Gun Policy in Black and White

By Jonathan Blanks Jonathan Blanks

Last week, after the national March for Our Lives events, black
students from the Parkland, Florida high
school that suffered the spree killing in March held a press
conference draw attention to the unbalanced coverage their
affluent, predominantly white classmates have received in the wake
of the tragedy. Although they supported their classmates’
efforts, the black students correctly noted that the calls to end
gun violence by Black Lives Matter and similar organizations have
not received similar support and sympathy nationwide. To his
credit, David Hogg has repeatedly used his
time in the media spotlight to discuss the racial and
socioeconomic privilege that has helped propel him and his
classmates to the center of the national gun debate. But simply
acknowledging that disparity does not overcome the number of
differences between how white and black communities typically
experience gun violence. This incongruity isn’t the
students’ fault, of course. The problems are much older than
they are.

Before we even consider race, proponents of gun control often
treat all gun deaths as the same. At first blush, focusing on the
common denominator—firearms—makes intuitive sense. But
digging deeper into the other causes of gun deaths, and the
political reality of a country with hundreds of millions of guns,
leads to different solutions for the …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute