First of all, let me start off by saying that I hate the mainstream media,
and that I usually try to ignore most news stories altogether, but
since my main man Charles Barkley is getting involved in the discussion,
I figured I should weigh in.
I completely disagree with Sir
Charles. I think the officer should have been indicted, and that the
only difference between this shooting and any other shooting in America
is that racial profiling was an issue, as well as the fact that cops,
specifically those of the white variety, get preferential treatment in
the judicial system. There's no denying that, and if you do then you're
living under a rock.
Unfortunately, the protest of this specific
case, while understandable, isn't going to solve much in terms of the
root of the problem, and that is the tolerance of guns in America.
Ending racial profiling is something that would take a complete overhaul
of the contemporary American culture, because so many people do it on a
subconscious level. It's been woven into peoples' mentalities through
music and entertainment, that blacks and latinos are more likely to
commit crimes, both violent and petty, than whites.
Americans of
all ethnic backgrounds are trigger happy. Sadly, there may be more guns
in this country than people. We, as civilians have tolerated, even
glorified, gun violence through the same music and entertainment that
wrongfully frames blacks and latinos as thugs and criminals, thus
building a culture that accepts it as a way of life. We can't, as
civilians, expect the police to not be trigger happy when we are trigger
happy ourselves. After all, cops are only given firearms, because they
are policing people who may also possess firearms.
In order to do
laundry, you need a machine. In this case, the mentally ill people who
shoot up a school, the ex-soldier with PTSD that shoots up a military
base, the kid that shoots another kid from a rival clique or gang, and
the dumb, racist cop that shoots an unarmed black kid, all have one
thing in common, and that is that they have the tool with which to carry
out these violent transgressions, a firearm.
If we disarm
ourselves, there would be no reason for cops to be armed either, none of
these forms of mental instability would lead to tragedy, and we
wouldn't even get to the point of having to deal with a prejudiced
judicial system in the first place. The problem is that we always
deviate from trying to ban guns altogether by focusing on some other
aspect of crimes like what the motivation was, or who the shooter was as
a person. We do this, because lobbying with the NRA to ban guns
altogether is such an uphill climb, as they make so much money on our
collective fear of each other.
Guns are the archaic tool that
continue to oppress all of us, an advent of a revolutionary war that's
already been won centuries ago. Shut down the NRA, and all of us will be
free.
