Nothing can break me out of my slumber like a potential debate on a wild subject. So I’ve been tweeting and gabbing a bit here and there, but not really finding it in me to make another full-blown blog post. Until now. Hope they don’t disappoint me.
So this all started, sort of, with that shooting at Thousand Oaks. So the same sort of arguments came up that usually come up around this point in time before anyone has any time to grieve (because let’s face it, many people who weren’t in the area give less of a shit about the victims and more of a shit about using them as a means to an end to make a political point about gun control, or lack thereof). “We need more gun control!” “It happened because it was in a gun-free zone!” “Conservatives suck dick!” “Liberals suck dick!” You know, all that stuff.
But I was taken off-guard when the topic came up that far-right extremists are statistically proven to be more responsible for these “massacres” than left-wing extremists, let alone muslim-extremists (I wonder of the last two should be grouped together, considering how much left-wingers go down on Allah worshipers).
Let me start at the Twitter tweet (because let’s face it, it’s only on Twitter where I can find people with differing opinions to debate with, Gab is currently just an echo chamber; it’s going to take another couple years before that changes, if it lasts that long) where someone who goes by the name Historian @NeolithichHist got involved in the discussion to finally make it interesting (ie offer me a real challenge). Someone else did something like that in an earlier Twitter debate I had which got too convoluted, and I’ll include her in the discussion should she choose to get involved in this current one (I can handle double teaming should it come to that).
The problem is armed white conservatives. Every single time it’s a white conservative who legally purchased a gun.
Every single time huh? As opposed to every other time where someone illegally obtained a gun to go kill people? Because statistically, those who don’t legally purchase a firearm (or who don’t legally obtain a firearm) are much more responsible statistically for gun crimes than those who do. But that’s just addressing the “legally purchased a gun” portion. He’s primarily taking aim at “white conservatives.” I’m not entirely sure where to find a study that takes aim at people by grouping them by their politics (identity politics is a dangerous topic to get dragged into, which from what I understand many left-wingers live by).
The difference between identity politics and people identifying with politics is this: The Left uses the concept of identity politics to spread division and strife amongst people. So they bring this group into a room, and they tell them something different in this group, and there’s something different in this group, and they pit them against each other. […] On our side, and on the side that I think better represents what we believe, is that we use people… all we use things to identify with politics. So we say… Ok, this group of people learn differently, they have a different culture. We understand that. But we’re telling everybody the same thing. […] And that message is unity, freedom, and American values. Big difference, huge difference, and we have to understand that difference. And therefore we can reach outside of the box.
Finding studies that group people by their race, on the other hand…
According to a 2015 Brookings Institution study, 77 percent of white gun deaths are from suicide. Only 19 percent are homicides. Even when you combine homicides and suicides, the white-male death rate from guns is approximately 16 per 100,000. For white women, the rate is less than five per 100,000.
[…]
A staggering 82 percent of African-American gun deaths are homicides. Only 14 percent are suicides. The overall gun-death rate for black males is roughly double what it is for white males, and for black males between the ages of 20 and 29, the rate is approximately 89 per 100,000.
[…]
Gun deaths are lowest in the population that owns the most guns. Fully 41 percent of white households report owning a gun, compared with only 19 percent of black households. Among white Americans, there are more guns, but there’s less crime. Among black Americans, there are fewer guns, but there’s more crime.
[…]
After all, there is ample evidence that federal officials can be extraordinarily lax when it comes to gun crimes, especially in cities where the death toll is highest. As recently as 2012, the districts encompassing Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York ranked last in federal gun-crime enforcement per capita.
[…]
Cries for gun control will lose their potency when crime loses its potency.
— https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/02/20/gun-violence-and-race-conservatives-gun-owners/
But I know what some of you might be thinking. “82% of African-Americans killed by guns? How often was it white people doing them in?” Well not that often.
According to the American Community Survey 2016 estimates, Los Angeles is 49 percent Hispanic, 29 percent white, 8 percent black, and 11 percent Asian.
The findings of the “Los Angeles Police Department Homicide Report” for 2017 are unsurprising for racial realists. According to this analysis, both the victims and perpetrators of violent crime in Los Angels are young, non-white, and poor. Of the 282 homicides which occurred in Los Angeles in 2017, 177—62.8 percent—were gang related.
Of all homicides committed in 2017 in Los Angeles, 72 percent involved handguns. Shotguns and rifles accounted for only one percent each. “Assault weapons”—the weapons targeted by current gun control push—accounted only for one percent. Firearms were used in 93 percent of homicides committed by gang members.
Suspect descriptions were provided for 146 of the homicides, yielding 171 suspects (some incidents involved more than one suspect). Of these suspects, 52 percent were Hispanic, six percent were white, and less than two percent were Asian. An astonishing 40 percent were black, despite blacks comprising less than ten percent of the city’s population.
So what else does he got?
And that’s where we left off, plus my mentioning that I’d carry this over to another website. So, regarding that article he linked to…
The only Islamist terror attack in Pennsylvania over the past 15 years was committed by Edward Archer, a mentally ill man who shot and injured a police officer in early 2016, later telling investigators that he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Far-right episodes of violent extremism were far more common.
[…]
A new database compiled by The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute examines that claim by looking back over a nine-year period, from 2008 through 2016. The findings are dramatic: Far-right plots and attacks outnumber Islamist incidents by almost 2 to 1.
There are 201 incidents in the database, sorted broadly as Islamist, right wing (including white supremacists, militias and members of the so-called Patriot and sovereign citizens movements), and left wing (including animal right militants, environmentalists, anarchists and Black Lives Matter sympathizers). Most of the Islamist incidents are thwarted plots, indicating a significant investment of law enforcement resources. Most of the others are successful acts in which attackers damaged property or inflicted human casualties.
[…]
- Right-wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, while 13 percent of Islamist cases caused fatalities. (The total deaths associated with Islamist incidents were higher, however, reaching 90, largely due to the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.)
- Incidents related to left-wing ideologies, including ecoterrorism and animal rights, were comparatively rare, with 19 incidents causing seven fatalities – making the shooting attack on Republican members of Congress earlier this month somewhat of an anomaly.
— https://www.revealnews.org/article/home-is-where-the-hate-is/
Have to admit, it’s a very extensive article. The quotes above aside, it also points out how federal resources are used to target Islamists far more than right-wing-extremists. Which is disproportionate to the number of crimes right-wing-extremists commit compared to Islamic extremists, or even left-wing-extremists, which even when combined is still lower than the crimes committed by right-wing-extremists. The point the article is making is that right-wing-extremists (implying extreme conservative whites) are more responsible for acts of domestic terrorism, and causing fatalities by those terrorist acts, than any other political/religious group in the United States. As far as I can currently tell, there’s no disputing this (though I am open to opinions, with data to back them, that oppose this conclusion).
However, don’t be fooled by this. This found a way to take the broad discussion of dangers posed by groups based on their political/religious leanings, and narrowed it down in a way to make it appear that we should all be more critical and wary of right-wingers than left-wingers (there’s the muslims too, but for the purpose of this discussion we’ll leave them out of this for now; they were worth mentioning just because of the context the above article is to be taken). It only focuses on acts of terrorism, as the article defines it. It doesn’t take into account gang-violence, non-terror related incidents of fatalities. You know, where the big numbers are.
