Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

Do Republicans Respect Police Opinion?

Posted on by under Politics

Republicans and conservatives are usually the quickest to insist the police must be respected, that “Blue Lives Matter,” and that officers should be allowed to do their jobs without pesky protests against the deaths of unarmed black males or other forms of unnecessary force. (The rightwing insinuation that one can’t respect officers for their bravery in a dangerous line of work, or want police officers to be safe, and oppose police harassment, brutality, and corruption is so obviously absurd it requires no further comment.) Conservatives are proud to have law enforcement’s back, even blindly at times. But when it comes to gun rights, it seems any deviance from mainstream conservative ideology on the part of police departments is simply ignored.

The Missouri gun bill — SB 656 — is a good example. On Wednesday, the Missouri Senate overrode Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of SB 656. In one month, Missourians will no longer need to pass a criminal background check, take a gun safety class, or get a permit to carry a concealed weapon (it is already legal in Missouri to openly carry without a permit or safety training).

The police backlash against this measure was immense.

The Missouri Police Chiefs Association is against the Missouri gun bill. Its president, Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams, said, “Someone who would have been prevented from carrying a concealed weapon before, they would be permitted to carry a weapon under this law. That creates a danger for law enforcement officers when they encounter those individuals on the street.”

Williams said the association is “at a loss for why we would want to do away with something that is working.”

The Missouri Fraternal Order of Police is against it. Its legislative director, Sergeant Kevin Ahlbrand, said:

The system we have in place works well now. Local sheriffs are the best people to recognize who in their communities should and should not carry firearms. Most of the other states with this type of legislation are mostly rural states. There’s a big difference between what happens in rural Missouri, Montana and Vermont and what happens in urban Kansas City and St. Louis.

As far as open carry in Kansas City and St. Louis, open carry is not supported by local ordinance unless people have a Concealed Carry Weapon permit. Sheriffs are the best ones to determine who should be able to carry a concealed weapon… This is a danger to public safety and it will be an increased danger to law enforcement because, quite frankly, we will have to assume everyone is armed.

The Springfield Police Officers Association is against it. President Mike Evans said:

I can tell you that a weapon in the hand of a properly trained individual can be life saving. I can also tell you that a weapon in the hand of an untrained or misguided individual can be devastating.

For those who want to take on the responsibility to carry concealed, under the pretense of being the first line of defense for themselves or possibly others, is it really too much to ask that you demonstrate you can use the weapon and have a basic understanding of the justifications for when force can be used?

The Kansas City Police Department is against it. Deputy Chief Cheryl Rose said before Wednesday’s vote, “We join law enforcement across Missouri in urging the Legislature to uphold the veto of Senate Bill 656.” Further,

Police are very concerned that if this law goes into effect, it will make it easier for many more people to perpetrate gun violence, which is a considerable problem in Kansas City. It also could make it extremely difficult for law enforcement to get guns out of the hands of people who would use them to commit violent acts.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Sharp is against it. He said, “The public should understand that Jackson County has declined over 900 requests for a conceal and carry permit since the existing law has been in effect. We need to continue to take guns out of the hands of people who are going to be harmful to our community. If overridden, SB 656 would give those rejected 900 people the ability to own a gun.”

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson is against it, going so far as to write an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, urging Missouri to “put public safety first and let SB 656 remain where it belongs: in the graveyard of bad ideas.” He declared:

SB 656 would end Missouri’s concealed carry permit requirement, which is one of just a few remaining checks and balances we have against the arming of violent criminals. It’s already too easy for lawless people to carry lethal weapons. This bill would make it even easier, and in the process, make things that much harder for peace officers who work to keep our communities safe…

Just as a driver’s license acts as a handy proof of one’s competence to lawfully drive a car, concealed carry permits help legal gun owners readily identify themselves to the police. Removing the permit requirement would also remove that clarity, needlessly increasing the risk of confusion in encounters between armed citizens and armed officers…

Even with our current permit requirement in place, police officers routinely find themselves in harm’s way doing the job we ask them to do: to protect St. Louis from a deadly gun violence epidemic. Overriding SB 656 would be a clear step in the wrong direction. It would increase the risks officers face on the job, it would make their work even more difficult and it would, without question, leave all of us less safe.

The National Rife Association made the Missouri gun bill its “top national priority,” according to the Missouri Times, lobbying hard for Nixon’s veto to be overruled. And when the NRA says jump, Republicans ask how high, regardless of whether they’ll stomp on the police on the way down.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

A History of Violence: How the War on Terror Breeds More Terror

Posted on by under War

From a young age, Americans — like citizens of other nations — are indoctrinated with nationalism, the belief that the United States is the “good guy” in world affairs, even if sometimes making mistakes in the pursuit of its noble aims. We are taught the U.S. uses its military might to protect the freedom of Americans and foreigners, expand democracy and peace, or in simple self-defense.

While sometimes this is true, the actual history of American foreign policy is far darker and more complex. The view of our moral superiority, however, serves an important function for the State. With the glorification of one’s country inherent in nationalism and patriotism comes the belief that the lives of foreigners are less valuable than your own countrymen. So because the U.S. is in the right, it really doesn’t matter how many innocent people perish in the pursuit of its goals.

The History of Violence series takes a less nationalistic and more honest look at the reasons the U.S. uses violence and the kinds of violence it deems acceptable. The series raises a key question: Would Americans deem it permissible for other powers to do to us what we did to them, for identical purposes and using identical violence? That is, if Vietnam bombed millions of Americans to prevent us from electing a Communist government, if Mexico conquered half the U.S. for more land and resources, if Guatemala helped overthrow our democracy in the interest of its corporations, and so on.

Despite the more rosy picture of U.S. benevolence, throughout its history the American government used military force to protect its economic interests and global power at the expense of weaker (often defenseless) nations. Presidents of both political parties authorized hundreds of military interventions into foreign nations, particularly in Latin America.

The boldest tactics included invasion and occupation, aerial bombings, terror attacks and assassinations, forcing open markets, and enacting trade blockades using naval and air power. Other methods included secretly arming and training rebel and terrorist groups, organizing and supporting coups, rigging ballots, and arming and funding brutal dictators. Usual targets included popular socialistic and communistic groups or governments pushing for land reform to help peasants or seizing national resources from foreign corporations, usually American.

These actions killed millions, and led to civil war, totalitarianism, genocide, and dire poverty in many countries.

*   *   *

On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush told perhaps the greatest lie in American history, during a speech to a joint session of Congress and a national audience. Explaining the motives of Al-Qaeda terrorists, Bush said:

Americans are asking, “Why do they hate us?”

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other… These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.

While it is true that ultraconservative Islamists have no interest in democracy or individual liberties, but rather religious repression and domination, the idea that the September 11 attacks were motivated by an intense hatred of “our freedoms” was absurd on its face. Would the system of government and civil rights of a nation on the other side of the globe, 7,000 miles away, really inspire men to kill themselves while massacring innocent people? If so, why not attack Switzerland on 9/11? With its direct democracy, it is more democratic than the U.S. Why not bomb Australia? Or Hong Kong, Canada, or Norway? There are many democratic countries with just as many individual freedoms as the U.S., some with more. Even America’s conservative Cato Institute knows 30 nations have greater personal freedoms than the United States. One of the most free nations on earth, Denmark, is much closer to the Middle East — why bother crossing the Atlantic?

We can put aside such thoughtless, juvenile ideas. There are more sensible explanations, provided by Osama bin Laden himself. He explained in detail why he declared war on and attacked the United States.

In short, U.S. military interventions into the Middle East enraged him and many other Arabs and Muslims — enough to plot revenge.

Our relationship with bin Laden began as a friendly one. In the 1980s, the U.S. gave weapons and money to Islamic rebel groups in Afghanistan to help push out the Soviet Union—one group, which became Al-Qaeda, was led by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Islamic fundamentalist from Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden “developed a relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency and received American funds to help build his mountain bases” (Foner, Give Me Liberty!). 

Not only did Afghanis want their independence from a foreign occupier, some Muslims throughout the Middle East saw it as their duty to wage holy war against the atheistic Communists, to defend Islam. When the conflict was over, violent groups turned their attention to American intervention in other Arab countries, what they perceived to be a new front in the war against Islamic nations, based on U.S. atrocities in Lebanon and Somalia, the Gulf War of 1991, the sanctions that directly killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, U.S. support for Israel, etc. You read about these sorts of American actions in Facing U.S. Wars of Aggression.

To establish the Muslim caliphate across the Middle East that Al-Qaeda envisioned, the U.S. would have to be dealt with in the same way as the Russians. Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center, a symbol of American global power, in 1993, killing six people. They did the same to the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing 200, mostly Africans. In 1999, they bombed the U.S.S. Cole in a port in Yemen, killing seventeen.

In 1996, bin Laden published in a London newspaper his “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” which refers to his home country of Saudi Arabia, which has Islam’s holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina (Saudi Arabia, a brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime, is a close U.S. ally and oil partner). He saw the foreign policy of the U.S., Israel, and their allies (the “Zionist-Crusaders alliance”) in the Middle East as a war against Islam:

It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience…. The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance.          

While bin Laden laments the “occupation” of Jerusalem by the hated Israelis, he said the “greatest of these aggressions” was the “American Crusaders” in Saudi Arabia, “the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka’ba….” He was enraged at his Saudi Arabian government for allying with the U.S.: “The King said that: ‘the issue is simple, the American and the alliance forces will leave the area in few months’. Today it is seven years since their arrival and the regime is not able to move them out of the country. The regime made no confession about its inability and carried on lying to the people claiming that the American will leave.”

Nearly all the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi Arabians.

He condemned Saudi economic ties to the U.S., mentioning the “oil industry where production is restricted or expanded and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy of the country.” He called for a boycott of American goods, saying: 

It is incredible that our country is the world largest buyer of arms from the USA and the area biggest commercial partners of the Americans who are assisting their Zionist brothers in occupying Palestine and in evicting and killing the Muslims there, by providing arms, men and financial supports. To deny these occupiers from the enormous revenues of their trading with our country is a very important help for our Jihad against them.

Bin Laden called on all Muslims to begin “destroying, fighting and killing the enemy.” There was no mention of American freedoms or democracy. In 2002, bin Laden offered his justifications for the 9/11 attacks in a “Letter to America”:

Why are we fighting and opposing you? …Because you attacked us and continue to attack us…you attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon…you have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day…your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the World Trade Center attack, wrote something similar in 2015: the “U.S. reaped what it sowed on 9/11.” He condemned the U.S. building “military bases in the Arabian Peninsula in Tabuk, Dhahran, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and U.A.E – which is prohibited by Sharia laws – to secure a non-stop flood of oil to [the U.S.] at the cheapest price” and U.S. support for “dictatorial rule of monarchial families and oppressive, corrupt, dynastic regimes” around the world, including “the Indonesian dictator Suharto when his army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds of thousands of landless farmers” and the “Shah of Iran and Safak, the brutal Iranian intelligence agency, for 40 years.”

He mentions the sanctions against Iraq and Madeleine Albright’s approving comment, U.S. support for Saddam Hussein “even when he was using poison mustard gas against the Kurds,” and how we “protect repeated Israeli crimes” at the U.N. “You can keep your military bases in Japan, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, but Muslim land will never accept infidels army bases in their land.” He concludes, “If your government and public won’t tolerate 9/11, then how can you ask Muslims to tolerate your 60 years of crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula and the whole Muslim World?”

A study of 52 instances of terrorists targeting the U.S. found that their motives included “boiling” anger at U.S. foreign policy, such as “the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” and our “country’s support for Israel in the Palestinian conflict.”

The War on Terror, as it increased U.S. involvement in the region, increased terrorism (by 2015, over 1 million Afghanis, Iraqis, and Pakistanis were dead due to Bush and Obama’s war, providing plenty of fuel for anti-American hatred and radicalization).

After 9/11, the CIA and international intelligence officials warned the Bush Administration that war would breed more enemies and new terror attacks. A Pentagon advisory panel, referring to the quote from George W. Bush, advised, “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate our policies” (Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects). 

During the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East was severely destabilized and hatred of the American government spread. American military incursion served bin Laden, in that it further validated his claims about American aggression and encouraged more people to join terrorist networks; for this reason, a CIA official in charge of tracking bin Laden called the U.S. “bin Laden’s only indispensable ally” (Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects). Abu Musab Al-Suri, an Al-Qaeda strategist, believed that “the war in Iraq almost single-handedly rescued the jihadi movement.” The Charlie Hebdo, Boston, and Orlando terrorists cited U.S. invasions, drone bombings, and torture as motives for their attacks.

Al-Qaeda, originally operating primarily from Afghanistan, spread across the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia: into Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, India, Indonesia, etc. In 2014, the organizations the U.S. had set out to destroy in 2001 were estimated to still be strong: the Taliban had 36,000-60,000 fighters, Al-Qaeda 3,700-19,000. Acting CIA Director Mike Morell said Al-Qaeda’s “great victory has been the spread of its ideology across a large geographic area.” Al-Qaeda increased its terrorism against religious, ethnic, and political enemies in many countries. ISIS, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the Taliban in Afghanistan spread terror as well. In 2000, there were 3,361 global terror fatalities, but over 11,100 in 2012, nearly 18,000 in 2013. This means a fivefold increase in fatalities since 9/11.

Iraq and Pakistan were thrown into chaos. Iraq went from a nation with no recorded suicide attacks in 2003 to 1,892 by 2015, killing 20,000 people. Between 1978 and 9/11, Pakistan saw a single suicide attack; between 9/11 and 2015, 486 attacks, killing over 6,000.

Nations that joined the U.S. invasion became bombing targets, like Spain in 2004 (191 killed) and Britain in 2007 (52 killed). In 2013, terrorists set off a bomb in Boston that killed three Americans. After France took a leading role in bombing ISIS, the terror group killed 129 people in Paris in November 2015. 

“This is an act of war,” French President François Hollande said, echoing Bush. “An act committed by a terrorist army, [ISIS], against France, our values, who we are, a free country that speaks to the entire planet.”

But what Louis Caprioli, former head of DST, France’s retired anti-terrorism unit, said of the attacks was more accurate: “This attack is linked to our engagement in Syria and Iraq, to our engagement in the Sahel [Africa],” as reported in a Bloomberg article titled “France Pays Price for Front-Line Role From Syria to West Africa.” Further,

This isn’t the first time France’s involvement abroad has led to terrorism at home. In 1995, Algerian Islamists set off eight bombing attacks that killed eight people and wounded 200 in Paris to punish France for supporting the government in that country’s civil war…

“For 20 years we have fought this Salafist doctrine,” Caprioli said.

France began bombing ISIS in September of 2014, launching over 200 airstrikes, mostly in Iraq. Even before this, France was supplying violent Islamic groups with weapons to fight Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. In October 2015, France bombed Raqqa and other targets in Syria. 3,000 French troops were also active in Africa to counter Islamic militants with allegiances to ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

This is in stark contrast to the French refusal to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, for which many Americans vilified them.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, leaving no question that French military intervention was its inspiration. It called France a “crusader nation,” echoing bin Laden.

Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake in the crusader campaign, as long as they dare to curse our Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him), and as long as they boast about their war against Islam in France and their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets, which were of no avail to them in the filthy streets and alleys of Paris. Indeed, this is just the beginning. It is also a warning for any who wish to take heed.

The ISIS statement also touched on the well-established fact that Islamic extremists view Western military intervention as part of a broader religious war, calling Paris “the lead carrier of the cross in Europe” and saying the attackers were “hoping to be killed for Allah’s sake, doing so in support of His religion, His prophet…”

As with the American experience after 9/11, only a few dissenting voices in France, drowned out in the screams for more war and revenge, pushed for a deeper understanding of why the Paris attacks occurred and warned that more war will only create more terrorism.

France’s NPA (New Anticapitalist Party) was one such voice. Its statement after the Paris attacks said:

This contemptible cruelty in central Paris responds to the equally blind and even more fatal violence of the bombings by French planes in Syria following the decisions of François Hollande and his government… Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other.

The NPA called for “the withdrawal of French troops from all countries where they are present, in particular in Syria, in Iraq, in Africa.”

The U.S. has a similar relationship with ISIS, like Al-Qaeda before it.

The bloody sectarian wars in Iraq caused directly by the U.S. invasion birthed new terror groups like the Islamic State in Iraq, which grew out of AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) and later joined with rebel groups in Syria to become ISIS. Even during a “War on Terror,” the U.S. was not opposed to arming terror groups to meet short-term goals, only later watching former assets step out of line, as had occurred so often in the past, like with bin Laden.

A classified Pentagon report from August 2012 revealed the U.S. actively supported the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI as the extremist groups attempted to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. The Pentagon predicted these groups would evolve into some sort of Islamic state, saying this could be helpful in “unifying the jihad” of the Sunnis against Assad and the other Shia power, Iran, but also noting it “will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory.” This came true. After arming rebels and welcoming a quasi-state of Sunni Islam extremists, the U.S. watched ISIS grow too powerful, launching a campaign of conquest, rape, and ethnic and religious cleansing. ISIS tortured, mutilated, and massacred Christians, Shia Muslims, Druze, and others. When the U.S. began bombing ISIS — after the group took over Syria and northern Iraq and was approaching Iraqi oil fields—ISIS publicly promised revenge. The use of the American military has left us in an endless cycle of destruction and death.

A group of Americans who lost family in the 9/11 attacks perhaps understood this. They condemned revenge and pleaded for peace, founding an organization, 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, to help eradicate Islamophobia and find nonviolent solutions to terrorism. Many wrote President Bush condemning violence, and some visited Afghanistan in 2002 to console the parents of U.S. bombing victims. A woman whose husband died at the Pentagon said:

I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation’s leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband. (Zinn, A People’s History of the United States) 

There are many other groups with similar aims, such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, which call for an end to war.

American officials will even condemn intervention, when referencing other nations. In October 2015, after Russia bombed anti-Assad forces in Syria, the U.S. declared the deaths of civilians “will only fuel more extremism and radicalization”! The Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, while insisting U.S. drones were far more accurate than Russia bombers and thus didn’t kill as many innocents, said, “We believe if you inadvertently kill innocent men, women and children, then there’s a backlash from that…. We might kill three and create 10 terrorists. It really goes back to the question of are we killing more than were making?” The day after the Russian airstrikes, the U.S. bombed a hospital in Afghanistan for nearly an hour, killing 22 people, including three children.

Yemeni journalist Farea Al-Muslimi, after his village was drone-bombed, explained how such things spread the anti-American hatred that radical Islamic terrorists long for: “What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant” (Chomsky, Because We Say So).

Terror attacks being revenge attacks for U.S. military incursions and wars in the Middle East should not be surprising, nor controversial. Whether you think such assaults are morally justified, despite how many innocent people die and despite oftentimes dubious motives like straightforward corporate gain, that is the cause of anti-American hatred and terrorist violence.

Nor should it be remarkable if religious zealots see their cause through a religious lens, using religion to broaden support and justify killing oneself and others. Some are convinced Western nations are trying to destroy Islam itself, though there is no evidence this has ever been among America’s dubious motives. The fact that Islamic fundamentalist extremists earnestly believe their deity wants them to kill Americans — waging a war to protect “Muslim lands” and Islam from foreigners and get revenge for prior U.S. interventions and alliances — simply does not change the actual historical cause of the conflict. After all, in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were no Muslim military bases in the United States and neighboring nations; Muslims did not drop bombs on Denver and Charleston; Muslim armies did not land troops on the east coast; Muslim governments did not help Muslim corporations seize large portions of American natural resources like oil. But the U.S. did all these things in Muslim nations of the Middle East, for half a century (for example, U.S. oil companies were operating in the Middle East by the 1940s, protected by the British, who occupied much of the region after World War I).

This examination is not to justify bloody terror attacks, in the same way most of the bloody U.S. interventions discussed in Part I: Facing U.S. Wars of Aggression cannot be justified by ethical people free from the blinders of patriotic indoctrination. But it does help us understand why 9/11 and other attacks occurred, and how a “War on Terror” cannot be won, how it is a cycle of U.S. invasions (drone bombings, too) and extremist revenge attacks, each feeding the other — it is endless war. The only way to stop the war is to withdraw — and never repeat our foreign policy mistakes.

