Jesse Jackson Links Guns and Hate

[CPTMO]

Guns and hate are on rise in America :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Jesse Jackson

Guns and hate are on rise in America

June 17, 2009

BY JESSE JACKSON

Last Wednesday in Washington, D.C., James W. von Brunn, an 88-year-old anti-Semite and white supremacist, allegedly took a .22-caliber rifle into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and shot and killed security guard Stephen T. Johns. Earlier this month, Dr. George Tiller, who ran a clinic that performed late-term abortions, was murdered while serving as an usher at his church, allegedly by anti-choice zealot Scott Roeder. In April, three Pittsburgh police officers were shot to death, allegedly by a right-wing extremist who thought the president was going to take his guns away.

These hate murders received national attention. Less attention is given to the 30,000 gun deaths each year, or up to 400,000 gun-related assaults a year.

The murders of Johns and Tiller were preceded by a Department of Homeland Security report that warned about the rise of right- wing extremist hate groups. That report was immediately denounced by Republican legislators. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked right-wing extremism for years, warned in February that there are more suspected hate groups in the U.S. than ever in our recorded history.

The reasons are clear. The election of Barack Obama may demon- strate progress toward a post-racist-society to many, but to others it's a threat and a betrayal. The economic downturn has been particularly brutal on manufacturing workers, veterans and low-wage workers. Many of these people feel abused by their government, threatened by low-wage immi- grants and angered by civil-rights ad- vances.

This hatred is fed by the extreme rhetoric of our politics -- as Republicans accuse Obama of promoting "fascist" policies and call Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Right-wing radio host Glenn Beck charged that Obama's lifting of the ban on stem-cell research was designed to create a new "master race." Rush Limbaugh accused the Obama administration of actively seeking to destroy America as we know it. All this speech is protected by the First Amendment, but that doesn't make it any less reckless.

Add to this hatred our obsession with guns -- which has reached ridiculous extremes. The gun lobby has cowed Democrats and Republicans from what once was bipartisan common sense.

Now both parties scrape low to please. The credit card reform bill was amended to allow concealed weapons in national parks. In Virginia, R. Creigh Deeds won the Democratic nomination for governor while backing measures to allow concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol. Bush let the assault weapons ban die, and Obama seems loath to take it up.

Adding guns to the festering hate in America is like pouring gasoline on fire. Now, our police are outgunned on our own streets. Gun show loopholes allow would-be terrorists or haters easy access to guns. Concealed weapons will take an ever-greater toll as they turn bar arguments into lethal encounters. There are at least 200 million guns in America.

This isn't about hunting deer or quail. This is about arming the haters, giving them the right to conceal weapons or arm themselves with assault weapons that are made for only one thing: killing lots of people.

Hate is on the rise. Guns are on the rise. Hate and guns are a deadly combination. Most Americans are neither haters nor gun nuts. Most support commonsense laws to limit easy access to guns. Few want to arm themselves with a concealed weapon to enter a restaurant or a national park. It is hard to find anyone who thinks it a good idea for our police to be outgunned on our streets, or for would-be terrorists to have easy access to assault weapons.

Guns will not provide economic security. Hunters do not need assault weapons to kill deer. Honest gun owners have a huge stake in policing the sale of guns so the nuts and haters have a hard time getting them.

But instead of strengthening our laws after 9/11, we have been weakening them. The majority is getting rolled by a mobilized minority. Only leadership can turn that around.


There is a blog at the end of the article where you can respond.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[sigmanluke]

I don't give a crap what he says. He has his agenda as well. And why do they always bring hunting into it? That's not what the 2nd Ammendment was, or is about.

[ErnieNWillis]

You do realize that Jesse's term "Haters" is referring to WHITE people! I'd like to see a study on GUN Violence broken down by ethnicity. Of coarse the Jesse's, Al's and Sheila Jackson Lee's of the world would chalk this up to white racists propaganda!

[SIGguy229]

Hey everyone! Look! Jesse is trying to seem relevant! Isn't that cute.

Look at him! Look at him!!


Hey! Did you know blood will be flowing in the streets with people carrying guns!! In National Parks, even!!

Sorry Jesse...you're yesterday's news...

[CPTMO]

I also like that is column is in The Chicago Sun Times. Can you get more gun control than that city or that rag of a publication?

[Paco]

Jesse Jackson Links Guns and Hate

Here's an update:

"Paco links Jesse Jackson to racism and stupidity."

Too bad no major news outlet will cover my story.

[Pure Kustom]

Jesse, Should do an indepth look. On how guns really work. A nice game of Russian roulette would be a good start. He could use a Glock. Because they are light and studying them won't get to heavy to hold.

[retsupt99]

Here's an update:

"Paco links Jesse Jackson to racism and stupidity."

Too bad no major news outlet will cover my story.

Sorry Paco, but you left out corruption, intimidation, bribery, and thuggery.

[mi2az]

And this is the guy that made cracks about Hymies in Hymie-town. He has the audacity to talk about hate ???

[PastorPack]

Look! Jesse is trying to seem relevant! Isn't that cute.

Jesse Jackson, the original punchline!

[Sheldon J]

And I grew up to love guns and hate Racist like him.....

[PointnClick]

ErnieNWillis sez...

I'd like to see a study on GUN Violence broken down by ethnicity. Of coarse the Jesse's, Al's and Sheila Jackson Lee's of the world would chalk this up to white racists propaganda!

A quick Google search turned up this... can't vouch for the veracity of the article...


Exerpt from Guns and Demography

by Richard Poe
November 4, 2003

Imagine how the civil rights establishment would react if Chuck Schumer and Sarah Brady proposed a law denying black people the right to keep and bear arms, but granting that same right to white people. Al Sharpton and Kweisi Mfume would cry, "Betrayal!" Yet many black leaders today support an anti-gun agenda that is fast driving America in the direction of race-based gun licensing.

Here’s how it works.

Anti-gun activists have succeeded in turning the gun debate into an esoteric exercise in statistical number crunching, comprehensible only to highly trained academics. Anti-gun experts argue that guns increase violence. Pro-gun experts argue that guns in the hands of honest citizens reduce violence. We the People look on dumbly, mystified by the charts, graphs, tables and diagrams wielded by each side.

The Framers of the Constitution never intended that basic rights should be subject to this sort of academic debate. They knew that once the debate started, it would never end. One excuse after another would be found to chip away at our rights, until none were left.

That process has already begun. And, as the anti-gun movement progresses, the rights of racial minorities will clearly be the first to go. The reason is simple. If statistical number-crunching is to be our guide in rationing out basic liberties, there is no question that crime statistics unambiguously demand the disarming of black America.

Race and Violence

In the white suburbs of Syracuse, New York where I grew up, many families owned firearms for hunting and self-defense. Guns were plentiful in our community, but gun violence was completely unknown.

Later, I moved to New York City and took up residence in Alphabet City, a largely Hispanic neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, notorious for drug trafficking. There I encountered a level of violence that I had never before witnessed.

On one occasion, I was nearly stabbed in the stairwell of my apartment building, when I walked inadvertently into the middle of a knife fight between two drug dealers. On another occasion, my wife and I had to take cover in a doorway when a gun fight broke out between drug dealers in front of our building.

According to U.S. Justice Department figures from 1992, white Americans commit murder at a rate of 5.1 per 100,000. For black Americans, the rate is 43.4 per 100,000 – eight times that of whites. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that blacks, who make up roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population, commit some 42 percent of all violent crimes, according to 1995–1996 data.

In addition, African American criminals prey on whites at a far higher rate than white criminals do on blacks. Justice Department figures show that in nearly 90 percent of all interracial crimes, a white person turns out to be the victim and a black person the perpetrator – a proportion that has remained remarkably steady for two decades (the figure was 87.49 percent in 1981 and 87.83 percent in 1999).

Youth Violence

Sensational media reports of suburban school shootings give the impression that Main Street, USA is seething with potential violence. Yet Mike A. Males, a researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has calculated that the murder rate among white American teenagers in 1995 (that is, the rate at which white youth, ages twelve to seventeen, were killed) was "virtually identical" to that of Canadian youth. By contrast, the murder rate among non-white youth in the United States was eight times higher than among Canadian youth in 1998.

Gun control advocates frequently point to Canada as a model of strict firearms regulation. Yet, even with our looser laws, white American teenagers are hardly more inclined to engage in gun violence than Canadian youth. Writing in the leftwing journal In These Times, Males points out that, in California, "where white households are the most likely to harbor guns… the gun death rate among white teens (three per 100,000) is as low as Sweden’s or Canada’s."

A similar phenomenon can be observed nationwide. Males notes that the proportion of youth murders committed with guns in Canada is much smaller than that in the United States. Yet, when Canadian youth are compared specifically with white American teenagers, the difference narrows considerably. "The U.S. white-teen [gun] murder rate is pretty close to Canada’s," notes Males. "Non-white youth are a different story: 180 murders, 147 by guns in 1998, a rate five and eight times higher than for California white or Canadian youth."

Race, Class or Culture?

In keeping with his leftwing views, Males emphasizes the role of class in these differential murder rates. He contends that blacks commit more murders because, overall, they have less money. Males’ figures do show that poor and affluent groups within the same race exhibit different levels of violence.

However, there are clearly factors at work in the American crime wave of the last forty years that cannot be explained by income alone. As John Perazzo points out in The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations, "During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when poverty and hopelessness plagued American life as never before or since, violent crime rates were far lower than today – for whites and blacks alike. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s, a period of economic prosperity, that crime rates soared."

Certainly, within the black community, cultural factors are at work that have wreaked special havoc among the young. "Thirty years of research suggests that the… boys who are most at risk for juvenile delinquency and violence are boys who are physically separated from their fathers…," writes Clark University philosophy professor Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys.

Sociologist David Blankenhorn writes in Fatherless America that "the weight of evidence increasingly supports the conclusion that fatherlessness is a primary generator of violence among young men."

Whatever the reason for the extraordinary level of violence in the black community, it presents anti-gun academics with a question they do not like to address: Why should white people be subjected to the same gun control laws as blacks, when black people are statistically far more likely to commit gun violence?

[Natureboypkr]

I am confident that everyone here knows that Jesse Jackson is a babbling moron. Anything that comes out his mouth is always dealing with race or who hates who. The make a long story short I cannot wait until people realize that he is always looking to stir up controversy to keep himself in the spotlight, and quite frankly I hope he disappear out of existence.

[torgo1968]

Wow. I'm not going to bother addressing the specifics, I'd just be preaching to the choir here. What is most notable is how poorly written this is. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, this is so horribly written it's almost unbelievable. It's something I'd expect to see in a middle school essay. He gets basic facts wrong, makes completely illogical connections, fails to connect points at all, just a horrendous mess.

[Sub Hunter]

You have his name wrong. We in IL (not Chicago) refer to him as Jessie Jacka$$ since he sounds so ignorant when he opens his mouth.