Let’s take into account the population of the United States and, statistically, how ethnically diverse it is (though that can be a bit tricky with the Latino population, given the illegal immigration issue). According to StatisticalAtlas.com, out of a population of over 200 million people in the United States, 62% are White, 17% are Hispanic, and a little under 13% are Black. Now with those numbers in mind, you would think crime stats would be similar to fit with those percentages. Since whites compose the majority of the population, you would expect the majority of the violent crimes to be committed by whites, mostly against other whites, sometimes against other races (the higher the number of other races, the greater the chance they will be a victim of the majority race). And you would expect Hispanics to make up the second highest amount of violent crimes, with Blacks taking third place. In a perfect and fair world, where everyone is the same and equal, and treated as such, that should be the case. And by the logic of that RevealNews.org article, that seems consistent with it at least in terms of race (at the moment, I can’t locate an article mentioning the ethnic percentages of what makes up those who identify as right-leaning, left-leaning, or just down the middle, so I wouldn’t know how to begin taking apart an argument stating that right-wingers are more dangerous because they’re composed more heavily of whites than left-wingers, anymore than I could make an argument supporting that view).
That being said, it’s not a fair and perfect world because we, as humans, are not a far and perfect species. We have political differences, we have cultural differences, and we have different hobbies. Because of those factors and more, anomalies are to be expected. The issue is what to make of those anomalies and how to address them without making things worse.
So with that in mind, back to the statistics. The RevealNews.org site states that right-wing-extremists are responsible for the deaths of 79 people from 2008-2016. An 8-year time-span. Not that I think nothing should be done about combating terrorist acts or anything, regardless of what race and political-party-supporters are doing them; but this is small potatoes. 79 deaths over the course of 8 years. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Non-white people, non-domestic-terrorist people, can beat that number in 1 year, in 1 city (not State, not County, City). Most of those committed by people who don’t legally own firearms. A good portion of those committed by non-white (and thus one could assume, by some strange logic, non-right-wing) individuals.
So they want to argue that because there are more right-wing-extremists in a white-majority country committing the most domestic terror acts on a white-majority population, we should do… what exactly? Have more gun control or eliminate guns when it’s statistically proven that More Guns = Less Crime? Have white guilt? Have right-wing guilt? I say we’re taking the wrong approach with that mindset, given some inconvenient facts that go against such conclusions. Consider the overall scale of crime. The overall crime rate, according to DisasterCenter.com, has been decreasing since 1991, without a single year of uptick. That being said, according to the same source, the murder rate has sort of always been in flux; but recent years have shown that it has been on the rise since 2014, and hasn’t gone down since. More than 17,000 U.S. citizens per year are murdered; it’s been that way since 2016. That’s too many just to simplify the argument down to, “But right-wing-extremists killed nearly 80 people in 8 years, roughly 10 people a year on average!” The problem is broader in scope than what domestic terror acts can account for. Certainly broader in scope than what right-wing-extremists can account for. Don’t let mainstream media which lives for sensationalism fool you into thinking otherwise.
On a side note, this does seem to fit an interesting pattern. A similar spike in overall murder rates occurred in 1999, with the number continuing to rise until 2003. So if the pattern is to repeat, that number should start to fall by, oh say, by either this year or next year. They seem to go by roughly 4 year patterns of rising and falling; making it seem like they coincide with presidential elections. Not sure if that’s a coincidence or if the political climate across the history of the U.S. is a contributing factor. On the other hand, I’m not so sure these are normal times we’re living in. Hindsight is 20-20, so time will tell.
What else do you have for me Historian?
Edit (11-24-2018): Here’s an interesting article: Armed Citizens Have A 94% Success Rate Of Stopping Would-Be Mass Shooters According to FBI Data
The Anomalous Host 
Really the flaw in your argument seems to be that you think that white and conservative is synonymous. It is not. The majority of people in the United States are either not particularly politically active or are liberal. Yet conservatives who are the minority in terms of politics make of the vast majority of mass murders. This does not fall in line with population numbers.
Additionally you’re using a meme image as your source of the ethnicity of crimes which appears to be made simply by taking this table from the fbi and converting it into percents.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43
You’ll note that table and most others cited for racist meme images like it are talking about arrests, not convictions not people who committed a given crime, but simply who was arrested on what charges. This number is not revised for anyone whose charges are dismissed, who declared innocent in court, whose charges were later exonerated. As outlined in a paper I will site below black Americans account for 47% of all cases where-in police, prosecutors, or evidence examiners were found to have fabricated evidence or outright framed the defendant. As you noted before yourself, this is far outside of their population and rate of even just being arrested for crimes. Additionally black Americans are more likely to be investigated and arrested for crimes than white Americans even in absence of any specific evidence to actual perpetrator of the crime. That is to say if there are a white and black suspect for the same crime, the black one is far more likely to be arrested even if there is no evidence leaning one way or another. The problem here is pretty clearly police and structural racism. Similar issue can be found in locations where a “white trash” community and a group of “normal whites” intersects. Even in absence of evidence the trash will be arrested.
Click to access Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf
Once these numbers are taken into account the other confounding variable is of course poverty and its causative relation with crime. All crimes, but robbery and drug crimes especially are motivated primarily by poverty and correlate with the income of the perpetrator being too low to sustain basic necessities. If society gives you no legitimate way to get by you will turn to illegal means. Due to the disproportionately high number percentage of black Americans living in poverty there is going to be a similar disproportionate representation in crimes. As demonstrated by corresponding fact that the vast majority of murders committed by black Americans and poor whites are directly associated with drug crime rather than any personal motivations.
This all leads to the fairly inescapable conclusion that black Americans are stymied both by overt racism and the relative economic immobility of America.
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All right, you decided to continue the discussion here! Was wondering if you would try tweeting things up, or do this. Anyway…
Really the flaw in your argument seems to be that you think that white and conservative is synonymous. It is not.
Well the way the tweet was worded, you had me convinced you thought that. Nice to know you don’t.
The majority of people in the United States are either not particularly politically active or are liberal. Yet conservatives who are the minority in terms of politics make of the vast majority of mass murders. This does not fall in line with population numbers.
What exactly makes you think conservatives are the minority in politics exactly? And even more importantly, you sure you want to keep going down this route of identity politics, and guilt-by-political-association?
Those questions aside, it’s one thing to equate conservatives with right-wingers. But equating them with right-wing-extremists, white supremacists, those who bomb abortion clinics, etc. Dangerous and inaccurate ground to be walking. That’s like assuming all conservatives are Christians. Hell, that’s almost like saying all Christians are Catholics. There are people who identify with a political party who don’t necessarily believe all of the same things, or even agree with everything a party does. I would hope that applies to all political parties.
Additionally you’re using a meme image as your source of the ethnicity of crimes which appears to be made simply by taking this table from the fbi and converting it into percents.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43
You’ll note that table and most others cited for racist meme images like it are talking about arrests, not convictions not people who committed a given crime, but simply who was arrested on what charges. This number is not revised for anyone whose charges are dismissed, who declared innocent in court, whose charges were later exonerated. As outlined in a paper I will site below black Americans account for 47% of all cases where-in police, prosecutors, or evidence examiners were found to have fabricated evidence or outright framed the defendant. As you noted before yourself, this is far outside of their population and rate of even just being arrested for crimes. Additionally black Americans are more likely to be investigated and arrested for crimes than white Americans even in absence of any specific evidence to actual perpetrator of the crime. That is to say if there are a white and black suspect for the same crime, the black one is far more likely to be arrested even if there is no evidence leaning one way or another. The problem here is pretty clearly police and structural racism. Similar issue can be found in locations where a “white trash” community and a group of “normal whites” intersects. Even in absence of evidence the trash will be arrested.
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf
So now we get to what you consider is the heart of the matter. This isn’t about gun rights per-se. This discussion is moving well away from that Twitter message by now. It’s a race issue, and a political party issue. That black people and liberals have been made out to be far worse than they are in reality, thanks to conservative outlets. In this particular situation, you’re making the case that systematic racism is still in place; and I’m assuming you think it’s because of conservatives that things are currently this way.
