Fox News was talking about President Obama and Guns Rights. They had some people on who were very upset because they believed "this president" was trying to redistribute wealth--taking wealth from the "middle class, upper middle class and upper class" and letting the poor people have it.
At the same time they were talking about how wrong it was for President Obama to redistribute wealth, they were talking about constitutional rights. Specifically they were very concerned because they saw President Obama as restricting their "constitutional rights" regarding the 2nd Amendment.
Let's get this straight. The Constitution of the United States is for all Americans. It is not just for "middle class, upper middle class and upper class" citizens. Where citizens of other, lesser economic classes do not have complete access to public institutions we must expand access to everyone.
People who are economically disadvantaged do not have the same access to public institutions that other citizens do. I am talking access to jobs. I am talking access to public health care. I am talking access to adequate housing. There is one other big area I am talking about, and for that I will need the preamble to the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
There is a group of people within the United States who are being denied access to domestic Tranquility and general Welfare.
Who are these people? They are the people who live in the inner city--specifically they are communities made of up of largely African Americans and Hispanics.
This is where the conversation turns to guns--specifically to gun violence.
The Far Right and the Republican party want to argue that guns are about defense. These groups are saying that they have a right to defend themselves. But the Constitution does not give anyone right to defend themselves from other Americans. Rather, the Constitution provides for defense against other countries and it provides for defense against the government. There is no RIGHT to defend yourself against other Americans.
If you need to defend yourself against "the bad people" this is a matter of Justice, not defense.
So when white people are talking about gun rights, they are really saying they want to defend themselves. They are saying they want to defend themselves against the large numbers of bad Black people and bad Hispanic people.
Guns are a big problem in the inner city, it is true. But guns are a big problem in the inner city not because the inner city is filled with lots of bad people. Guns are a problem in the inner city because we have lax gun laws and because access to public institutions has largely been cut off.
This is what happened last night in my neighborhood (9NEWS). Well, not exactly my neighborhood. It happened across the park, across the expanse of prairie dogs. It happened in the horrible and awful place that is Aurora, Colorado. Here is a picture of the crime scene--from my neighborhood.
You can see that the "illustrious"neighborhood of Stapleton is separated from the "horrible" neighborhood of Aurora by only a few rodents. The shooting that was reported on 9NEWS last night took place near the red building on the right side of the photograph.
I woke up last night around 2:00 in the morning. I heard a steady drum beat of loud shots--boom, boom, boom. I didn't count the shots but there had to be at least 20 shots. It was enough that I incorporated the shots into my dream and then I woke up and realized that I wasn't dreaming. The shots were real and they were VERY CLOSE.
Here's the thing:
There was no way to protect anyone from these shots. They occurred in the middle of the night. I could hear the shots, but I couldn't really tell what direction they were coming from.
The news only talked about the shooting at 11:00 that night--we couldn't find anything about the shots at 2:00 in the morning. This is also another problem. We rarely hear about what is really going on. But that's another issue. For this blog post--I want to say that there is NO WAY to protect yourself from this type of gun violence. No Way.
We do not need guns. We do not need guns. We do not need guns. We do not need guns.
Guns are destroying us. And listening to White people talk about how they want to protect themselves from the awful Black and Hispanic people is really, really horrible.
We are all Americans. Our society needs to be for all people. Where someone is restricted in their access to our society we need to take steps to allow their participation. This is the meaning of the Constitution of the United States. Anything less is simply blah, blah, blah.
