So, you know that debate over gun control we’ve had lately, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting? Yeah, the one where everybody is talking past each other and not making any sense at all, or hardly offering solutions to the problem of gun violence. Yep, that one. Well, given that we’re all concerned about the safety of kids in schools in “certain parts” of the nation. Do check out what happened in Trenton, New Jersey this week. Yeah, you read the headline right. Uh-huh, so how’s that for irony, right? Yep, it seems that Officer Sleepy McSleepy is back in hot water again. I suppose getting suspended for sleeping in his patrol car while on the clock wasn’t bad enough. Now, Officer Richard Takach has “misplaced” hid semi-automatic service-issued weapon. I don’t know about you, but at this point, this cop needs to be fired. But considering that he works in a state that allows blind people to own, have, and shoot guns… umm, don’t be surprised if he isn’t relieved of duty.

This from NBC10:

A New Jersey cop who was spotted sleeping in his patrol car last summer has now lost a loaded handgun, according to his lawyer.

Trenton Police Officer Richard Takach misplaced the Glock semi-automatic handgun in the city’s West Precinct parking lot around 3 a.m. on Monday, his attorney Stuart Alterman said.

“It’s not a sign of him being careless,” Alterman added. “It was an accident. Nobody intentionally loses a weapon. He was changing in and out of his duty uniform to his street clothes. He was transferring his weapon from his duty holster to an off-duty holster. And unfortunately he lost a weapon. He left it on the car or the truck. When he realized it was gone, he called, he drove back to Trenton, they looked for it, and he notified his superiors immediately.”

Takach, a 15-year veteran, remained on the job and was scheduled to report for duty Tuesday night.

Takach was suspended in July after a photo was posted online showing him asleep in his patrol car while in uniform.

Watch the video:

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As it has been presented, the Obama Administration has indicated that he is ready for serious gun reform. He has pledged to put his “full weight” behind a legislative package for containing gun violence offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein. The bill aims to “stop the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of military-style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition feeding devises.” It will ban 120 specifically named weapons, including handguns and shotguns, and strengthen the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004.

Now I am against violence of any form, but I don’t see why an assault rifle should be the focus of his political venom- guns do not kill people, people do. To focus on the tool misses the problem.

I have owned several SKS since 1990. If you don’t know what an SKS, see the image in this post of me on the book cover of my last book. No it is not a prop is real and one of several. I like it because it fires the 7.62 x 39 (AK47/SKS) slug. Now for most this is an assault rifle, for me it’s just a rifle.

Some ask why I want or need an assault rifle like an SKS? My answer is based on two things: the second amendment and prospects of Tyranny. The second amendment says “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” (keyword being regulated not maintained). There was no standing militia in the colonies. In fact they did not get together until 1774 (the Coercive Acts) when the British implemented gun control measures via an import ban on firearms and gunpowder;” the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gunpowder; and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations. History is complete with examples of gun control and the results. Whether in Turkey where in 1911 when 1 .5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated between 1915 and 1917, or even in modern times when in 1964,Guatemala established gun control allowing the government to kill 100,000 Mayan Indians between – From 1964 to 1981. I won’t even mention Nazi Germany, who killed 13 million weaponless Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals after established gun control in 1938.

The aforementioned represents Tyranny which refers to the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power and/or the despotic abuse of authority or oppressive or unjustly severe government on the part of any ruler. Fact is, according to the FBI homicide data, hammers, clubs and knives are responsible for more homicides than rifles In fact; the FBI concluded that rifles of all types are the least-used guns when crimes are committed. Not to mention that most firearm murders (about 11,400), are gang related, how many would you guess had legally purchased or registered weapons?

Now many would suggest that tyranny on behalf of the US government with it’s first black President is outrageous: maybe or maybe not but looking at the facts suggest that anything is possible. Take the National Weather Service, who like the Department of Homeland Security in securing large quantities of ammo. Back in March, Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of .40-caliber hollow point bullets that are designed to expand upon entry and cause maximum organ damage. The NWS ordered 46,000 rounds of hollow point bullets and I don’t think they are for predicting tornadoes. Then there was the solicitation posted by the Social Security Administration for contractors to supply 174,000 rounds of “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition.”

The point is technology, if there is tyranny, then what good is a handgun against weaponized drones, Tanks and body armor? None. But I can rest assured that the 7.62 of the SKS can go through all and that makes me comfortable for I have 99 problems – owning an assault rifle isn’t one of them. For the fact of the matter is, when only the military and police have guns, it is called a police state.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Dr. Torrance Stephens, and was originally published on his blog Raw Dawg Buffalo. A notable scientist and published author, and scholar you can follow Dr. Stephens on twitter: @rawdawgbyffalo.

