claiming that gun manufacturers are rich because black
people are killing each other, and government racism made it all possible.
That class envy feeds into a sense of grievance and entitlement, which
translates into crime. Chicago has its head of law enforcement peddling
black grievance and class envy. It's no wonder black teens are going up to
the North Side in mobs to beat and rob whites and Asians.
McCarthy, with his reckless comments, is helping the black community to
delude itself and maintain a violent status quo that has existed since the
1960s. His remarks were despicable, and his ideology is a wretched failure.
Violence will naturally result from the refusal to hold individuals or
groups accountable for their actions; that goes for families, communities,
and entire societies.
McCarthy would insist that he, and the legal system, will hold violent gun
users accountable. But he and the communities that cheered his excuses are
setting up mixed messages for young people: we're going to hold you totally
responsible for the consequences of your actions, even though we hold gun
laws responsible for the causation. So punitive crime control policy meets
the welfare state, with the result being that irresponsibility and excuses
continue to produce violent behavior and incarceration, and nothing changes.
McCarthy should not be joining in the chorus of excuses that causes the
very problems his police force is trying to combat.
John Bennett (M.A., University of Chicago, MAPSS '07) is a veteran, writer,
and law student at Emory University living in Atlanta, GA. |
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