But I get it. If we can prove that enough blacks have been wrongfully convicted, that would cast the conclusion of blacks committing more crimes, on average, than white people. Because if enough have been shown to be wrongfully convicted, then that would indicate systematic racism is still in place; and thus any research/debate/topic that supports any theory that is, well, similar to the one I proposed in this blog entry. That the amount of killings done by white conservatives with guns is so minuscule compared to the killings done by everyday non-white conservatives that you can’t make a good argument that demonizes white conservatives or the right to bare arms. By proving blacks don’t murder as often as previously ascribed, that would make the theory less credible. Or something like that.
Well anyway, I took a look at that report, mainly focusing on the “Murder” section, because we should try to keep things on topic here. We’re primarily discussing murder rates, and to some extent I’m unsure of at this point, murder by firearm. The report states that a disproportionate amount of blacks have been proven to have wrongful convictions over the years, as shown by the exoneration rate, proving that more blacks are falsely accused and determined guilty of a crime compared to any other race in the United States. I believe it. In fact, I watched a documentary some years ago covering that subject, albeit on a smaller scale limited to one town as opposed to the whole United States; though the point of the film is to raise the question of, “If it’s happening here like this, where else could it be happening?” Ferguson: A Report From Occupied Territory. You can read a short review I made of it on Letterboxd, if you wish:
https://letterboxd.com/gex/film/ferguson-a-report-from-occupied-territory/
And you can watch the 1 hour film here:
Now, that being said, while discrimination does exist against black people in the United States, I question how prevalent it is nationwide. As in I wonder if the places where this discrimination takes place are in several hotbed cities, or if it really is all over the place. Currently, I believe the former. Because it does depend a lot on the city itself, how segregated it is, how it’s doing financially, among a few other factors. Generally, the more low-income an area is; the worse-off a city is doing financially; the more likely the local government and law enforcement will want to exploit others for financial gain. Whether it has to do with lawyer fees, paying bail; or even just going straight into the business of the prison industry and how some corporate/political assholes benefit off of it. I don’t doubt that black people have been taking the blunt of that impact for most of U.S. history, at least up until the mid to late 90s. There’s still a ways to go, but I believe significant improvements have been made since then, at least when it comes to systematic racism.
With that in mind, I took a look at listings from this site:
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/detaillist.aspx?View=faf6eddb-5a68-4f8f-8a52-2c61f5bf9ea7&SortField=Convicted&SortDir=Asc
Linked from the report you gave me. Detailing who was wrongfully convicted for what and where, and when they got released. Now, if we go back as far as that study has gone, of course black are going to be more disproportionate than whites. It goes back to people who have been convicted since the 50s for crying out loud (though to be fair, it’s mainly the 70s that start to contain the large number of wrongful convictions). I don’t intend to go back that far. Not when I believe the present is a different time with less racial biases compared to the past. So I analyzed the numbers based on those who were convicted from 2008-2016, and later exonerated from no later than 2016. And only focusing on those exonerated of murder/manslaughter convictions, here’s what I found:
2008-2016
Whites exonerated: 29
Blacks exonerated: 28
Hispanics exonerated: 6
Got to say, those numbers aren’t exactly helping your case. Sure, there’s a bunch of blacks exonerated of drug possession, theft, among other non-violent crimes; which may very well add up to a number greater than that of whites. But we’re talking murder rate here, and somehow linking that do gun crime I imagine at some point.
As for blacks facing poverty far more than whites, and using that as an excuse to turn to crime (and I’ll admit, I’m sympathetic to that view), doesn’t that go beyond the scope of what we should be talking about here? Because that would open up another can of worms and make this discussion go out of control. That should be carried over to a separate blog post, should we choose to go that route. Whether we do that or not, let’s stay focused on the topic at hand. Political parties, race, extremism or lack thereof, guns, murder; who is the biggest offender of the latter due to the other formers, or is it something that can’t really be blamed on a single left-leaning/right-leaning/race?
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[b]Well the way the tweet was worded, you had me convinced you thought that. Nice to know you don’t.[/b]
I specified white conservative men because we are talking about American gun violence. If we were talking about China I would have specified conservative Han men, Saudi Arabia conservative Arabic men, and India left wing minority radicals.
[b]What exactly makes you think conservatives are the minority in politics exactly?[/b]
Consistant statistics from opinion polls, party registration, and popular voting turn out. Conservatives are a fairly large minority but account for about 20-30% of the population depending.There is no true political majority in America but the largest plurality is those who are not dedicated politically and tend not to vote either due to lack of opportunity or lack of motivation, and are followed by liberals and leftists who are grouped together because America’s overton window is stupidly far right.
[b]And even more importantly, you sure you want to keep going down this route of identity politics, and guilt-by-political-association?
Those questions aside, it’s one thing to equate conservatives with right-wingers. But equating them with right-wing-extremists, white supremacists, those who bomb abortion clinics, etc. Dangerous and inaccurate ground to be walking. That’s like assuming all conservatives are Christians. Hell, that’s almost like saying all Christians are Catholics. There are people who identify with a political party who don’t necessarily believe all of the same things, or even agree with everything a party does. I would hope that applies to all political parties.[/b]
I fail to see how this is any more objectionable than you equating all black people with black criminals. In both cases were are making an association. You are making the assertion that a disproportionate number of black people commit crimes and are attempting to leverage that into an assertion that there is something inherent in the black population of America that leads to criminal behavior. Whereas I am quite similarly making the assertion that a disproportionate number of white conservative men commit mass murder and that there is something inherent to the white conservative male population of America that leads to murder. Though I will state uniformly here that I believe this to be caused by cultural and economic problems rather than anything biological. I do not in any way believe there is any inherent genetic or phenotypical evil to white conservative men. I cannot say for certain that you would make the same assertion yet for your assertions about black people in America. I would appreciate such clarification.
[b]Got to say, those numbers aren’t exactly helping your case. Sure, there’s a bunch of blacks exonerated of drug possession, theft, among other non-violent crimes; which may very well add up to a number greater than that of whites. But we’re talking murder rate here, and somehow linking that do gun crime I imagine at some point.[/b]
My point was only that guns are not a proper deterrent. I do not believe that limiting those guns would cause conservative white male terrorists to vanish or even really decrease in number. I was simply asserting that having more concealed carry would not be a significant deterrent either due to the number of cases committed in areas with open or concealed carry allowed. I mean there was a dramatic spike in recent years in the United States despite gun laws not changing in any significant way.
The obvious solution would be to address the societal and economic issues leading to these terrorists. I think first and for most we need to hold the people who radicalize them responsible. The talk radio host ranting about the globalists coming to eat your babies is just as much at fault for white terrorism as the imam preaching jihad is at fault for Islamic terrorists. However the imam is arrested or at least deplatformed whereas the talk radio/talk youtube guys are left completely unmolested. Second we need to make mental healthcare both more socially available and affordable. Last we need to make upward economic mobility a real possibility for the majority of Americans rather than giving them more and more lower paying jobs with no room for advancement.
[b]As for blacks facing poverty far more than whites, and using that as an excuse to turn to crime (and I’ll admit, I’m sympathetic to that view), doesn’t that go beyond the scope of what we should be talking about here? Because that would open up another can of worms and make this discussion go out of control. That should be carried over to a separate blog post, should we choose to go that route. Whether we do that or not, let’s stay focused on the topic at hand. Political parties, race, extremism or lack thereof, guns, murder; who is the biggest offender of the latter due to the other formers, or is it something that can’t really be blamed on a single left-leaning/right-leaning/race?[/b]
I think you’re missing a key part of my argument here. Similar systemic oppression is found against white populations that are generationly poor or who have characteristics that cause them to be categorized as “white trash”. It is for the most part the result of a capitalist society’s habit of reinforcing hierarchies generation to generation by economic means. For instance many urban Black Americans grew up in homes with badly maintained lead paint and have minor to severe amounts of lead poisoning as a result. This happened because their parents were poor, and results in decreased cognitive ability and impulse control greatly increasing the likelihood that they remain poor as well, leading to their own children growing up in those same lead poisoned homes. Similarly in Appalachia most jobs available to the poor are physically harmful to the human body leading to chronic pain, which causes drug abuse to generally leads to negligent parenting and no money for higher education. As a result most Appalachian children have few prospects and end up taking so same physically damaging jobs. In both cases this has been going on since at least the early 1900s.
Racism rears its ugly head in the habit of people believing that there is something inherent to the character of the people of these populations or the specific habits of their culture that is the causes is generational poverty. When a person blames “black culture” or alcoholism or “spending money on cell phones” for populations remaining in poverty while ignoring the obvious economic reinforcement of poverty they are being racist.
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To quote the poet and WWII resistance* fighter Rene Char, “Each act is virgin, even the repeated ones.”
Going with this, 15 black people shooting 15 black people with 15 unlicensed guns on a Saturday night in Detroit over 15 dimebags is not one event, it is 15 unique and separate events caused by similar conditions (many listed above).
As Historian touched on, there are compounding factors. Lead is definitely one, considering the white-collar horrors committed by realtors, etc, in the early 20th century (and still going on, really) which has generational implications affecting not only crime but economics and social identity.
Another is the disproportionate imprisonment of blacks for minor crimes (pot, for starters – soon to be legal), who then become hardened criminals in prison, unleashed into the same situations that got them arrested in the first place, arrested again, hardened further, and so on.
That said, I’d be curious to know what percentage of black crime is perpetrated on/by people who know each other.
On the other hand, white militias, abortion-clinic bombers, and elected holocaust deniers are not separate things – as evidenced by the recent news that the police and FBI are suddenly being forced to grapple with issues they have willfully ignored for decades. As also illuminated above, these are people whose ideology is causing them to go outside (or mail things outside) of their social groups for the express purpose of causing harm – to other groups.
The difference is intent. The punk in the alley is not prepping for a Teahad. Worst case, he is like the proverbial tiger whose personality or, more likely, environment, has taught him to like the taste of men. I firmly believe that good and evil come in all shapes and colors. I don’t believe that the U.S. is (or has ever been) a clean enough petri dish to test any of this properly.
Last but not least, the title of this blog post refers to political parties. I think it can be safely argued that even though blacks tend to vote D, right-wing whites have been corralled much more thoroughly and successfully over the past few decades to the same ways of thinking. There is no unifying (and stupid) chant like, “LOCK HER UP!” or, “BUILD THE WALL!” on the left as there is on the right. “BLACK LIVES MATTER” hardly compares, as it is simply an affirmation of worthiness rather than an attack, overt or otherwise, on others.
We also have, “SAVE THE WHALES” I guess, but that still doesn’t quite do it.
*P.S. – who was he resisting? You guessed it – organised, right-wing psychos. Can we add the total death toll of WWII into our calculations?
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@Historian.
I specified white conservative men because we are talking about American gun violence.
So then you do believe white conservative men are primarily responsible for American gun violence! Well then I’ll raise the question which I pointed out would be a problem earlier: What study indicates that white men, who are conservative, are primarily responsible for gun violence? And even if there was such a study to show proof of this, to what end? Comparing to who for what purpose? To white men who are left-wing? To white conservative women? To left-wing women? To black conservative men? Black conservative women? Black liberal men? Black liberal women?
If this is supposed to be just a racial issue, the answer already seems evident. But if you’re going to make this into a political issue (or hell, even an issue that combines both the political and the racial, which would get dangerously specific), with the theory that a political affiliation affects how often they do gun violence compared to other groups; then at that point you might want to reconsider the scope of the argument altogether. Because what you’re really wanting to argue isn’t that white conservative men are more responsible for gun violence across the United States (because theoretically it’s mainly conservatives who would want to own guns, while theoretically left-wingers don’t; and yet what are we to assume regarding the political affiliation of those in gangs, or those who identify as left-wing but still have a gun anyway because they don’t agree 100% with all of their political party’s stance [vice versa for those who identify as conservative]?). The underlying factor is that you want to argue that the right is more violent than the left because, ultimately, some study out there shows that they rack up a higher body count.
Because 2nd Amendment aside, the main argument for guns is that it acts as a deterrent again criminal activity. While the argument against guns is that it acts as a catalyst for violence. I bring this up because, assuming you do manage to bring up a study that does prove white conservative men are primarily responsible for the gun deaths in the United States (a study with a reliable conclusion that I doubt exists), that’s ultimately the direction the argument will go in. Because the argument gun supporters tend to make is: “If guns aren’t an option, those who wish to do violence will do so through other methods, such as knives, vehicles, bombs, bats, pipes, molotov cocktails, etc.” To which a gun defender would say, “Well of course white conservative men are responsible for the bulk of gun violence, they’re the ones who believe in using guns! Those who don’t believe in using guns are causing violence and murder to happen in other ways; against people who don’t have guns!” At which point we would then be getting into an argument over whether cause more violence and murder in a society with them, or if a society without guns is just as (if not more-so) prone to violence and murder. If that happens, we’d be at a stalemate. Because I could bring up books written by John R. Lott, among studies from other analysts, which bring up statistical arguments showing that guns act as a deterrent to crime, overall, globally. While you would bring up studies that intend to show otherwise.
Honestly, from what I’ve seen, pro-gun or anti-gun, neither study is 100% conclusive, despite all the analysis done and what they claim all the bars and charts show. But if you want to try and get a conclusion from a topic like that our of a debate from me, you can try.
But first thing’s first, you gotta support your claim with evidence. Show me proof that conservative white men are more responsible for gun violence in America.
Consistant statistics from opinion polls, party registration, and popular voting turn out. Conservatives are a fairly large minority but account for about 20-30% of the population depending. There is no true political majority in America but the largest plurality is those who are not dedicated politically and tend not to vote either due to lack of opportunity or lack of motivation, and are followed by liberals and leftists who are grouped together because America’s overton window is stupidly far right.
Citation? Source? Though I find it interesting that you seem to be aware of those who identify with neither party. Because any serious study on which political group is primarily responsible for gun violence would also take them into account.
I fail to see how this is any more objectionable than you equating all black people with black criminals. In both cases were are making an association. You are making the assertion that a disproportionate number of black people commit crimes and are attempting to leverage that into an assertion that there is something inherent in the black population of America that leads to criminal behavior. Whereas I am quite similarly making the assertion that a disproportionate number of white conservative men commit mass murder and that there is something inherent to the white conservative male population of America that leads to murder. Though I will state uniformly here that I believe this to be caused by cultural and economic problems rather than anything biological. I do not in any way believe there is any inherent genetic or phenotypical evil to white conservative men. I cannot say for certain that you would make the same assertion yet for your assertions about black people in America. I would appreciate such clarification.
Fair enough. But make no mistake, I do not equate all black people with being criminals. I know for a fact there are plenty of decent black folks out there (just as I would hope you would know there are plenty of decent conservative white men, let alone just conservative men). Hell, I even follow a few of them on social media sites. Larry Elder, the Hodge Twins, Brandon Tatum, just to name a few. Plus there’s no denying some nice cultural stuff the block community has provided for America, or even teams of blacks and whites working together to offer such that everyone of any race can partake in (Jazz, Blues, Hip-Hop, dancing that actually requires talent, Rap, some interesting 90s films, etc.) Just because we have differences in color doesn’t mean that creates a gap so wide we can’t just step across it.