These things make us consider how we might react if America was a weaker, poorer nation and subject to the kinds of blows we dealt to Middle East nations for decades. Some would surely take up our arms and plot revenge in the home nations of enemies, and like Muslims convinced deadly U.S. policies are part of an attack on Islam itself, some Americans would surely come to see Muslim invasions of Iowa and Illinois as motivated by something equally inaccurate and nonsensical — freedom, perhaps.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

The Armed Whites Flying Confederate Flags at the NAACP are the Stupidest Whites in America

Posted on by under Race Relations

In late August 2016, a group of about 20 people held a “White Lives Matter” protest in front of the Houston, Texas, NAACP building — with Confederate flags on display and assault rifles at the ready.

A protestor explained:

We came out here to protest against the NAACP and their failure in speaking out against the atrocities that organizations like Black Lives Matter and other pro-black organizations have caused the attack and killing of white police officers, the burning down of cities and things of that nature. If they’re going to be a civil rights organization and defend their people, they also need to hold their people accountable…

We’re not out here to instigate or start any problems. Obviously we’re exercising our Second Amendment rights but that’s because we have to defend ourselves. Their organizations and their people are shooting people based on the color of their skin. We’re not. We definitely will defend ourselves, but we’re not out here to start any problems.

And of course, he said they brought the Confederate flags to show Southern pride.

There are so many things wrong in this confection of inanity it is difficult to decide where to begin.

First, let’s go with the notion that the NAACP needs to “hold their people accountable.” What the f*ck are you talking about? The NAACP is not responsible for the actions of all black people (and neither is Black Lives Matter). A civil rights organization is in no way responsible for African Americans who riot against or seek murderous revenge over police misconduct, any more than Greenpeace is responsible for your carbon footprint. Only in a mind clouded by juvenile white delusions would it be the duty of the NAACP to corral and “get under control” all the “troublesome,” “criminal” black people.

And of course, saying that “their organizations,” black organizations like the NAACP, are “shooting people based on the color of their skin” is just thoughtless slander. Just because a black person participates in a riot or targets police officers does not mean the NAACP is behind it.

Second, what in the world does protesting killings of police officers (such as the tragic shooting in Dallas that killed 5 police officers, a revenge attack by a black veteran after police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) have to do with “Southern pride”? Whites who use this term like to pretend (at least publicly) that the Confederate flag represents all Southern culture, tradition, and history besides slavery, insurrection and secession, Jim Crow laws, white terrorism, lynching, etc. — that it has nothing to do with racism or America’s barbaric racial history. If that’s the case, why bring it to a “White Lives Matter” rally? Your explicit aim is to stop black people from killing whites; what does that have to do with Southern pride, unless Southern pride is just a misnomer for “white pride”?

Could it be that the flag is actually a symbol of racial divisions? That it was birthed and popularized by pure, unadulterated race hatred? Can we stop playing make-believe? It originated as a battle flag for traitorous states that sought to preserve black slavery, and was popularized by a white terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, after the war. According to Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy’s

…foundations are laid…upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…

The creator of the flag (which originally had the stars and bars in the corner, the rest white) was quoted in the Daily Morning News on April 23, 1863, as saying:

As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.

The Confederate flag has never been about something noble. It was and is used as a symbol of anti-black sentiment; not in all cases, as discussed elsewhere, but at “White Lives Matter” rallies like this, held outside a civil rights organization that had nothing whatsoever to do with the deaths of police officers? There is no question. The protesters operate under a simple premise: black people are out of control. Under this premise, inextricable from white denial, unarmed, nonviolent black people aren’t killed by police way out of proportion to their low population, aren’t drastically more likely than whites to be stopped and searched for no reason, aren’t more likely to be physically abused by police than whites exhibiting the same behaviors, and many other well-documented injustices. Without the understanding that such things lead to race riots and anti-police hatred and violence, the problem is simply that blacks are hateful and violent for no reason — no matter how far below 1% the number of African Americans who actually commit such acts is. To these whites, the problem is black people, their “nature,” their “criminal tendencies.”

Such a view is racism by definition. Whether conservative whites simply don’t know about the mountain of research concerning anti-black discrimination and mistreatment or know of such things and ignore them, the result is the same: racist views about how our black brothers and sisters think and behave.  

Third, perhaps these poor, misinformed souls should pay closer attention to the news — or better yet, actually follow Black Lives Matter or the NAACP on social media. Then perhaps they’d see headlines like “NAACP President Condemns Violence After Michael Brown’s Death” and “NAACP Condemns Senseless Killing of NYPD Police Officers” and “NAACP Condemns Looting and Violence in Baltimore After Freddie Gray Funeral” and “Black Lives Matter Activists, Civil Rights Leaders Condemn Dallas Ambush” and “After Shooting Targeting Police, NAACP Denounces Violence From All Sides” and “Black Lives Matter Leader Condemns Violence at St. Paul Protest.”

Enter “NAACP condemns” or “NAACP denounces” into Google and you could spend days reading the NAACP’s rejection of violence and hate crimes against whites, police, and private or public property. Is this what the protestor meant by “failure in speaking out”? You can find similar condemnations from Black Lives Matter leaders, who believe in peaceful protest as the means for positive change.

There is so much more that could be said about this protest. How marching around with guns and the Confederate flag in the black neighborhood where the NAACP building rests is not going to ease American race relations. How the protestor wore a “Donald Trump ’16” hat and a shirt “with white supremacist symbols” (Washington Post). How he whined about how “We’re being told it’s bad to be white” and insisted Black Lives Matter should be labeled a “hate group or domestic terrorist group” — when there is zero evidence the organization itself called for any sort of violence, and its platform, if one bothered to actually read it, talks of ending mistreatment, violence, and discrimination against blacks, not, for Christ’s sake, mistreating, hurting, or discriminating against white people. In short, they want safety and equality.

