Five Notes on Guns and the Police

by Richard Kostelanetz (January 2014)

Having written before on this website about common misunderstandings about guns in America, may I comment upon two recent incidents that drew (too) much press attention at the time, but are now far enough behind us to be seen more objectively.

In late September, a gang of bikers attacked an Asian-American couple whose SUV had gotten in their way on the West Side Highway in my home town of New York City. Not only were their victims beaten with dangerous objects, but, in a development impossible only a few years ago, gruesome footage showed up on YouTube and televison news.

In late February, a black teenager named Trayvon Martin was shot dead inside a gated community in Florida. (To more than one fellow New Yorker I needed to explain that a gated community is the provincial equivalent of a building with a doorman.)

Each episode must be understood in the context of different guns laws in each state. Since New York City forbids its citizens to have concealed weapons, the gang of violent bikers depended upon the likelihood that their victims could not retaliate with lethal force. They knew that even if they killed their victims no biker would die.

If a white man had similarly attacked a black Floridian likely to carry a concealed gun, how would the victim be regarded? Or if a New Yorker got shot from fist-beating a Floridian entitled to carry a concealed gun, what would we call him? A hero? Or a jerk?

II

Ending stop-and-frisk means that some bad guys (yes, mostly guys) will have less fear about looking threatening on the street. Those most in jeopardy are not white people, who reside in neighborhoods far away with their own spies (e.g., doormen, block watchers), but law-abiding blacks and Latinos in poor neighborhoods and residents of marginal neighborhoods, such as mine (Ridgewood-Bushwick), that are now, by common consent, considerably safer than they were two decades ago. May I further suggest that, contrary to common opinion, the absence of visible police should be considered a measure of a safe neighborhood. In my own, I see them more often in a favorite Chinese take-out than in cars or on foot patrolling the streets.

III

IV

V

Need I repeat that widespread thoughtlessness about weapons and the police also makes life in our country more dangerous than it should be?

 

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