As for my assertions on black people in America, consider my position as such: I do believe they are responsible for a disproportionate amount of violence in America. The cause is something I haven’t completely determined. It might be genetic, as many countries with a black majority haven’t exactly made much headway into becoming a first-world country without outside help (or made progress into becoming independent and strong enough to successfully resist such “outside help”). Or it could be economic, due to their economic status from the pre-60s up until now, and having a hard time becoming financially well-off to keep themselves and their families supported through thick and thin; which is why many opt to turn to gangs and the drug trade (something which falls into one of those situations in the 60s and 70s where, as you indicated, they were so bad off they had little choice but to go that route out of desperation). Or it could be social, with the large numbers of kids they tend to have without considering the financial consequences of doing so, dads leaving the family so the kids often tend to get raised by a single mother. In more recent years, there has been the promotion of the victim mentality idea, encouraging them not to consider taking responsibility for their own actions. Or it could just be all of the above. Whatever the case, there are those who have risen above such, shall we say, limitations, due to hard work and improved talent, and can be considered success stories that can act as an inspiration to others.
My point was only that guns are not a proper deterrent. I do not believe that limiting those guns would cause conservative white male terrorists to vanish or even really decrease in number. I was simply asserting that having more concealed carry would not be a significant deterrent either due to the number of cases committed in areas with open or concealed carry allowed. I mean there was a dramatic spike in recent years in the United States despite gun laws not changing in any significant way.
Ah crap, so we are going in that direction. WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! Could’ve saved me some pointless paragraphs that now do nothing but preach to the choir boys who read this shit!
But I guess we both having feelings of race and political affiliation that are so strong they’re guaranteed to bleed out into whatever we post regardless of the topic. So, it’s not the political parties and races you want to discuss. It’s the guns. This will most likely end on a stalemate where the best outcome either of us could hope for is, “Well at least you’re sympathetic to my views and are willing to admit there’s a small chance they may be right.”
The obvious solution would be to address the societal and economic issues leading to these terrorists.
Well, we might be able to find some common ground here. But that depends on just how big of a hypocrite you really are (if you are one), and how far your double standards really go (if you have any).
The one thing I’ll agree on, “The obvious solution would be to address the societal and economic issues leading to these terrorists.” Agreed, though I would be curious as to what defines a terrorist for you, and whether or not certain groups and individuals would fall under that category. If this conversation continues long enough, I’ll find out.
I think first and for most we need to hold the people who radicalize them responsible.
Also agree. But again, that depends on whether or not we can find common ground on what defines a terrorist and who we use as an example.
The talk radio host ranting about the globalists coming to eat your babies is just as much at fault for white terrorism as the imam preaching jihad is at fault for Islamic terrorists.
Ah, should’ve known the Alex Jones reference would be coming. Equating him with an Imam preaching Jihad though, that’s not fair. AJ never called for violence against others, at least as far as I can recall. Imam’s preaching Jihad though, Jihad by it’s very definition (assuming the “spiritual war” is taken more literally, which in the case of muslim terrorists, it is) is a call for violence against others. But let’s see where you go with this; I like seeing others giving themselves some rope.
However the imam is arrested or at least deplatformed whereas the talk radio/talk youtube guys are left completely unmolested.
Yeah, ’cause that’s been shown to happen in recent events.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2018/01/13/how-conservatives-are-being-destroyed-by-facebook-twitter-and-google-without-even-realizing-it-n2433962
Second we need to make mental healthcare both more socially available and affordable. Last we need to make upward economic mobility a real possibility for the majority of Americans rather than giving them more and more lower paying jobs with no room for advancement.
Not sure how that can be economically feasible, even with the Trump economy. But even so, aren’t we going off-topic again?
I think you’re missing a key part of my argument here. Similar systemic oppression is found against white populations that are generationly poor or who have characteristics that cause them to be categorized as “white trash”. It is for the most part the result of a capitalist society’s habit of reinforcing hierarchies generation to generation by economic means. For instance many urban Black Americans grew up in homes with badly maintained lead paint and have minor to severe amounts of lead poisoning as a result. This happened because their parents were poor, and results in decreased cognitive ability and impulse control greatly increasing the likelihood that they remain poor as well, leading to their own children growing up in those same lead poisoned homes. Similarly in Appalachia most jobs available to the poor are physically harmful to the human body leading to chronic pain, which causes drug abuse to generally leads to negligent parenting and no money for higher education. As a result most Appalachian children have few prospects and end up taking so same physically damaging jobs. In both cases this has been going on since at least the early 1900s.
Racism rears its ugly head in the habit of people believing that there is something inherent to the character of the people of these populations or the specific habits of their culture that is the causes is generational poverty. When a person blames “black culture” or alcoholism or “spending money on cell phones” for populations remaining in poverty while ignoring the obvious economic reinforcement of poverty they are being racist.
Hell, why didn’t you say so in the first place? I agree! Instead of distributing money to illegal immigrants and free healthcare, why don’t we fix the issues that would make people need healthcare and mental health guidance in the first place! I’m all for having a neighborhood/apartment/home remodeling effort done nation-wide for this. That would create jobs, and help people out in the process! Only issue would be efficiency and corruption. Although you do have to admit, if it’s been going on for long enough; accusing a victim of such a system for behaving in the manner that one could consider stereotypical and racist, it doesn’t exactly mean they’re wrong. For instance, your proposition of blacks being lead-heads because of their environment and raising; can that not be considered a contributing factor towards them having a disproportionate murder rate compared to whites? If fixing the environment makes it less disproportionate (and thus improves society), I’m all for it.
As for capitalist society reinforcing economic hierarchies, I’ll agree capitalism has its downsides. But they are nothing compared to the downsides of socialism and communism. Best we can do is try to have enforcement of the law and trying to hold the higher-ups accountable; something that I’ll admit is very difficult to do in a capitalist society. But in a socialist/communist society, it’s just downright impossible without a revolution.
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In response to your whole first section, I think that there was a miscommunication due to a failure in editting on my end. I should have said “because we are having this discussion in the context of American gun violence”. I am still only speaking of mass murders and terrorist attacks here, for which my citation are the previously linked articles.
Citation? Source? Though I find it interesting that you seem to be aware of those who identify with neither party. Because any serious study on which political group is primarily responsible for gun violence would also take them into account.
Click to access 242.pdf
This segment is from 2005. I chose to use it due to its extensive nature in specificity but other more recent surveys are available though in less granularity.
Or it could be social, with the large numbers of kids they tend to have without considering the financial consequences of doing so, dads leaving the family so the kids often tend to get raised by a single mother. In more recent years, there has been the promotion of the victim mentality idea, encouraging them not to consider taking responsibility for their own actions. Or it could just be all of the above. Whatever the case, there are those who have risen above such, shall we say, limitations, due to hard work and improved talent, and can be considered success stories that can act as an inspiration to others.
See it’s stuff like this that is going to have people call you racist, though I’m assuming this is mostly a point of ignorance due to media portrayal more than anything else. Single mother households are primarily a symptom of being urban poor rather than being any given race. For instance you’ll see via the following study that all races have high rates of single mother households if poor. The lowest being pacific islanders and even then they’re still at more than 20%.
Click to access single-motherfamilies.pdf
Now there is a larger number of African American households represented on that chart than other races, but this leads us to the second confounding variable, that being the split between urban and rural populations. It is significantly harder financially to abandon a family in a rural environment than it is in an urban one simply due to the increased difficulty of moving and job acquisition. As a result of poor white and poor hispanic households are significantly less liking to have single mothers because they are also significantly more likely to be rural than the primarily urban black population.
https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=carsey
Hence why in areas of the rural south you have a signficantly lower rate of black children with single mothers despite similar levels of poverty and crime.
So, it’s not the political parties and races you want to discuss. It’s the guns.
Again my only real point on the guns is that they are not a significant deterrent.
