New York Magazine Questions Gun Control From The Left :: 10/18/2019

There are a group of people who have spent a lot of time demonizing police officers all throughout the nation. While police do make mistakes and that there are times when criticism seems completely justified, these folks don’t see individuals who may have screwed up or even departments that might represent a problem. No, they see anyone in blue as part of some bizarre brand of evil.

What’s hilarious is just how much overlap this group has with the crowd that wants the American public disarmed.

For the first time I’ve seen, a magazine that’s not aligned with the right is asking why would you want the “evil police” to be the only ones who have guns.

At Tuesday’s Democratic primary debate in Ohio, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Julián Castro how he’d end gun violence. Until then, the solutions put forth by his fellow candidates had focused mostly on implementing universal background checks, buying back some assault rifles, confiscating others, and banning their future sales. That most firearm deaths in America are caused by handguns went unmentioned. “What’s your plan to prevent those guns?” Cooper asked Castro. The former Housing secretary instead challenged the question’s premise, outlining the dangers of having police go door-to-door looking for weapons at all. “In the places I grew up in, we weren’t exactly looking for another reason for cops to come banging on the door,” Castro replied. He continued:

And y’all saw a couple days ago what happened to Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth. A cop showed up at 2 in the morning at her house when she was playing video games with her nephew. He didn’t even announce himself. And within four seconds he shot her and killed her through her home window. She was in her own home. And so I’m not gonna give these police officers another reason to go door-to-door in certain communities, because police violence is also gun violence, and we need to address that.

Castro drew attention to an under-examined aspect of the gun-violence debate: That too often, gun-control efforts seek intervention from the state, often using force, to prevent violence between civilians without challenging the state’s ability to use the same violence against them. This dynamic is vivified by cases like Jefferson’s, one of dozens of people killed each year by law enforcement — a disproportionate share of them black — who don’t even need guns to be viewed as threats. Jefferson was the second black person in the Dallas area whose killing at the hands of police made headlines in recent weeks. Earlier this month, former Dallas officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to ten years in prison for killing Botham Jean, her black neighbor, in his own apartment last year, after she walked in thinking it was hers and that he was a burglar.

Now, I’m not in agreement with the idea that police are racist or anything. Some are, some aren’t. Like any other group of Americans, you’re going to get a bit of everything.

However, there are those that do. They’re convinced that the police represent some kind of evil, yet they also advocate for disarming the American public so these same officers are the only ones with guns. I’m sorry, but if you tell me that there’s an armed gang that will kill me just as soon as look at me, I’m not going to give up my guns. I don’t care if they’re funded by the drug trade or tax dollars.

Many on the pro-gun side have argued that if they actually believed what they were saying, they wouldn’t be so opposed to gun control.

It’s a fair point.

The fact that a writer for New York Magazine is willing to publish a similar line of those, especially in the wake of Julian Castro’s comments during the debate, is an interesting development.

I’m torn as to the ramifications of this line of thinking, though. On one hand, I want to say anything that helps us protect the Second Amendment is a good thing. On the other hand, I don’t really want to see something that continues to vilify the police like this.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/10/17/new-york-magazine-questions-gun-control-left/