The Gun Paradox

This morning I awoke to horrific news; an ambush of Dallas police officers, with 5 killed and numerous others wounded.  This is disgusting.  The initial reports indicate the person who targeted the officers was doing so in direct response to the continued slaying of African America men by police in America.  In the last week, the nation has been rocked by shootings of African American men in Falcon Heights (Philando Castile) and Baton Rouge (Alton Sterling).  In both cases, the men we're killed partially due to the gun they were legally carrying, but not brandishing or threatening anyone with, at the time of their deaths.

I'm outraged by all of these deaths.  Anyone insisting I have to be more outraged because the dead are either brave police officers, or innocent African Americans, is misguided.  I can mourn when law enforcement are killed, or when an individual is killed by law enforcement without justification or provocation.  If you are screaming one side's deaths are more important, tragic or sadder than the other side's deaths, you have an agenda I want no part of.

Understandably, you might've missed a smaller story this morning.  Cell phone footage of a June 25th police shooting of an unarmed 19 year old in Fresno, California has emerged, and it leads to more questions than answers.  The individual, Dylan Noble, died from his wounds, inflicted by officers who shot him.  While the video doesn't show the entire conflict, it does show officers 12-15 feet from Noble, who's on the ground, in no way an immediate threat to the officers who have guns drawn.  From this distance, the officers shoot Noble twice.

The Fresno police are refusing to release the body camera footage until the investigation is complete, but considering the man was unarmed, the officers are coming under a lot of scrutiny for the discharge of their weapons.  They shot the man four times in total.  FOUR!  And the final shot was a shotgun blast.  Chief of Fresno Police Jerry Dyer is quoted as saying the officers feared for their lives as the suspect kept reaching towards his waistband for a non-existent weapon.

The officers were 12-15 feet away from the suspect.  He wasn't armed, but police didn't know that.  Considering Noble wasn't a vampire or other mythical creature who can jump long distances from a laying down position, the only weapon the officers could've used to validate the shooting was a potential gun, not a knife, or axe, or pipe.  If the case was to go to trial, a jury would have a hard time labeling the shooting as justified if Noble was 12-15 feet away from them with a switchblade.  Our laws clearly state the potential of a gun is validation for the police to shoot a suspect, and the Fresno officers will likely be found not guilty of any wrong doing.

Did you catch that?  Our laws which are designed to protect police officer actions when it comes to shooting perps acknowledges guns are extremely dangerous.  A lot of weapons are dangerous, but guns, the most lethal of weapons, are overwhelmingly used to validate police shootings.  When it comes to the shootings this week, the officers will likely never face any charges, as the officer's fear of a gun, even in the cases of Castile and Sterling's legally carried guns, offsets any responsibility by the officers.  The gun itself, whether real or imaginary, whether licensed or illegal, IS the legally recognized danger.

With the shooting of the Dallas police officers, nothing is being said at all about the gun, a sniper rifle which can be used with lethal results.  Instead were being told it's all about Black Lives Matter, or it was President Obama, or it was liberals encouraging violence by questioning the needless deaths of two African American men.  If the Dallas shooter had a knife, axe, or pipe, there wouldn't be five dead officers.  The sniper rifle needs to be included as a main part of the discussion.

Who's been writing the police's 'fear of a gun' defense laws?  Many of the same people who scream "guns aren't the problem, people are the problem;" politicians like MN Rep. Tony Cornish and US Senator John McCain.  These 'guns everywhere' kooks are the ones who turn a whiplash inducing 180, and embrace a solemn, factual and sober gun tone when it comes to writing laws which authorize police shootings.  They're admitting we should all be afraid of guns.  Sadly, they reserve their dalliances into sanity for these gun laws alone.

If the gun is such a dangerous object that a police officer can legally kill a suspect due to fear of a gun, real or unreal, then why is the gun taken out of the equation when a police officer is not the shooter?  If we legalize police shootings due to the life threatening danger of a mythical gun being present, then shouldn't we write laws which accept how dangerous real guns actually are?

The Dallas Police were highly trained, each carrying a loaded weapon on their hip.  It didn't matter.  In the case of Philando Castile, he actually had a carry and conceal license, to make him safer.  It was used as the justification to gun him down.

Guns suck.  They're violent weapons that can cause obscene amounts of carnage.  If we were to apply the legally recognized danger of guns to more than just police shootings, there'd be fewer victims of gun violence overall.  My prayers go out to the police officers killed in Dallas, as well as to the near daily loss of African American lives, gunned down in the streets by law enforcement.