Ah, should’ve known the Alex Jones reference would be coming. Equating him with an Imam preaching Jihad though, that’s not fair. AJ never called for violence against others, at least as far as I can recall. Imam’s preaching Jihad though, Jihad by it’s very definition (assuming the “spiritual war” is taken more literally, which in the case of muslim terrorists, it is) is a call for violence against others. But let’s see where you go with this; I like seeing others giving themselves some rope
I fail to see how saying that people are pedophile rapists over and over again and then saying that “something must be done” is any different from saying over and over again that “America is the Great Satan” and that “something must be done”. In both cases it leads to murder. Jones was directly calling for violence against Comet Pizza at the very least and a terrorist heeded his call.
Yeah, ’cause that’s been shown to happen in recent events.
You’re comparing getting banned from youtube and being slapped with fines to being blackbagged to gitmo and/or being charged with literal treason laws in the UK?
Not sure how that can be economically feasible, even with the Trump economy. But even so, aren’t we going off-topic again?
America has a history of setting up mental health hospitals with public money then gradually cutting the budgets until they turn into abuse ridden hellholes and get shutdown after media exposes. The solution is pretty simple. Set up publicly funded mental health hospitals with the equivalent funding in today’s money that we used on them back in the 50s but don’t cut the staff or funding. Allow funding to grow with inflation.
Instead of distributing money to illegal immigrants and free healthcare, why don’t we fix the issues that would make people need healthcare and mental health guidance in the first place!
Citation on money given to illegal immigrants. Cause all I’ve seen is money being used to ensure that southern tomato and chicken farmers keep being allowed to use illegal migrants as effectively slave labor. I have never seen any substantial evidence of the money going to the migrants themselves.
As to healthcare, while prevention via removing lead paint/asbestos, cleaning up drinking water, and the like will substantially reduce overall medical costs, we still need money going into healthcare, specifically in paying for ongoing preventative care. As American tax payers are the hook for any bills by people who show up at an emergency room and default on payment. It’s substantially cheaper to simply pay for people to have regular check ups and preventative care. This is one of the primary reason that Canadian government spends less money per person on medical care than the American government does, despite having a government run system. The other reason being that American drug companies have been allowed to form cartels and artificially jack up the prices of drugs for Americans compared of the world. Your medicine in America costs more than the same medicine in Mexico or Canada even without citizenship to get the government to pay for it, because America is not enforcing its anti-Trust/anti-monopoly laws.
For instance, your proposition of blacks being lead-heads because of their environment and raising; can that not be considered a contributing factor towards them having a disproportionate murder rate compared to whites?
Yes, in the same way that chronic pain from bad working conditions makes rural white folks disproportionately likely to abuse prescription drugs.
As for capitalist society reinforcing economic hierarchies, I’ll agree capitalism has its downsides. But they are nothing compared to the downsides of socialism and communism. Best we can do is try to have enforcement of the law and trying to hold the higher-ups accountable; something that I’ll admit is very difficult to do in a capitalist society. But in a socialist/communist society, it’s just downright impossible without a revolution.
I have no problem with a market economy in general, however the government’s primary goal should be curbing the power of corporations. In countries where capitalism is considered virtuous in and of itself and “more capitalism” is seen as the solution to most problems this does not occur. I would vastly prefer an economic system closer to Eastern European countries (not Russia) than that of the United States, and will thus work to vote in people more likely to give me those economic systems.
Or, “NO BORDERS! NO TRUMP! NO WALL! NO USA AT ALL!” The other stuff ANTIFA does. Or wearing pussyhats and doing whatever it is 3rd wave feminists do when they’re not calling for men to lose some of their rights and opportunities.
See you’re just illustrating his point. Dedicated anti-fascist and socialist revolutionary organizations (there is no unified ANTIFA as conservative media likes to pretend there is) tend have significant animosity toward the sort of performative protesting you’re describing with the vagina hats. It’s seen as a classic case of the Democrats and other liberals like them so say “we hate the results of discrimination but refuse to address the causes”. Similarly despite being fairly steeped in left wing communities I had never heard the little chant you quoted before. No borders related chants are basically only relevant in organizations focused on supporting Latino families directly and they are rarely if ever actively anti-US or anti-state.
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@Zabadahooha
Welcome to the debate.
To quote the poet and WWII resistance* fighter Rene Char, “Each act is virgin, even the repeated ones.”
Going with this, 15 black people shooting 15 black people with 15 unlicensed guns on a Saturday night in Detroit over 15 dimebags is not one event, it is 15 unique and separate events caused by similar conditions (many listed above).
So?
As Historian touched on, there are compounding factors. Lead is definitely one, considering the white-collar horrors committed by realtors, etc, in the early 20th century (and still going on, really) which has generational implications affecting not only crime but economics and social identity.
Another is the disproportionate imprisonment of blacks for minor crimes (pot, for starters – soon to be legal), who then become hardened criminals in prison, unleashed into the same situations that got them arrested in the first place, arrested again, hardened further, and so on.
That said, I’d be curious to know what percentage of black crime is perpetrated on/by people who know each other.
First paragraph issue was addressed in last response to Historian. Second paragraph, I agree. Prisons should be reformed. Something Trump claims to want to do, and something that everyone, on all sides, seems to agree with.
It’s funny though, we all seem to agree on what can be done for blacks who commit crimes. But when it comes to whites who commit crimes, at least conservative whites, left-wingers usually want to jump onto the gun. The gun is the issue, the gun is responsible; not the background of the individual who used the gun, not his/her mental health, not their societal issues, not who or what influenced them. It’s guns. I prefer the approach of figuring out what caused the driver to crash rather than banning the all cars because the driver drove one. Because vehicles and guns are quite similar in that they both represent responsibility. They support the idea that individuals can be responsible, and be held responsible for their own actions. But many of you would rather attack the thing said individual used, which is used by many other individuals for non-devious purposes, rather than the individual himself/herself, and take into account all that went into doing their actions. You’ll often find there’s more to it than just owning (or unlawfully coming into possession of) a gun.
On the other hand, white militias, abortion-clinic bombers, and elected holocaust deniers are not separate things – as evidenced by the recent news that the police and FBI are suddenly being forced to grapple with issues they have willfully ignored for decades. As also illuminated above, these are people whose ideology is causing them to go outside (or mail things outside) of their social groups for the express purpose of causing harm – to other groups.
The difference is intent. The punk in the alley is not prepping for a Teahad. Worst case, he is like the proverbial tiger whose personality or, more likely, environment, has taught him to like the taste of men. I firmly believe that good and evil come in all shapes and colors. I don’t believe that the U.S. is (or has ever been) a clean enough petri dish to test any of this properly.
Last but not least, the title of this blog post refers to political parties. I think it can be safely argued that even though blacks tend to vote D, right-wing whites have been corralled much more thoroughly and successfully over the past few decades to the same ways of thinking. There is no unifying (and stupid) chant like, “LOCK HER UP!” or, “BUILD THE WALL!” on the left as there is on the right. “BLACK LIVES MATTER” hardly compares, as it is simply an affirmation of worthiness rather than an attack, overt or otherwise, on others.
We also have, “SAVE THE WHALES” I guess, but that still doesn’t quite do it.
Or, “NO BORDERS! NO TRUMP! NO WALL! NO USA AT ALL!” The other stuff ANTIFA does. Or wearing pussyhats and doing whatever it is 3rd wave feminists do when they’re not calling for men to lose some of their rights and opportunities.
And look, you’re unloading a lot of stuff on here than can branch this discussion off into a dozen different directions. Bringing up abortion clinic bombers and holocaust deniers (you know, the things that every conservative not only doesn’t condemn but also identifies with; that’s sarcasm if you can’t tell). Grappling with issues that have been building up for decades (though I think we both have different priorities on what the biggest dangers some of those issues are, or if some should even be considered an issue; how does this apply to gun violence or murders currently?). Groups being corralled into thinking and voting a certain way (ho boy, that is something I definitely believe, and something I definitely believe applies to the left just as much, if not more-so, than it does to the right). How unified each political party is on issues (that should worry everyone; individuality is more important than group-think; I would hate to believe either side is that unified on anything, not unless they’re brainwashed or peer-pressured or blackmailed into doing so).
Can we keep it focused on the issue at hand? On who currently commits the most murders, or even the most violence, in the United States? Because last I checked, this was an article I made defending conservatives from the allegations that they’re more violent and murderous and bloodthirsty and trigger-happy than other political and/or racial groups; in the present year, or even decade. Tell me how these things relate to the topic of this article, and what the intention is in mentioning them.
*P.S. – who was he resisting? You guessed it – organised, right-wing psychos. Can we add the total death toll of WWII into our calculations?
And bring up the number of deaths also done by socialist/fascist Germany, and communist Russia? Why the hell not? Let’s bring up Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge while we’re at it. And Stalin. And North Korea. And Cuba under Che and Batista. You want to see the so-called right-wing at their most psychotic? Mine as well as be fair and do the same for the so-called left-wing.
Or we could stick more with stateside discussions and keeping things more “this century,” and not risk branching off so far. Unless you feel that it’s absolutely necessary and required to prove your point, because you may not think that current and recent events don’t provide enough evidence to do it.
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Wow, that was a slog! And people say WOOF articles are too long! We haven’t researched this topic, and have no useful input other than our strong suspicion that if right-wing Whites were committing most of the mass killings in this country, the fact would be inescapable, since the media would feature non-stop wall-to-wall coverage of the shooters’ conservative affiliations—complemented by the usual band of psychotherapists and sociologists eager to explain why homicidal proclivities are endemic to conservatives, while pointing out Trump’s ultimate responsibility for the slaughter.
Actually, such coverage is conspicuous by its absence, if we don’t count people in, say, the Tea Party, whom, say, Brian Ross locates in the phone book and links on ABC News to shootings committed by someone else with the same name, or the shooter who was widely labeled right wing because he wounded a Democrat senator—which pretermitted the datum that he also shot and killed a Republican judge.
It also occurs to us that conservatives may simply be better shots—as witness the Bernie Bro who attempted to wipe out the entire GOP congressional softball team, firing for ten minutes from a concealed position with a Soviet SKS rifle, wounding only four of his richly available targets, non-fatally.
But given the volume of memes, junk stats, anecdotage and wildly dichotomous demographic arguments this post provoked, we hereby move that no additional debate be permitted until our host–the anonymous provocateur—has operationalized all relevant terminology to preclude further semantical shenanigans, following which only commenters willing to submit complete lit reviews in APA format comprising no fewer than a dozen scholarly sources for advanced approval by the webmaster should be allowed to opine. Except for us, of course—we don’t have to, because it was our idea in the first place, and —we don’t have the time. We used it all up reading what’s here already.
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Wow, that was a slog! And people say WOOF articles are too long!
Yeah, I know. Sorry. Short articles aren’t usually my thing.
But given the volume of memes, junk stats, anecdotage and wildly dichotomous demographic arguments this post provoked, we hereby move that no additional debate be permitted until our host–the anonymous provocateur—has operationalized all relevant terminology to preclude further semantical shenanigans, following which only commenters willing to submit complete lit reviews in APA format comprising no fewer than a dozen scholarly sources for advanced approval by the webmaster should be allowed to opine.
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@Historian
In response to your whole first section, I think that there was a miscommunication due to a failure in editting on my end. I should have said “because we are having this discussion in the context of American gun violence”. I am still only speaking of mass murders and terrorist attacks here, for which my citation are the previously linked articles.
Now that’s doing a disservice to the whole gun debate. Only including mass murders and terrorist attacks to make the case that white male conservatives are more problematic than anyone else when it comes to gun violence? I can see how that can potentially be used as an argument to lay the blame for fatalities due to extremist groups on white male conservatives. But that can’t be used as an argument against guns. There’s a number of problems with this. Examples:
* Those who the extremists go after can also arm themselves with guns to protect themselves from said extremists.
* Many, if not the high majority of, conservative white men (let alone just conservatives in general, regardless of race or gender) disapprove of such extremist actions to the point where they would take action against such a group should the situation arise. Hell, why not ask how many who have stopped shootings were white conservative men?
* Shall we also disarm white conservative police and military? After all, some people view them as extremist groups.
* What of the definition of an extremist group? Who is to say what that definition is? Who is to say it won’t be changed for convenience?
* If Muslims shouldn’t be condemned for the actions of a few extremist Muslim terrorists, and if blacks shouldn’t be condemned for the extremist actions of a few BLM people (or the Black Panthers for that matter), and if Immigrants shouldn’t be condemned for the actions of a few illegal immigrants (or MS-13), then white male conservatives (or conservatives in general) shouldn’t be condemned for the actions of a few extremist white male conservatives. It’s a perfect example of the dangers to “guilt by association.”
* Even if you were to succeed in proving that white male conservative extremists are the primary reason for gun violence, and use that as a tool to attack conservatives in general and, I don’t know, pass some law that bans them from getting guns or something, that still leaves the question of, “What about the other groups who have a higher murder-count due to use of guns than the white male conservative fanatics?”
Limiting the focus of the subject to just this small of a group indicates that the point of this is more to attack them than it is to attack guns in general. Which is a waste of time, considering pretty much everyone, including conservatives, condemns the actions of these extremists. But if you’re trying to use this as an excuse to attack conservatives in general, you will fail.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070926040026/http://people-press.org/reports/tables/242.pdf
This segment is from 2005. I chose to use it due to its extensive nature in specificity but other more recent surveys are available though in less granularity.
Well taking a look at it, they don’t seem so far behind the number of Democrats. Both are behind in terms of those with neither party affiliation. I’m not seeing how this shows Conservatives to be an actual minority in politics from this.
And combining Liberals with Leftists (ie combining Liberals with Democrats, as I’m assuming that’s your meaning) shouldn’t be considered either. I’ve seen plenty of Liberals who share some right-wing views while not identifying as right-wing, while the same Liberals also share some left-wing views.
And why do that anyway? Because “America’s overton window is stupidly far-right?” What the hell is that supposed to mean? That far-right issues are the only ones primarily allowed to be discussed in public discourse? Even assuming that is true, just why do you think that is? What’s preventing far-left issues from being discussed publicly? What’s stopping the mainstream media, or late night talk-show hosts, or theatrically released films (or Netflix films), or people on Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook from doing that? As far as I’m concerned, if what you are saying is true regarding far-right issues being the primary ones in the overton window, one reason someone could give for that is that far-right issues are the only ones open to criticism.
See it’s stuff like this that is going to have people call you racist, though I’m assuming this is mostly a point of ignorance due to media portrayal more than anything else. Single mother households are primarily a symptom of being urban poor rather than being any given race. For instance you’ll see via the following study that all races have high rates of single mother households if poor. The lowest being pacific islanders and even then they’re still at more than 20%.
Click to access single-motherfamilies.pdf
Now there is a larger number of African American households represented on that chart than other races, but this leads us to the second confounding variable, that being the split between urban and rural populations. It is significantly harder financially to abandon a family in a rural environment than it is in an urban one simply due to the increased difficulty of moving and job acquisition. As a result of poor white and poor hispanic households are significantly less liking to have single mothers because they are also significantly more likely to be rural than the primarily urban black population.
https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=carsey
Hence why in areas of the rural south you have a signficantly lower rate of black children with single mothers despite similar levels of poverty and crime.
First off, no. Ignorance and racism would be in assuming the average white person could dance or wrap better than the average black person, or that the average black person can play ice hockey better than the average white person. You may want to consider why it is that poor single mothers wind up having and taking care of children they can barely afford as opposed to not having any at all. That being poor as a correlation to IQ (that could be a reason Asians are the lowest on the single-mother low-income chart), laziness, retardation, or being targeted by political/racial groups (that aren’t necessarily right-leaning).