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So this is where we’re at right now, black folks? Shoot, and here I thought the Love & Hip Hop Atlanta boycott petition on change.org was bad. Now Al Sharpton’s outfit is leading a boycott of the Django Unchained action figures being sold. Jesus Christ! Do we need another black kid armed with Skittles and Ice Tea to be shot because black rage is idle? But seriously, I could think of many other things to be pissed about as a person of color, other than some $299.00 collectibles being sold on Amazon. But hey, I suppose that’s just me being tired of being the angry black dude.

This from NewsOne:

Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network has been largely silent on the raging controversy surrounding Quentin Tarantino‘s ‘Django Unchained’ — until now.

In the wake of the release of action figures in the cast’s likeness, Rev. K.W. Tulloss, NAN’s president in Los Angeles, the progressive, civil rights organization called for a national boycott of the slavery toys which can be purchased for $299 on Amazon.com.

“Selling this doll is highly offensive to our ancestors and the African American community,” Rev. K.W. Tulloss, said to the NY Daily News. “The movie is for adults, but these are action figures that appeal to children. We don’t want other individuals to utilize them for their entertainment, to make a mockery of slavery.”

Now  yesterday I mentioned how this movie has made some of my “cousins” upset. And as I said then, some of them are probably more upset because the film was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino who happens to be white. I firmly believe that most are upset for no other reason than that fact. So, as far as the action figures go? Well, let’s just say that I don’t see them being packaged with chains, branding irons, or any of those ghastly iron masks used to torture slaves. That said, I really don’t see the big deal; because, it’s not like kids are running out to buy them.

It’s just standard movie marketing actually, and the National Action Network is doing a fine job by boosting sales with this frivolous attempt at a boycott of these dolls. Besides, it’s not like black folks are going to break their necks to drop #299.00 on Amazon to buy them anyway.

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So there’s a “Django” action figure being sold now; and, of course, some of my cousins are upset about it — yep, yet another reason yo hate this movie for some. The action figure isn’t actually a stocking stuffer, but I hope it doesn’t have a Kung Fu grip like G.I. Joe. Nope, no need to get Spike Lee any angrier about the movie than he already is at this point. Seriously, how much more disrespectful can they get with this thing? Oh well, it could have been worse. Yes, somebody could have had the bright idea to start selling a crack head action figure after the movie Do The Right Thing.

Oh, and speaking of “angry black men who hate white men with the audacity to make movies that illustrates what it was like for black folk back in 1853″. Did you hear what Tavis Smiley had to say about Tarantino and the movie Django Unchained? Well, like Spike Lee, he too hasn’t seen the movie nor intends to “pay to see it,” like he said in a recent interview featured on The Daily Beast. Like Lee, he too takes issue with a white movie director using his craft to bring to the big screen a film that revels in the painful but often avoided legacy of slavery. Responding to a question about his first reaction to the film, Smiley opens up the interview with the following:

Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained has as much to do with the history and culture of American descendants of African slaves as Dumbo has to do with the plight of Weimar Jewry. Spike Lee says that it disrespected his ancestors. It does not. It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with one white man’s fevered, second-hand vision of what it would be like to be something he probably can’t conceive. It’s like me attempting to write an intimate account of the pains of childbirth. I may have held a baby and changed a diaper, but one would doubt my authority on the subject.

Tarantino obviously knows black people, but only a white man in America could believe that this provides him with the authority to speak on the black American experience. Like 99.9999 percent of the white population, he has minimal intimacy with the culture of the descendants of American slaves. That culture, imbibed from birth by American blacks raised in black American households, involves an intimate, often subconscious acknowledgment of history, of a unique place in the American hierarchy, of a struggle against mainstream paradigms of who and what we are. These are intimacies of which whites are necessarily ignorant — they’re white. Just as I, as a male, have no intimate knowledge of birthing pains, whites have no knowledge of being black. They can gain an abstract conception, but that’s it.

Um, excuse me, I know Tarantino is white and all, but I sincerely doubt whether anyone alive today — including black folks — are able to have more than an abstract conception of what slavery was like. Yes, though many of its scars still run deep throughout the diaspora, to suggest that by virtue of one being charged with melanin comes with a certain esoteric knowledge of slavery even if we’re fifty years removed from Jim Crow. Which is funny because it’s as though being able to endure “the struggle” was woven into our cultural and biological DNA — it’s as if unlike any other race, we’re predisposed to endure any struggle. And thus, we’re exceptional or something.

Of course, Tarantino has every right to make a film on any subject he chooses, and he knows his audience well. The film has become the white literati’s preferred lens into the forbidden territory of black rage (a sort of reverse Uncle Tom’s Cabin). But when blacks discuss it as if this product of white Hollywood is a legitimate expression of our culture or our rage, we do ourselves a gross injustice; we follow the pattern of outsourcing our history and self-image to the majority; we marry ourselves into the grotesque self-images that their history has tried to stamp upon us.

Django Unchained is nothing more than one white Hollywood director’s fantasy of what black revenge would look like. It would be no more to us than another big screen cartoon if we dealt honestly and independently with our own history — a history white studios or directors would never touch. Such history puts the lie to the frames and simplifications with which Americans maintain our halo of historical innocence on matters related to race.

If we lavished similar imagination upon the history of the blacks who fought for the British during the American revolution to escape slavery, the German Coast uprising, the Prosser and Vesey rebellions, the ‘Crazy as St. Paul’ Nat Turner rebellion, the Black Seminole rebellion of 1835, the innumerable anecdotal tales of black resistance against slave-owners, perhaps we wouldn’t glom onto the work of a white director who (with his infantile insistence on his right to fling the word “nigger”) seems frightfully similar to the clueless character in Lou Reed’s infamous, “I Wanna be Black.” If we taught ourselves to regard the Civil War as “a failed war to protect and extend slavery,” and not “a war to free the slaves,” we would be less seduced by the siren song of second-hand revenge fantasy. If we debated among ourselves the virtues and vices of real old-west outlaws like the notorious Rufus Buck Gang, Cherokee Bill and Isom Dart, perhaps one white man’s notion of blacks in the old west would be less noteworthy. If we knew that black freedman populated Indian Territory and that a black lawman named Bass Reeves served as a Deputy U.S. Marshall for “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker, we’d have a far richer, more complex view of our history than that promoted by the likes of Hollywood and Tarantino.

Yes, blacks are giving this film too much credence, but it’s our own fault. We have outsourced our history to the majority and failed to devise the means to teach our history to ourselves. In a country in which we have been historically subjugated and reviled, we accept instruction about our history and our place in it from those who subjugated and reviled us. That’s a bit insane. As long as we continue to do so, the likes of Django Unchained will rise from the level of mainstream curiosities from black-cultural dilettantes, to fake nipples mimicking the teat of cultural sustenance.

Listen: We can only imagine just what it must have been like for African slaves not just in America, but also those spread all throughout the new world; but even so, we have no earthly idea, despite the documented research, of just how bad it actually was. So what is the point to this post? That I can’t wait for Tarantino to do the sequel where Django and Madea try to bust John Brown the abolitionist, out of prison for killing white folks so everyone can be happy. Yep, let’s try to rescue a white man in the next one, since folk wanna act like he had Harriet Tubman giving lap dances in this one. as cathartic as this film isn’t for some, maybe my suggested sequel will be received with open arms only if a black guy produces, writes, and directs it. Because quite naturally, who else is there better to tell stories of the black struggle than black people, right? After all, last time I checked, black kids are still picking white dolls over black dolls; and, it ain’t like y’all Negroes supported Akeela And The Bee anyway.

So yeah, blame Tarantino for that too.

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I never realized what assimilation was or is. I never gave a thought about genocide or Manifest Destiny and I thought the holocaust only pertained to what Hitler did to the Jewish people. And it didn’t matter to me, because I never gave a thought about it. I was busy living life as I knew how, a Lakota woman. I was raised in our traditional ways but never taught all those things until I was older. I just thought life was about being traditional, with our ceremonies, songs, traditions, and ways. Sure, I went to a Christian church with my friends, went to Vacation Bible School for a popsicle, and I tested out other religions as if dipping my toes in cold lake water, but I never felt right about it. I didn’t feel wrong about it, I just felt as if it wasn’t my thing. And I made my way back to who I was and who I knew myself and my people to be. Lakota. That is where I belonged and where I feel centered.

The first time I realized that a child raised without their culture and forced into another way of life develops a huge hole in their soul was in college. I read an essay by a Vietnamese American student. She was adopted as a baby, from Vietnam, by white parents here in America. She was given a good life, she was raised with little blonde brothers and sisters and she had a suburban sounding name like Caitlyn or something. She did everything right and everything she was supposed to do in life, plus she won a scholarship to a college away from her family. It was her first time on her own and she discovered herself questioning who she was. She was drawn to other Asians and began hanging out with them. She learned of their likes, dislikes, cultures, foods, and she felt “at home and at peace.” Many of them were also adoptees, taken from their families and countries and grew up American. They were drawn to each other to fill a need in their souls. Yet she felt this with a great deal of guilt towards her American family. She loved her adopted family but felt at home, finally, with her friends, who in turn felt the same.

That is the first time I realized how taking the culture away from someone can be somewhat traumatic or really traumatic. How lost it makes that person feel. As I grew older and started seeing cases of this same thing happening with my own Native people and it was shocking. I remember the first time, was when I met a lady in her twenties. I saw her at the casino we both worked at and asked her what tribe she was from. She became angry and said “The lady that gave birth to me was from so and so reservation but I’m white. I grew up white. I was raised white, so don’t ever ask me that again.”

All I could say was “Whoa.” I stood there shocked. I never in my life met another Indian who hated being Indian, and she had to nerve to say she was white, when she was a few shades from midnight? That’s when someone told me she was raised in a foster home, who eventually adopted her.

I began then to understand what it meant to be assimilated and colonized. I began reading of our history and how children were taken by the US government from Native families once they were put on reservations. Children were forcefully taken out of their homes at the age of 5 and put in residential schools until the age of 18. They made handcuffs so small to detain these children. They were beaten for speaking their language, hair was cut, and all for the purpose of “Kill The Indian, Save The Man.”

This generation was our grandparents and great grandparents, who suffered physical, sexual,and emotional abuse in the residential schools. They were never given the chance to heal because these stories were never told. They were kept on the down low by the Catholic church and the government who ran the residential schools. Many of these boarding schools who are now in operation are now making monetary payments, now wanting to hear the stories of abuse and now trying to make amends. After a few were hit with class action lawsuits.

The next generations, also suffered and still suffer. By the foster care systems. Children were taken from their homes and given to white foster families to raise. The families receiving funding for every foster child, would often take on many foster children. The state holds the households they take the children from to the standards set by white society. Without ever listening to how we set family structures, how we take care of our own, or how we live with our traditions, they set everything up to fit a mold, that they live by.

Based on a 1976 study by the Association on American Indian Affairs found that 25 to 35% of all Indian children were being placed in out-of-home care. (Eighty-five percent of those children were being placed in non-Indian homes or institutions.) Congress then passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (25 U.S.C. § 1901) in 1978 in order to keep American Indian Children with American Indian families.

However, this is not being followed in South Dakota. Why? Because South Dakota has a dirty little secret. According to a wonderful and very thorough investigation by National Public Radio that inspired me to find my brother who was lost for 21 years due to failure of the fact that DSS didn’t follow ICWA regulations and place him with family. I was 19 years old when he was taken from his mother. I was employed and had my own place and he was 8 years old. When I asked them why they didn’t ask me, all they said was sorry and also ,sorry we can’t help you find him now. That is when I began to search for him and I also began to investigate why so many of our Indian children in South Dakota are taken from their homes and placed in Non-Native homes, this is when I found their dirty little secret.

South Dakota’s Department of Social Services receives money for Native children they take custody of. They receive more money than the non-Native children they take from their homes. Native children in South Dakota make up 15% of all the children of South Dakota, yet over half the children placed in foster care are Native. And only 13% of those children are placed in Native foster homes. While Native foster home sit empty for months. South Dakota removes children from their homes at a rate 3 time higher than any other state. But according to state figures, less than 12 percent of the children in foster care in South Dakota have been actually physically or sexually abused in their own homes. That’s less than the national average.

I still didn’t get to the dirty little secret yet. South Dakota, years ago, designated all Native children as “special needs.” Which means every Indian child in every school benefits that school with more funding and it also means that every Indian child taken from their home by DSS benefits South Dakota more than non-Native children. And although the state says they match all the money coming in from the feds dollar for dollar, the match is not exact. According

to records from 2010, the feds reimbursed the state three quarters for what it spent on the children they removed from their homes. There is also an adoption incentive program nobody hears about. The federal government gives the states $4,000 for each child who is placed into adoption from foster care. That amount is $12,000 for “special needs” children. And of course over half the children removed from homes in South Dakota are Indian children, who, you guessed it, are designated by the state as “special needs” just for being American Indian. The state has made almost a million dollars in the last ten years off of our most precious resource. Our children. They moved us to dry, barren lands that cannot be farmed, the took the gold and every resource from the lands they stole. And now they are after our children.

Why is this not making a splash? Why is it not news? Especially , in South Dakota? Because they will go to any length to cover up what they do to take our children away. Even as our children are being violated in the homes they are placed in. Here is one case that will blow anyone’s mind and still has yet to reach the media in South Dakota.

