What is it at the root cause of all these police shootings and why can't we stop the insanity?? We'll get to that but first-- I'm sure you've already noticed that I posted a picture saying "all lives matter". This isn't met to minimize the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, but I feel that the statement "Black Lives Matter" already triggers people on different sides of the matter to have very specific reactions. Yes, saying "all lives matter" may do the same to some degree, but we cannot live in a post racial society as long as we continue to fight the same battles of the 60's and use statements meant to elicit very strong, often negative feelings in different groups for different reasons. Here's a decent video discussion posted by New Gingrich and Van Jones which was a good dialogue but doesn't really offer much in the way of advancing the conversation in my opinion, but it does explain what I said above pretty well. There are still residual consequences from the old days, but we must do what we can to finally separate ourselves from the past. The problem with doing so lies in the fact that people still hold on to the past and their feelings about it. This is keeping our country from being able to truly progress. Yes, feelings are important but uncontrolled feelings lead to more anger, frustration, and ultimately violence NOT meaningful change. Facts, backed up by strong but rational feelings are what will foster real, lasting change. I challenge everyone to comb through these statistics before making more judgements about the situation at hand or how to mitigate it moving forward. A few facts-- In 2015 there were 990 police shootings, nearly 75% of those shootings (730) were police being shot at or trying to protect citizens being shot at, 26% of the shootings (258) were perpetrated against non-hispanic blacks who make up between 12-14% of the population-- a delta of +12-14%, 50% of the shootings (494) were were perpetrated against whites who make up around 77% of the population-- a delta of -27%, and 9% of the shootings were against unarmed citizens. Is there a disparity?
Again I ask-- is there a disparity? Yes, there were almost twice as many whites shot as blacks. Percentage wise though-- blacks are definitely disproportionately affected. This leads me to believe that while race does play a role, focusing only on that takes our focus off the most troublesome statistics first: the 75% of cop shootings that are a result of people firing on other citizens or cops and the 9% of shootings against unarmed citizens which was 7 times as high against blacks as whites. Reduce those two numbers and you're looking at meaningful change but not overnight. So what's causing the 75% of the attacks in progress? A little more investigation is needed, but I can almost guarantee that in a majority of those cases there were individuals who owns guns who shouldn't. Yes, guns can be obtained by illegal means but reasonable gun reform is still nowhere in site and instead of groups like the NRA being proactive with solutions that help protect more citizens while protecting the rights of the gun owners they represent they simple oppose any measure that they portray as taking us down the "slippery-slope" of robbing every U.S. citizen of life, liberty, and firearms. The 9% of unarmed citizens, mostly black-- now what do we do about this issue? This one in tricky and involves a combination of fixing some of what ails urban areas as well as the passive racism that many suburbanites exhibit towards suspicious looking brown people that "have guns" which often manifests itself as active racism. A big issue that underlies all of this violence still has to do with poverty which silos disadvantaged people off into ghettos which have a good way of helping perpetuate the cycle of poverty, violence, and police targeting that many of those people do suffer every day. Again, don't take my word for it...https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-year-end/
(PS-- Something I didn't originally discuss, but feel compelled to mention now-- I made no mention of how other minority groups (i.e. Hispanic) are also impacted by these police shootings. There are other groups disproportionately affected by police shootings as well. It's just that the white and black populations are the two most affected groups, albeit under disproportionate and different circumstances. This was not meant as a slight to any other groups in the least.)
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