Page 2 The Skanner January 20, 2016
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Challenging People to Shape
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Opinion
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
Dallas Tragedy Debunks Anti-Gun Control Myths
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
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Advertising Manager
Christen McCurdy
News Editor
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Reporter
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e can’t tolerate
this
anymore.
These tragedies
must end. And to
end them, we must change.
We will be told that the causes
of such violence are complex,
and that is true. No single law
— no set of laws can eliminate
evil from the world, or pre-
vent every senseless act of vi-
olence in our society. But that
can’t be an excuse for inac-
tion. Surely, we can do better
than this.” – President Barack
Obama, Sandy Hook Inter-
faith Prayer Vigil, 2012
One of the more unsettling
revelations about the tragedy
in Dallas is that the mental-
ly unbalanced gunman was
rejected, ater a background
check, for membership in
an extremist group, but was
legally able to purchase a
high-capacity assault rile.
According to media re-
ports, Micah Johnson was la-
beled “unit for recruitment”
among a network of extremist
groups, including some desig-
nated as “hate groups” by the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
Yet within months of that
rejection, Johnson was able
to meet in a parking lot with
a gun seller he contacted on-
line, and take possession of a
military weapon designed to
slaughter human beings as
quickly and eiciently as pos-
Marc H.
Morial
President &
CEO National
Urban League
sible.
In what kind of a world do
we live when hate groups that
actually encourage violence
against law enforcement of-
icers are more circumspect
than our current irearm
safety laws?
“
ons, domestic abusers, the vi-
olently mentally ill are able to
acquire irearms and the law
does nothing to stop them.
More than 90 percent of
Americans support univer-
sal background checks. Le-
gally-required background
checks have blocked more
than two million gun sales to
dangerous people since the
system was instituted.
Maybe Micah Johnson’s
background would have
slipped past the system.
Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32
people and wounded 17 on the
Virginia Tech campus in 2007,
The man who sold Johnson the AK-
47 said Johnson appeared normal
during their 15-minute meeting
The man who sold John-
son the AK-47 said Johnson
appeared normal during
their 15-minute meeting —
as though dangerous mental
instability is written across
someone’s face.
“It’s my belief he would
have passed a background
check,” the man said. But it
wouldn’t have mattered, not
in Texas. Federal law requires
only licensed gun dealers to
conduct background checks.
Millions of guns are sold each
year online or at gun shows
through private sellers. Fel-
was banned from buying
guns because a court found
him severely mentally ill.
But he passed a background
check, because his records
never made it into the system.
Prior to the attack in Dal-
las, each mass-shooting inci-
dent in the United States has
prompted a bizarre chorus
calling for even more guns in
our society. “The only thing
that stops a bad guy with a
gun is a good guy with a gun,”
as the saying goes. Setting
aside the impossibility of dis-
tinguishing a “good guy” from
a “bad guy,” there were plen-
ty of people with guns at the
scene of the Dallas massacre
and not one of them was able
to stop the sniper. The police
were armed. About 30 of the
marchers at the demonstra-
tion where the attack took
place were armed. Not one of
them managed to stop Micah
Johnson with a gun.
Every modern study con-
cludes that more guns equal
more crime. Right-to-car-
ry laws are associated with
signiicantly higher rates of
aggravated assault, robbery,
rape and murder. American
children are sixteen times
more likely than children
that live in other high-income
countries to be killed in gun
accidents, with as many as 100
children dying each year.
Our irearm safety system
is broken — tragically, fatally
broken. Lobbyists for the ire-
arm industry hold our law-
makers in an almost literal
death grip, blocking common
sense reform at every turn.
Call your U.S. Congress mem-
bers and demand action on
gun violence. Learn the truth
about gun violence in Amer-
ica and educate your friends
and family. And work for a
nation that puts the safety of
its citizens ahead of proits
for the gun industry.
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Intellectual Honesty About Race and Criminal Justice Reform
T
here is an old adage that
posits “The more things
appear to change, the
more they stay the same.”
Once again, millions of Amer-
icans are engulfed in what has
become a reluctant national
debate and dialogue concern-
ing race and the urgency to
reform the nation’s criminal
justice system. Finding and
identifying transformative
remedies and solutions are
long overdue.
In the wake of the most re-
cent fatal tragedies in Dal-
las, Minneapolis, and Baton
Rouge, there are renewed fer-
vent calls for improving rela-
tions between police oicers
and the communities they are
sworn to protect and serve. I
believe these calls are being
made in earnest, seeking con-
clusive change.
However, the underlying
systemic reasons why these
and other tragedies continue
to happen are somehow rou-
tinely avoided. There is a per-
vasive fear to speak and artic-
ulate the truth about race and
the institutionalized devolv-
ing impact of racism on all
levels of the criminal justice
system.
To put it bluntly, there is too
much intellectual dishonesty
concerning the historical and
contemporary role of race
in America. In particular we
Benjamin F.
Chavis, Jr.
NNPA
President
and CEO
need more intellectual hon-
esty about why and how real
reform of the criminal justice
system should be achieved.
We need remedies that ac-
tually work to enable and to
“
public chorus that bemoans
the prolonged contradictions
of this failed social system.
I know that there are some
preventative programs and
initiatives that are producing
positive results about which
more people should be made
aware.
Criminal justice reform re-
quires the coordinated and
combined eforts and support
of principled leaders in the
private sector along with gov-
ernment oicials, communi-
There is a pervasive fear to speak
and articulate the truth about race
and the institutionalized devolv-
ing impact of racism on all levels of
the criminal justice system
empower people to improve
their quality of life without
the debilitating and too oten
death-rendering consequenc-
es of a broken criminal justice
system. Mass incarceration,
prosecutorial
misconduct,
judicial inequality, racial pro-
iling, and police brutality are
all interrelated and intercon-
nected in the counterproduc-
tive web of the system named
criminal justice.
It is a system that lacks
honesty, truth and integrity.
Yet, my purpose here is to go
beyond merely joining the
ty organizations, and family
members who are impacted.
We should also acknowledge
that poverty and economic
insecurity feeds the pipeline
to the jails and prisons in the
United States.
Acquiring a good education
and training that provide a
means of generating a sus-
tainable income are also key
factors that are necessary, if
reform of our system of jus-
tice is to be productive. Last
year in Baton Rouge, ironi-
cally, I was pleased to be on a
panel about criminal justice
reform at the 57th national
convention of the Southern
Christian Leadership Confer-
ence (SCLC) founded by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. We
discussed the need for re-en-
try programs for the thou-
sands of ex-ofenders who are
returning to our communi-
ties across the nation.
One such program I want to
highlight, Project JumpStart
in Baltimore, Md., is an efec-
tive and eicient model to re-
forming an important aspect
of the criminal justice system:
ofender re-entry workforce
development. The construc-
tion trades are a growing
skilled-workers industry in
most urban areas where there
are high-paying job opportu-
nities.
JumpStart is Baltimore’s
premier construction train-
ing program. It is a 14-week
skills training program in
plumbing, carpentry and
the electrical trade. Trainees
also receive inancial literacy
coaching as well as practical
courses in mathematics as it
relates to the construction in-
dustry. More than 70 percent
of the trainees actually go on
to attain apprenticeships, li-
censes, and high-wage jobs.
Read the rest of this commentary at
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