Former assistant state attorney Brandon Taliaferro and court appointed child advocate Shirley Schwab go to trial tomorrow, January 7, 2013 for crimes they didn’t commit. Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Schwab have been indicted by SD Attorney General Martin Jackley with witness tampering and disclosure of confidential, Department of Social Services information. They are being accused of these crimes for encouraging two teenage Lakota foster girls to tell the truth about being molested by their non-Native foster parent, who is now serving a 15 year prison sentence for rape of a child under 10.

According to the Daily Kos: Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Schwab now assert that South Dakota is engaged in a criminal conspiracy to discriminate against Lakota foster children and their mothers, fathers, grandparents and relatives. “It is financially beneficial for the DSS to remove American Indian children from their homes and place them in [white] foster homes,” said Attorney Taliaferro to the Aberdeen News on December 19, 2011. “[Had I followed] the orders of [my boss with respect to the Mette investigation, it] would have required [me] to violate the law, and ethical rules that govern attorney conduct.” Mr. Taliaferro asserts that in 2011 he refused to participate in “a cover-up of misconduct” by the DSS.

The charges are believed to be a direct response to Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Scwab for criticizing the state’s payroll during the NPR investigation. According to reporter Stephanie Woodard in her article for 100 Reporters “Rough Justice In Indian Child Welfare” where two state Department of Criminal Investigation agents are seen on a Youtube video planning the cover-up by the state against Mr. Taliaferro and Ms. Schwab. They are unaware, that though they are off camera, they left their microphones on.

This is all dirty, low down, Gestapo like tactics used by the Department of Social Services . And it shows how far the state will bend, how low they will go, to keep the millions of dollars they have coming in by stealing yet again from the Indigenous people of this land. Instead they don’t take from the land, they take from the womb.

They won’t get away with this much longer. Something has to be done.

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So, are you having a Happy New Year thus far? Hopefully you are, because there are many who are not. Case in point, check out what happened to the Ramirez and Ortiz family of Phoenix, Arizona. Like many across America, their celebration of the new year involved guns. Now, I don’t know where you may live, but it’s very common to hear the occasional celebratory gunshot around here at midnight when the ball drops. Unfortunately for the Ramirez family, their moment of joy turned to tragedy, when the 19-year-old Savannah Ramirez accidentally shot her older brother while attempting to take photos for Facebook. Yep, yet another case that proves that alcohol and guns do not mix.

This from Gawker:

A 19-year-old woman in Phoenix who accidentally shot and killed her brother was posing with a gun for Facebook photos, according to local police.

Savannah Ramirez and her brother, 22-year-old Manuel Ortiz, were celebrating New Year’s Eve at Ortiz’s apartment along with three other people, when a Facebook photoshoot with a gun turned deadly.

Brother & Sister: Msnuel Ortiz & Savannah Ramirez

Police believe both Ramirez and Ortiz were drinking and the weapon was in Ramirez’s hand when it accidentally discharged. If blood tests confirm that alcohol was indeed involved, Phoenix police Sgt. Steve Martos said Ramirez would likely be charged with manslaughter.

“Every New Year’s Eve, this particular sister is going to be thinking about this for the rest of her life,” Martos said.

You know that silly argument that many refuse to accept that says guns don’t kill, but it is people with guns who do? I think in this case, at least, it can be said that this accidental shooting supports the aforementioned argument. But don’t tell that to the NRA president, Wayne La Pierre.

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Remember that iconic photo of Malcolm X peeking out the window while holding gun with what’s known on the streets as a banana clip? as I think of this week’s ongoing gun control debate, I’ve come to rest on that very picture probably being the biggest reason why I’m opposed o an assault weapon ban. I can provide numbers to support the argument that an assault weapon ban will do very little as a solution to America’s gun violence problem. But being a black man, that very photo says it all. Not that I’m paranoid or afraid of “the man” coming after me like they did Malcolm — nope, never that. You see, I’m reminded of the fact that at one point in this country’s history, it was against the law for anyone black to own a gun. And in so many ways, the existence of that law further enabled “certain people” when it came to terrorizing the lives of black folks in America.

Here’s a stupid conversation on gun control:

Any gun control we enact will have a limited effect. But this should not be cause for despair. Much of the recent hysteria over gun deaths is misplaced.

