Violence has always been America’s favorite pastime, and the gun her preferred toy. It is no secret America was established by use of the gun in threatening, provoking and murdering vulnerable populations, and since her birth as a nation, her image in the world has been colored by these deeds. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution speaks to America’s unrivaled fetish for steel and gun powder.
Americans and their guns are not easily separated, and any reasonable effort to stem the proliferation of violence due to guns appears futile. What is left is ignorance singing falsetto in most gun discussions.
Politicians understand that limiting access to any gun is un-American and indeed it is. To be armed is to be American, which is why it is nonsensical to the average citizen to relinquish their personal desires to imitate their favorite episode of Bonanza or Gunsmoke or video games such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto.
But now, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama wants those who have historically been one of the most victimized by gunfire, Black Americans, to believe he’s prepared to do something about it. However, Obama won’t move to boldly challenge the issue of gun control because to do so would require a level of moral courage never displayed in American politics: the courage to tell the whole truth.
Moreover, the republic has never appeared particularly interested in the protection of all of its citizens – only some. If this were not so, perhaps the mental health services and police protections bandied about recently would have actually worked to significantly address the areas of the nation where they are most needed, among the poor in inner cities; where the faces are mostly black and brown and where all forms of violence suffocate the hopes of the dispossessed and disenfranchised.
It is not surprising that many blacks, especially those occupying these enclaves of despair, look on with mock scorn as the media attempts turning humanity inside out to fathom white shooters murdering innocent middle-class whites. Rather than focus on the larger problem of gun violence across socio-economic and racial divisions, pundits and politicians strain to unearth any morsel of justification to explain the growing list of white mass killers.
Mental illness is thoroughly explored. But if mental illness is truly what causes white males to murder school children, then why is this same diagnosis not afforded to violent black youths who riddle entire city blocks with bullets? Why haven’t, for example, black and Hispanic gang members been psychologically analyzed so we may prevent the next spilling of blood in the ghetto? Crimes committed by black people against other black people have always been dismissed by lawmakers as merely the begrimed activity of a subhuman population.
This is why Chicago’s murder rate continues to break records while President Obama and Congress pander to middle-class whites by declaring a national discussion on guns. But when all the talk is finished, none of the solutions will solve the crisis faced by those occupying these war zones. I suppose not even mild regard extends to the poor – especially those black and brown.
If American concern with respect to gun violence is indeed genuine, then any solutions to the problem must address the violence all Americans face. Both victims and victimizers must be treated justly by law makers, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system if we aspire to heal the country from the deep wounds which afflict us.
America in 2013 remains stuck in neutral, undecided on the fundamental ethos which undergirds its very existence, and until that most important self-evident truth espoused in the founding documents of this country – that all people are created equal – is finally realized, the entire country inches closer to the complete crumbling of this would-be American democracy.
Timothy Dwight Smith is a nationally published journalist. He may be reached at timothy.smith@washburn.edu.