After this protest, the term “white delusions” simply cannot do present conditions justice — a more appropriate term is surely “white lunacy.”

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

Not a Christian Nation: How the Founders and Their Constitution Enraged the Religious

Posted on by under Religion

Many on the religious right insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, meaning the federal government and Constitution were intentionally founded on Christian principles by Christian men, who intended the faith to take a central role in governance and law.

The Constitution (and its Bill of Rights) was an important document in world history because it greatly expanded personal freedoms and slightly widened democracy (it kept political power in the hands of the aristocracy). However, and even more radically, the Constitution made no mention of God or Jesus Christ. This was a departure from the Declaration of Independence, the 1776 Articles of Confederation, and many state constitutions, which mentioned God, his glory, and the rights he gave man. It was very unlike most European states.

This caused much controversy. (Sources available in The Godless Constitution, by Kramnick and Moore.)

 

The Constitution enraged many Christians

The U.S. Constitution was signed in September 1787, to a mixed response.

One writer in November 1787 condemned the framers’ “silence” and “indifference about religion.” A Virginia newspaper warned of “pernicious effects” of the Constitution’s “cold indifference toward religion.” Thomas Wilson of Virginia called the document “deistical,” and lamented that the framers didn’t think of God during their work. A 1787 Philadelphia pamphlet declared “there was never a nation in the world whose government was not circumscribed by religion” and that “the new Constitution, disdains…belief of a deity, the immortality of the soul, or the resurrection of the body, a day of judgments, or a future state of rewards and punishments.”

A delegate at the New Hampshire ratification warned that if the Constitution passed, “Congress might deprive the people of the use of the holy scriptures.” A writer in a Boston newspaper warned in January 1788 that God would turn his back on America, like he did with Saul in the Old Testament. Charles Turner of Massachusetts warned it would lead to “ruin.” Later, Timothy Dwight declared at Yale College that the War of 1812 would be lost because we “offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgement of God.” Minister Horace Bushnell even blamed the Civil War on our “infidel” government!

When the Constitution and Bill of Rights did mention religion, it angered Christians further. The First Amendment said the government would not support one particular religion, nor prevent people from following any particular religion. Article 6 of the Constitution declared there would be no religious tests for political office. Amazingly, this law, according to Maryland delegate Luther Martin, was “adopted by a very great majority…and without much debate” at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, despite the fact that 11 of the 13 states had religious qualifications for being a politician. If you were not Protestant, you could not govern. And in Rhode Island, only Protestants could vote! One of the two states that banned religious tests, Virginia, did so because of earlier efforts by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. This led to some hysteria.

Protestant Christians were terrified that no religious qualification meant we’d see “a papist [Catholic], a Mohomatan [Muslim], a deist, yea an atheist at the helm of government.” Minister David Caldwell, a delegate at the North Carolina ratification, warned we’d have “Jews and pagans of every kind” in office. Thomas Lusk of Massachusetts, not seeing the irony, predicted “Popery and the Inquisition may be established in America.” A pamphlet in North Carolina cautioned that the Pope in Rome might be elected president! Many Christians feared the anti-slavery and anti-war Quakers would be elected. A New York newspaper denounced the idea of politicians who were Quakers (“who will make the blacks saucy”), Muslims (“who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity”), deists (“abominable wretches”), Negroes (“the seed of Cain”), beggars (“who…ride with the Devil”), and Jews (who might “rebuild Jerusalem”).

Fortunately, cooler, more tolerant, and less religious heads prevailed.

Proposals and petitions to have religious tests for federal office were struck down by the Constitutional Convention. So were ideas to add religious language to the document, like delegate William Williams’ suggestion the preamble be changed to: “We the people of the United States in a firm belief of the being and perfection of the one living and true God, the creator and supreme Governor of the World, in His universal providence and the authority of His laws…”

Some people pointed out that men of all faiths or no faith fought in the Revolutionary army. Jews and other groups protested for equal rights. Tenche Coxe of Philadelphia, former member of the Continental Congress, declared, “Ecclesiastical tyranny, that long standing and still remaining curse of the people, can be feared by no man in the United States,” and that we would become an “asylum of religious liberty.” James Iredell, future associate justice of the Supreme Court, called religious tests “discrimination.” Reverend Daniel Shute said they came from “bigotry.” Reverend Isaac Backus called them “the greatest engine of tyranny in the world.” Reverend Samuel Langdon called the lack of religious tests a “great ornament of the Constitution.”

The fact that the Constitution was secular, despite much precedent for religion in government, is overall a testament to the influence and power of non-Christians like Madison and Jefferson at the Constitutional Convention. Most of the famous founding fathers opposed religion in government, and some had some very nasty words for Christianity indeed.

 

The Founders’ Heresy Enraged Many Christians

In 1831, New York minister Bird Wilson lamented, “The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels.”

Not what one usually hears from the religious right today.

