The irony is not lost upon me that on the 4th of July in the year 2022, a day set aside by law to celebrate the time in 1776 when 13 British colonies rebelled from Great Britain’s rule and ignited a bloody war for independence from King George III, that yet another episode of mass bloodshed happened in Highland Park, Illinois\u2014just as an Independence Day parade kicked off in the downtown square!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are as weary of these murders as I am, then you are probably asking yourself, \u201cwhen will the mass killings stop?\u201d Well, if I had to guess, I would say \u201cnever!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I am frustrated by the state of affairs in our so-called Union, I will never grow tired of reminding Americans that America has a problem, a MAJOR problem, with guns and wanton violence in cities, towns, and villages from “sea to shining sea.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will never grow tired of reminding Americans that America has a problem with a gun lobby that has bought and owns one political party (Republicans), and frightened away another (Democrats), facts that render common sense political solutions, like bans on sales of AR-15’s and similar weapons (or deeper background checks), from coming into fruition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To me, there’s something terribly perverse that an 18 or 19-year-old male can purchase weapons before they are even old enough to legally purchase a sip of alcohol! And while murder suspects come in all races, creeds, and colors, as I write quite often, even how a Black or brown misdemeanor suspect is treated by law enforcement often is FAR different than how a white male murder suspect is treated by law enforcement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seriously, in just the past week, 25-year old Jayland Walker, an unarmed Black male who was running away from the police, was shot more than 60 times, an ending that was captured in horrifying detail by police cameras! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conversely, 21-year-old Robert Crimo III\u00a0 (below) was gently taken into custody after a six hour manhunt in Highland Park, Illinois!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seems that whenever some young white male inflicts maximum carnage at a grocery store, school, movie theater, parade, or a church, like Dylann Roof infamously did at Emmanuel AME Church in 2015, that not only are they NOT beaten, Tasered or shot, in Roof’s case, he was treated to Burger King by his arresting officers right before being booked for nine counts of murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such disparate treatment is wrong, racist, and does little to mend the rifts across America that grow wider by the day on myriad political and social issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a small and independent media outlet, it is my charge to point out the “color of injustice” each time that these issues are ripe! Sadly, not only are the gun loving, right wing MAGA crowds seeing few mentions of the disparate racial impact of gun violence in America in most mainstream outlets, but for the same white-washing reasons, a fair number of liberals seem reticent to hold white males accountable for the violent miseries that many are randomly inflicting across our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What’s worse is that each time I see breaking news that another mass shooting has occurred, when the inevitable “when will it stop” questions are posed, as I do above, my conclusion remains “never!” My skepticism stems from the fact that America, at its very founding, was forged by violence, period\u2014full stop!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lest we forget that early Americans not only shed the blood of their British, French, and Spanish cousins through gun violence, but their long rifles, pistols, and cannon proved to be the decisive difference against Native American tribes as they systematically stole their lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guns were how white Americans suppressed slave rebellions planned or executed by men like Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and John Brown\u2014rebellions in a South where enslaved Black males outnumbered white males three to one in many areas, but were out gunned 50 to 1 (or none) within the same region!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simply stated, America’s fixation with guns is embedded within its DNA, and one could even argue that America’s rise as a Superpower was not just because of its immense contributions to the Industrial Age, but because while those capitalist corporations that exploited Black, brown, Asian, and poor white labor made fortunes during the 19th and early 20th centuries, their sister industries that produced the rifles, pistols, cannon, warplanes, mines, and missiles\u2014particularly the nuclear ones\u2014were able to prevent even those foreign nations who could call in America’s massive debts from ever really being able to force the issue because of her militaristic might!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus, my lament and, thus, my melancholy that this nation lacks the fortitude to change what it has always been\u2014a land where both bullies and coward alike think with a pistol\u2014and talk with an (assault) rifle…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hobbservation Point is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chuck Hobbs is a freelance journalist who won the 2010 Florida Bar Media Award and has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The irony is not lost upon me that on the 4th of July in the year 2022, a day set aside by law to celebrate the time in 1776 when 13 British colonies rebelled from Great Britain’s rule and ignited a bloody war for independence from King George III, that yet another episode of mass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[779,618,569],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-4th-of-july","tag-america","tag-democrats","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1452,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions\/1452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}