A lot of people have been citing a recent report, “American Gun Deaths to Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 2015.” The article shows that gun deaths in America are slowly rising, and now stand at 32,000 per year — a staggering toll. Now, 32,000 deaths per year is a lot of death, and I’d never minimize that. But what the article’s authors fail to mention is that gun murders comprise less than a third of that total — about 9,000 per year in recent years. With accidental gun deaths steady at around 500-600 per year, the bulk of those 32,000 “gun deaths” are suicides.

In fact, murder by gun has been falling steadily since the early 1990s. Some of that is due to improvements in emergency medicine, but most is a result of the overall decline in violent crime that America has enjoyed over the last two decades. The fact that overall gun deaths has risen since 2000, despite the fall in murders, suggests that increased gun suicide has accounted for more than 100% of the increase in gun deaths. Obviously, suicide is a tragedy, and I don’t want to minimize it. But people aren’t panicking over suicide, they’re panicking over murder, and gun-related murder is on the way down.

Of course, 9,000 gun deaths a year is still a lot. Still more than other rich countries, still a disgrace, still far too many! But people who have been watching the round-the-clock coverage of the Newtown massacre need to understand that “mass killings” of the Newtown type account for a very small percent of that 9,000. Most of those 9,000 gun murders are of the more mundane, but no less deadly variety — drive-by shootings, gang wars, personal quarrels, and other easily comprehensible crimes.

And if we really care about those 9,000 souls who are shot to death each year, there is an extremely effective policy that we could enact right now that would probably save many of them.

I’m talking about ending the drug war.

Now I can think of many reasons to end Americas 40-year-long failed War on Drugs; and, I’m sure we can have a debate on just that. However, since we’re all up in arms about guns since last month’s tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. Given the many ill-formed opinions and positions posited by more than the NRA’s Wayne La Pierre. Again, in the interest of public safety, isn’t it time we treat drug use, abuse, as well as gun violence like a public health crisis much like we did with HIV/AIDS in America and abroad? No seriously, think about that for a second. Yes, think about how a necessary paradigm shift — that is, decriminalizing illicit drugs — as far as policy can produce the desired results for the greater good.

Reliable statistics on the number of drug-related murders in the United States are hard to come by. A 1994 Department of Justice report suggested that between a third and a half of U.S. homicides were drug-related, while a recent Center for Disease Control study found that the rate varied between 5% and 25% (a 2002 Bureau of Justice report splits the difference). Part of this variance is that “drug-related” murders are hard to define. There are murders committed by people on drugs, murders committed by addicts to get money for drugs, turf-war murders by drug suppliers, and murders committed by gangs whose principal source of income is drug sales.

But very few would argue that the illegal drug trade is a significant cause of murders. This is a straightforward result of America’s three-decade-long “drug war.” Legal bans on drug sales lead to a vacuum in legal regulation; instead of going to court, drug suppliers settle their disputes by shooting each other. Meanwhile, interdiction efforts raise the price of drugs by curbing supply, making local drug supply monopolies (i.e., gang turf) a rich prize to be fought over. And stuffing our overcrowded prisons full of harmless, hapless drug addicts forces us to give accelerated parole to hardened killers.

Ending the drug war would involve reducing all of these incentives to murder. Treating addicts in hospitals and rehab centers, instead of sticking them in prisons, would reduce demand for drugs, lowering the price and starving gangs of income while reducing their incentive to wage turf wars. Decriminalization would relieve pressure on our prison system, allowing us to focus on keeping violent people off the streets instead of pointlessly punishing drug users for destroying their own health. And full legalization of recreational marijuana — which is already proceeding quickly among the states, but is still foolishly opposed by the Obama administration — is an obvious first step.

In other words, yes, gun control is good. BUT don’t expect it to be a panacea for America’s gun violence problem. If we really want to save some of those 9,000 people, we need to end the self-destructive, failed drug policies that have turned us into a prison state and turned many of our cities into war zones. (source)

Now, does this sound crazy, or what? Of course to some of you it does; however, alcohol is considered a drug, yet I don’t see Mexican drug cartels murdering people by the thousands each year to be able to control the market for alcohol. Nope, you don’t hear about headless bodies being found in deserts along the southern border because of alcohol. Which is really funny because more people die annually because of alcohol than they do because of guns. So if we’re really serious about doing something about gun violence in America, why not start with drug legalization? After all, if that were to happen, what’s the worse that can happen other than a reduction in gun crimes in cities in Chicago? A city that had 506 homicides in 2012, with 80% of them being gun-related; with only 4% of the guns used being assault weapons. This makes sense in my head, but what about you?

After all, like “Nino Brown” said, “Ain’t no Uzis made up in Harlem,” which they might not be. But, it’s undeniable that more money is made by the presence of guns and drugs in our neighborhoods by the folks responsible for the task of keeping them out, than the ones engaged in the trade.