But don’t get me wrong, I’m aware that plenty of single mothers are in their situation due to being a victim of circumstance or victim of a crime of some kind. But I also think that many of them are in their position because they made some bad choices in their life (ex: why have a kid in the first place?). Even if you threw a bunch of money at them to help them out, they would squander it all real fast, and then wind up back where they started.
That, and there’s the idea that they are taught and raised to be reliant on government welfare, which is something the Democrats love to throw out, so that they can remain loyal Democrat voters and supporters. One of the easiest ways to get onto welfare is to be a single mother. So it isn’t illogical to assume that being a single mother in a poor household is something so prevalent among black because it happened by design, and because they’re content with it for some reason.
But in any case, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to take the discussion further down this route, since it diverges from the gun argument. I’m assuming the reason you went down this route is to justify the reasons as to why blacks are disproportionately responsible, at least in urban areas, for a large percentage of gun violence. I wonder what would happen if we went down the other side with that sort of sympathetic view, seeing how white people can be justified for their acts of gun violence. In the end, everyone has a reason that they find justifiable, that others can sympathize with. But that doesn’t change the statistics. But it could very well change the approach to take to combating gun violence. After all, with the direction you try to take the discussion when it comes to black people, in that the way to solve their issues is not by taking guns away, but by some other sort of law and infrastructure reform. Now if only you could be that open-minded for conservatives.
Again my only real point on the guns is that they are not a significant deterrent.
John R. Lott disagrees. I’d put up a reference to his book or his lectures, but they’re too long. The point being experts exist who will argue otherwise with statistics to back up their stance.
I fail to see how saying that people are pedophile rapists over and over again and then saying that “something must be done” is any different from saying over and over again that “America is the Great Satan” and that “something must be done”. In both cases it leads to murder. Jones was directly calling for violence against Comet Pizza at the very least and a terrorist heeded his call.
Well for starters, pedophile rapists should be locked up while Satan should be vanquished; that tends to be the mindset of the average person. Second, you could say the same thing about Maxine Watters with her calls for violence against Republicans. Or Robert DeNiro and other Hollywood celebrities. Or TheHuffingtonPost. Just to name a few.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-benn/sorry-liberals-a-violent-_b_10316186.html
And third, it’s not all that difficult to twist a message that is meant as a call for justice, into a message that calls for vengeance. It’s just plain hypocrisy.
You’re comparing getting banned from youtube and being slapped with fines to being blackbagged to gitmo and/or being charged with literal treason laws in the UK?
Hey, you’re the guy who said we were left unmolested on YouTube. You want to lower the standards that far, you get to eat that shit-sandwich you asked for that you didn’t think we made. You don’t get to bitch about me pointing out a fact to prove a statement you made to be wrong. And on two fronts, where there are several imams preaching and advocating violence (more clearly than Info Wars ever did, since I’m sure at this point you need that pointed out) and continue to do so without being arrested.
As for being charged with literal treason laws in the UK, you want me to bring up Tommy Robinson while we’re at it?
Right-wingers are silenced far more often on popular social media platforms than the left-wingers, and it’s not for reason of advocating violence. It’s because of so-called “hate speech,” and because those who run the platform don’t agree with right-wing views.
So enough with the bullshit. You want to debate being wrongfully silenced and being de-platformed? That’s a big discussion that belongs on another page, not here with the gun conversation. Unless you think there’s a big enough correlation to social media and gun violence. In which case, do-tell.
America has a history of setting up mental health hospitals with public money then gradually cutting the budgets until they turn into abuse ridden hellholes and get shutdown after media exposes. The solution is pretty simple. Set up publicly funded mental health hospitals with the equivalent funding in today’s money that we used on them back in the 50s but don’t cut the staff or funding. Allow funding to grow with inflation.
Publicly funded? Sounds nice in theory, but when has that ever been reliable in practice, at least for something as big as that?
Citation on money given to illegal immigrants. Cause all I’ve seen is money being used to ensure that southern tomato and chicken farmers keep being allowed to use illegal migrants as effectively slave labor. I have never seen any substantial evidence of the money going to the migrants themselves.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/09/taxpayers-illegal-immigrant-births-funding/
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/illegal-immigrants-can-attend-private-schools-state-funded-program
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2018/02/26/how-american-citizens-finance-health-care-for-undocumented-immigrants/#50313ce12c47
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/map-illegal-immigration-costs-california-most-23b-all-states-89b
https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/02/21/costs-illegal-immigration-california/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/10/judicial-watch-investigations-director-chris-farrell-soros-affiliated-state-department-is-funding-illegal-immigrant-caravans-video/
And if you want to continue down this sort of discussion, consider stating how it will relate back to the gun violence issue. Because discussing what programs should be reduced/eliminated/altered to have finances put to better use elsewhere (in this case on resolving issues that would resolve the gun violence problem in the long run) will keep us here forever. And it isn’t exactly discussing how that relates to extremist conservatives being better or worse overall than anyone else responsible for gun violence.
As to healthcare, while prevention via removing lead paint/asbestos, cleaning up drinking water, and the like will substantially reduce overall medical costs, we still need money going into healthcare, specifically in paying for ongoing preventative care. As American tax payers are the hook for any bills by people who show up at an emergency room and default on payment. It’s substantially cheaper to simply pay for people to have regular check ups and preventative care. This is one of the primary reason that Canadian government spends less money per person on medical care than the American government does, despite having a government run system. The other reason being that American drug companies have been allowed to form cartels and artificially jack up the prices of drugs for Americans compared of the world. Your medicine in America costs more than the same medicine in Mexico or Canada even without citizenship to get the government to pay for it, because America is not enforcing its anti-Trust/anti-monopoly laws.
I’ll refer to what I stated above, and say this is making the discussion too unfocused. Let’s just say that I agree that those things need to be fixed, including anti-trust and monopoly laws, and living conditions, and leave it at that.
Yes, in the same way that chronic pain from bad working conditions makes rural white folks disproportionately likely to abuse prescription drugs.
Ok then.
I have no problem with a market economy in general, however the government’s primary goal should be curbing the power of corporations. In countries where capitalism is considered virtuous in and of itself and “more capitalism” is seen as the solution to most problems this does not occur. I would vastly prefer an economic system closer to Eastern European countries (not Russia) than that of the United States, and will thus work to vote in people more likely to give me those economic systems.
Now that’s going way off topic at this point. Let’s rein it back in a bit, unless you can convince me that this links closely enough to the topic at hand. Such as curbing the power of some corporation that is linked to the gun violence somehow.
See you’re just illustrating his point. Dedicated anti-fascist and socialist revolutionary organizations (there is no unified ANTIFA as conservative media likes to pretend there is) tend have significant animosity toward the sort of performative protesting you’re describing with the vagina hats. It’s seen as a classic case of the Democrats and other liberals like them so say “we hate the results of discrimination but refuse to address the causes”. Similarly despite being fairly steeped in left wing communities I had never heard the little chant you quoted before. No borders related chants are basically only relevant in organizations focused on supporting Latino families directly and they are rarely if ever actively anti-US or anti-state.
You may say there is no United ANTIFA, but there is something that binds those members together. And it’s not the cause, it’s who is giving them money.
https://newspunch.com/antifa-payment-george-soros/
Same thing with Planned Parenthood, and other vagina-hat-wearing supporters,
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/soros-funded-womens-rights-group-promotes-contraception-abortion
Plus there’s also that whole thing of ANTIFA causing conservative speakers to be unable to speak at college universities, assuming the universities would let them speak in the first place (hell, they may even talk about the gun issue from their perspective).
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