By Allen Schmertzler.
I can remember how much the searing voice of Malcolm X scared the pajamas off of an America accustomed to a good night’s sleep, especially white America, and yet today, it seems so measured, rational, and in the context, understandable and tragic. But his message has been long buried.
Disenfranchised minorities with legitimate grievances are not waging either a defensive or an offensive “war” advocating violence against those that put a “hand” on them, even though institutional racism perseveres and they have been victimized by racial profiling, police shootings, outlandish stereotypes, and incarceration rates at grotesque disproportions to white society. The “crazies” with guns are, and it seems that the “hands” that ignite their rage are an exaggerated product of their paranoid delusions and socially unrewarding and disconnected world.
Sadly, too many innocents are being sent senselessly and unwillingly to the cemetery at the hands of killers with guns, in what appears to be at a greater frequency and without justified provocation. I am far more scared today folks than when Malcolm X was alive. There is an insanity of gun violence epidemic in our society that has coupled with an insanity of silent denial from a majority of our elected class over this malaise.
In the past year there have been over 200 mass shootings in at least 40 states. A majority of the perpetrators were youngish white males who obtained their weapons legally. While this plague uproots lives, families and communities, the effort to legislate gun safety and control is going nowhere in many states.
To the contrary, we see sales of guns increasing after well publicized mass shootings and irresponsible solutions being advocated such as former Texas Governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry declaring that allowing guns in movie theaters would prevent future such mass shootings. I am still uneasily waiting to hear about killers with guns being shot dead before mass killings by an armed “good-guy citizen” in a shootout of heroic proportions in a mall, place of prayer, theater, or, Anywhere, USA.
From too many Republican politicians we keep hearing fear-baiting perverse prejudicial stereotypes about illegal immigrants who are rapists, murderers and drug dealers with calves the size of cantaloupes invading our bucolic communities and ruining America. From too many of our institutions we keep seeing statistics that counter the belief we are a post-racial society. From too many of our Democratic politicians we keep hearing the silent tiptoeing around to prevent awakening the NRA hornet’s nest that sting to death their electoral position.
If we are going to wage an honest war against people who are wreaking havoc on our freedom, then the real question begs, when will there be an honest public discourse on the dominant profile of mass shooters, with the same vigilant war against that crime, which we have waged against other evils?
When will our society conclude that perhaps the second amendment as it’s current interpretation, is not a price worth paying? There can be no real freedom when there is no real freedom from fear that another mass shooting can occur anywhere. Louisiana Governor and presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal, stated how shocked folks were that a mass shooting could occur in our town of Lafayette. That is disingenuous, dishonest, and an ignorant abandonment of the very epidemic everybody must understand and expect today.
Every location where folks gather under a lost reasonable expectation of safety must understand that fear and anxiety now occupies, Anywhere, USA. To be peaceful, courteous, obey the law and respect everyone means we cannot continue with our arms race. We cannot shoot our way out of this malaise by sending the mentally imbalanced and their victims to the cemetery.