Although the overall U.S. prison population declined slightly in 2011, the federal prison population continued to rise, with rates of drug and immigration offenders that eclipse those held for violent crimes. While only 8 percent of federal prisoners were sentenced for violent crimes in 2011, almost half of federal inmates – 48 percent – were in prison for drug crimes, according to Department of Justice statistics. Another 11 percent were held for immigration offenses – one of the largest-growing segments of the prison population.

These numbers reflect the impact of the aggressive U.S. “War on Drugs,” a major contributor to the United States’ standing as the number one jailer in the world. Overall declines in U.S. prisons of 0.9 percent are attributable to state prisons, as some states have been moved by budget crises to adopt innovative reforms, and some jurisdictions have moved toward decriminalizing minor drug offenses.

But federal drug law remains draconian, with harsh mandatory minimum sentences for sometimes minor nonviolent roles in drug deals. What’s more, one of the major causes of the state prison population decrease was the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that California state prisons are cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment. A drastic decrease in California’s prison population has resulted from what is known as realignment, in which prisoners are moved from state prisons to county jails, where local sheriffs have greater discretion over how to deal with offenders – for better or for worse — and may send them to mental health treatment, home surveillance, or community service rather than hold them behind bars. The California shift accounts for more than half of the decrease in the U.S. prison population, and overall state spending on prisons continues to be the fastest-growing budgetary item after Medicaid. (source)

Now watch the following video and ask yourself: What would change if drugs were made legal in America?

The post Why Ending the Drug War is Good Gun Control Policy appeared first on Madness & Reality.

It has been almost a week since the Shady Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Ironically, even as funerals are being held for the victims, assault weapons like the AR-15 Bushmaster used in the shooting are selling like hot cakes. Yep, amid the talk of a federal assault weapons ban and a tightening up of regulations, it would appear that said gun and weapons like it, have become the season’s new Tickle Me Elmo. As the debate continues over the necessity of owning such a weapon, one thing isd clear: There is still an obvious demand for them in the wake of this last week’s horrible tragedy that saw the death of twenty children and six adults in one swoop, even as the country still mourns. That said, I think it’s safe to say that Americans are not afraid of those shiny Red Rider BB Guns once feared for shooting out the eyes of children.

Anyone seeking to limit the sale of assault weapons must reckon with the fact that millions of Americans own guns that might be classified as one, and for many it is no more exotic than, say, a motorcycle or sports car, from which they derive a similar satisfaction.

“It’s very stress-relieving,” said Chad Knox, a paramedic who shoots targets and hunts small pests with a semiautomatic rifle on his 40 acres in Marietta, Ohio. “Some people crochet, some people shop, some people shoot guns.” .

Mr. Knox owns an AR-15 style rifle, a 55-year-old design based on a military weapon that has become notorious because it was used by gunmen in a series of mass shootings in recent years, including the attack in Newtown, Conn., last week.

Outlawed for a decade by the federal government, certain models of the AR-15 could again be forbidden if President Obama can persuade Congress to restore the federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004, as he has indicated.

But to many owners of military-style semiautomatic rifles, who reject the term “assault weapon,” the AR-15 and its brethren do not evoke fearsome images of attacks on people. They use their guns for target practice and hunting small game like rabbits, squirrels and coyotes.

They also say that as a self-defense weapon, the AR-15, which is based on the military’s M-16 and M-4, has its limits: It cannot be carried in public, and in the home it is potentially less accurate than a shotgun. (read more)

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The horror at Sandy Hook Elementary is beyond comprehension. Our hearts are broken and our nightmares renewed at such senseless loss of precious life. We are sickened that this could happen. How can this tragedy and the other massacres that have taken place be prevented? How can we protect ourselves and the most innocent among us from the deranged and the murderous evil minds that prey upon the defenseless? Is gun control the answer?

In 1994, The Gun-Free Schools Act was passed and implemented in 1995. Since the Gun-Free School Zone Act there has been a 370% increase in the rate of school shooting deaths. Yet, the United States homicide rate has decreased by 14% since GFSZA was enacted. Why is the murder rate decreasing where conceal carry laws are in place, but those murdered on educational property has quadrupled where guns are banned? Areas where victims are disarmed attract violent predators. The data from the Gun-Free Schools Act bears this out.