The Founding Fathers, sons of the Enlightenment and followers of the more secular John Locke, were greatly influenced by deism. Some did not believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Deism is the belief that a higher power exists and created the universe, but does not intervene in the material world any longer. Nature is the only way to “see” God. Thus, miracles were impossible, prayer irrelevant, the Bible mythological. In this view, Jesus Christ was a fraud.

John Adams was a Christian, but condemned religious violence and religious dogma. George Washington, while writing little on faith matters, regularly made mention of God, and encouraged his men “to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier.” But there is some controversy over how seriously Washington took Christianity (many quotes attributed to him, such as “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible” and “What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ” are total fabrications). It is highly possible Washington was a deist. Jefferson wrote of Washington (Anas, February 1, 1800):

When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion. I know that Gouvemeur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.

James Madison and Ben Franklin were known to be deists, as were Jefferson and Thomas Paine, though these two flirted dangerously with atheism. Jefferson even rewrote the New Testament, cutting out all supernatural events, including the Resurrection (look up The Jefferson Bible).

Regardless of their differing views, the most famous Founding Fathers disliked the Church in some way. They generally believed in a secular government, well-documented in many places, from national treaties to personal letters. Not all of these men signed the Constitution, but those that did helped make it godless.

 

George Washington: Protect religion from tyranny, but beware its dangers

“No one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”

Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia, May 10, 1789

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”

Letter to Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

Letter to Edward Newenham, Oct. 20, 1792

 

John Adams: Be a Christian, but you’re not in a Christian nation

“Conclude not from this that I have renounced the Christian religion…. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion.”

Letter to Jefferson, Nov. 4, 1816

“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”

Letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816

“The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Treaty of Tripoli, approved by the Senate and signed by Adams, 1797

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an æra in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses…”

“Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.”

Defence of the Constitutions, 1786

“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”

Letter to his son John Quincy Adams, Nov. 13, 1816

“A general Suspicion prevailed that the Presbyterian Church was ambitious and aimed at an Establishment as a National Church. I was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical Project. The Secret Whisper ran through them all the Sects “Let Us have Jefferson Madison, Burr, any body, whether they be Philosophers, Deist or even Atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.[“] This Principle is at the Bottom of the Unpopularity of national Fasts and Thanksgivings, Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion.”

“We Shall have the civil Government overawed and become a Tool. We Shall have Armies and their Commanders under the orders of the Monks. We Shall have Hermits commanding Napoleons. I agree with you, there is a Germ of Religion in human Nature So Strong, that whenever an order of Man can persuade the People by flattery or Terror, that they have Salvation at thier disposal, there can be no End to fraud, Violence or Usurpation.”

Letter to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812

 

Benjamin Franklin: No need to worship, and don’t let the church use the state

“I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.”

Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion, 1728

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1759

“When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

Letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780

 

Thomas Jefferson: Jesus was a fairytale, and separate church and state

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”     

Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

“We find in the [gospels]…a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.”

Letter to William Short, August 4, 1820

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say There are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket.”

“Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned… What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”

Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religious, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the Despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

 

James Madison: No official religion, period

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”

A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their common good.”

Federalist No. 10, 1787

“The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”

Detached Memoranda, c. 1817

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize.”

Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774

“Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, June 20, 1785

 

Thomas Paine: A demon likely wrote the bible

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”

“The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.”

“The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar, not many years before; and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in the execution of innocent persons.”

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

The Age of Reason, 1794

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

Are Gun Rights the Only Way to Show Conservatives Racism is a Problem?

Posted on by under Race Relations

Both explicit anti-black sentiment and subconscious stereotypes of black people (as more dangerous, more aggressive, lazier, less intelligent) are still enormous American problems, which negatively impact African Americans in all arenas of life — housing, education, employment, policing, courts and prisons, the media, and so on (see The Evidence of Widespread American Racism).

And if the infection of racism is so pervasive, one might muse, could it also affect Second Amendment rights, something held dear by many conservatives? It has in the past, as many gun control policies, some supported by Reagan and the NRA, were racist responses to blacks arming themselves. If black and white gun owners are treated differently today, might the knowledge of a sacred right being violated due only to ethnicity awaken those on the Right who dabble in white denial to the disadvantages faced by black people?

To begin this discussion, a meme comes to mind that read: “It’s only called open carry when the man is white. When he’s black it’s called ‘Oh shit, he’s got a gun!'”

If you felt the pull of a smile at your lips, you’re already partially “woke,” as much as you may not realize it. “It’s only called open carry when the man is white… If he’s black it’s called ‘Oh shit, he’s got a gun!'” is only humorous if you believe there’s some truth behind it. It hints at a world where blacks (exhibiting the same behaviors as whites) are seen as more dangerous, more threatening, more deviant.

Rationalizations that a white person might use in defense have, to put it bluntly, no basis in reality — and rely on black stereotypes. “You’re more likely to be drawn on or shot by a black person”? Not if you’re white. 84% of white people are killed by whites (the “white-on-white crime” epidemic?). Likewise, as the races still live very segregated lives, black people kill other black people the vast majority of the time. With so many more whites in the U.S., a white person’s largest threat is other white people. In 2012, whites were charged with 69% of crimes, blacks 28%. Whites led in categories like rape (65%), assault (63%), and burglary (67%), while blacks led in murder charges (49%, a lead of 1%) and robbery (55%). More minor categories were dominated by whites. Looking at all violent crimes lumped together, blacks committed about 20% of them. And of course, if we look at mass shootings in America, some 64% of them were committed by whites since 1982, verses 16% by blacks, a 4:1 ratio (see The “Black War on Whites” is Another White Myth).

For a white person, it would make much more sense to fear a white man with a gun. (Not that it makes much sense, according to conservatives, to fear anyone with a gun unless he or she starts behaving violently. Conservatives point out conceal carry owners tend to be more law-abiding; as the National Review editor put it in an article celebrating more diversity in gun carrying, “Anybody who is worried about concealed carriers needs his ruddy head looked at.” Really, why fear someone with a gun?)

Yet American society is characterized by the unspoken, unreasonable fear of black people. Surveys indicate about 60% of whites can openly admit belief in stereotypes concerning blacks like higher aggression or greater criminal appetites — but nearly 90% of whites hold subconscious (implicit) anti-black biases. One experiment looked at what whites thought when a white man and a black man came to blows. When the white man pushed the black man first, 17% of white respondents said this was a violent act. But when the black man pushed the white man first? 75% of whites characterized it as violent.

The police are more likely to become physically violent or draw their weapons at blacks than whites in similar situations. Many studies show why. “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing” showed how police officers associate innocent blacks with criminality and aggression. “The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals” showed ordinary civilians in simulations are far quicker to shoot armed blacks than armed whites, and decide faster to spare an unarmed white than an unarmed black. “The Correlates of Law Enforcement Officers’ Automatic and Controlled Race-Based Responses to Criminal Suspects” found that during simulations police officers with anti-black biases shoot unarmed black suspects more often. “The Consequences of Race for Police Officers’ Responses to Criminal Suspects” showed police officers are more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed blacks than unarmed whites. Unarmed Americans killed in the first half of 2015 were twice as likely to be black than white. Blacks who were not attacking an officer when killed made up 39% of total deaths in 2012, way out of proportion to a small black population, 13% of Americans (compared to 46% of total deaths being white, who are nearly 70% of the American population).

These things are rooted in the fear of the “dangerous, criminal black man.” This fear exists even in the minds of conservatives (and liberals) who encourage African Americans to arm themselves. It affects liberals, conservatives, moderates, civilians, police officers, whites, and sometimes blacks themselves. So it should be no surprise if blacks who carry are treated differently than whites who carry.

The result of one amateur social experiment, where a black man and a white man each strolled around in public with a semiautomatic weapon in an open-carry state, should come as no shock. Watch the video here, then read on.

Each of these men had the right to bear arms in public view. Why, one might ask, should either of them be stopped by police? (Again, why not assume these are “good guys with guns”?) Yet though they exhibited the same behaviors while exercising those rights, the black man was treated as a much graver threat. This is a fine example of how the law is colorblind but those who put it into practice are not. Americans technically have equal rights, but discriminatory practices persist. Thus Tamir Rice, Jermaine McBean, and John Crawford III were shot and killed while holding toy guns in open-carry states, conceal-carry permit holder Clarence Daniels was attacked by a white vigilante who spotted his firearm, Philando Castile was murdered after reportedly telling an officer he had a gun on him and a license for it, and so on.

Many black gun owners say they are treated differently than white gun owners. “If you have a firearm or you scare the wrong people, you’re going to get shot. You’re going to get killed. The perception of the scary black man still exists,” one leading black firearms activist said. Owners understand that carrying can give them the means to protect themselves against crime in their neighborhoods, but know it can make them a target of the police or white vigilantes who may see a white man as a good guy with a gun but a black man as a “thug.” These feelings come from countless incidents, from the Castile shooting to everyday police harassment of black gun carriers to the story of Mark Hughes, a heavily armed black man marching in Dallas right before the killing of multiple police officers, who was wrongly made a suspect and hunted down.

More voices deserve to be heard:

After Earl Brown, a black man working security with a legal firearm, was killed by police in Lauderhill, Florida, his wife Gloria said, “Honestly, I hear the N.R.A. talking about the right to bear arms. He had the right to bear his that night; they just never told us he wouldn’t have the right to life. It seems like white men and police officers are the only ones who have the right to bear arms in this country.”

After the Castile shooting, a member of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, a group of black gun advocates, said, “It terrifies me. Here I am telling black people: ‘Hey, bear arms legally. You’ll have a better opportunity to protect yourself. Maybe the law will respect you more.’”

Philando Castile himself had discussed the dangers with his sister, who reportedly said, “You know what? I really don’t even want to carry my gun because I’m afraid that they’ll shoot me first and then ask questions later.”

This is not to say misunderstandings, tragedies of police or vigilante shootings, do not happen to white gun owners, because they do. Further, these stories and the experiment above are anecdotal evidence, with sample sizes of one or two, not serious studies. According to The New York Times, “There is no data on whether legally armed white or black people are shot at higher rates in the United States.” So while there are many studies showing how blacks are treated differently by white civilians, judges, lawyers, the police, etc., there are no specific studies yet on how black conceal- or open-carry supporters are treated differently. But no matter where we stand on how grave a problem racial discrimination is today, we should all carefully consider the implications of the possibility.

If it is anything like other complaints of mistreatment, studies may soon exist to assure whites that this issue is not simply a confection of black delusions.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.