Why is it that these mass murders occur in Gun Free Zones? Recent memory includes Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Aurora Theater, and now Sandy Hook. They are rural, unprotected, and Gun Free Zones. Ever wonder why the schools in the worst neighborhoods in our inner cities do not fall victim to mass murderers? They would be met with metal detectors and armed guards. They wouldn’t get very far. The evil minded and the deranged pick easy targets – the disarmed – to do the most damage. They do not obey Gun Free Zone signs. They do not obey gun control laws. They acquire guns illegally. There are current laws that prohibit the mentally unfit from owning a gun, yet those with the intent of causing mayhem, find a way. More gun control is not the answer. And, in case you have forgotten, you have a right to protect yourself, your property, and those in your care.

So, why are we, as a society, not having an honest conversation and a debate about the effectiveness of gun control? Why do we blame all gun owners for the act of one deranged person? Guns are how we avoid talking about the dark side of human nature that will never be eradicated. The best we as individuals can do is to protect ourselves and those we hold dear. (read more)

So as we await the NRA’s official press conference in anticipation of them supporting the tightening of regulations. May I suggest that we don’t hold our collective breaths. At the end of the day, it is quite clear that nobody in America is serious about gun control — and the more we talk about it, the more guns are swiftly flying off of store shelves. So what should we do? I say let them have their guns; yes, forget about an assault weapon ban. Yep, allow them to fulfil their sense of security so as to sleep better at night. I know, sounds crazy, right? Well, not so much if government mandates that gun owners insure their instruments of death or face a tax should they fail to, much like is deemed Constitutional by the Supreme Court with the Affordable Care Act under the commerce clause. Let them keep their guns, but make it more costly. After all, freedom ain’t free, right?

The post NC Tea Party Hosts “Great American Gun Giveaway” As Purchases Spike appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So I’m wondering: Would we be mad at the NRA if Adam Lanza was shot by the police? Seriously, think about that one for a second before answering. Anyway, I just found out that the 12-year-old daughter of one of my wife’s former co-workers committed suicide yesterday — she hung herself. Yes, she was twelve years old; and, she was black.

Not that race matters when it comes to the frailty of the mind. But, I had to put that out there just in case someone reading this may have assumed that she was white. Why? Because, many within the black community are ignorant enough to believe that suicide is just one of those things that black folks don’t do. Yes, sadly some of us are misguided.

Bu,t see? Not everyone with mental health issues are quick to grab guns and murder innocent children — actually,only a small percentage of mental health patients are violent. That aside, I know, some of you are of the opinion that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting has more to do with gun control and assault weapons than anything else. Yeah, never mind that the AR-15 used by Adam Lanza to murder twenty-six people was perfectly legal in a state that has an assault weapons ban. Uh-huh, also, let’s just conveniently forget that while we mourn the loss of lives in Newtown, CT. that innocent children are also being killed by U.S. military drones overseas.

Ain’t that right, Mr. President?

The post Would we be Mad at the NRA if Adam Lanza was Shot by the Newtown, CT. Police? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Way back in the day, well before we were known as Niggers, Negroes, and subsequently African-Americans, we were known as Spearchuckers. It was meant as a derogatory term as did most other terms used to describe Blacks of African descent in America. But you know what? I do not think Spearchucker is a bad term. Actually, I wish we were Spearchuckers today, or rightfully called that in a literal sorta way.

Ok, bear with me as I explain. You see, way back when, when Africans lived on that other planet called Africa, we carried spears as a weapon, right? I was not there, but I suspect, that back in the day in Africa, a Black man without a spear was as worthless as a Black man without a job and unable to pay his child support today. Yup, possessing a spear was important, without it, there was no food, or means of defending the homies in your crew from some other crew that claimed to either be a Crips or Bloods, or whatever. Plus, I seriously doubt the chicks took a Black man without a spear seriously. I mean, why would she if he cannot even bring home a rhino or elephant periodically, right?

Some where along the line, some White guy decided to show up in his space ship on planet Africa. Being from another world, and not knowing what he would run into, he carried with him what was known as a gun. And you know what happened? The White guy being forever the forward thinker, decided to trade his guns for a few Africans (who were sitting in the county jail) to give them their freedom to come help said White guys tend to his flower garden. Was not that so nice of the White guy who landed on planet Africa? Of course the ever so curious African do-gooders accepted the guns as bail money. Yup, and the rest is history as they say.

This is why I always say that the gun, is worst invention known to man. Yup, Africans got guns in exchange for other Africans. Then, they put down their spears, (which made it even easier to be kidnapped) and now White people are using spears in an Olympic sport called the Javelin. Ain’t that a bitch? And now here we are centuries later, Black people here in America are killing one another in record numbers every year by using a guns.

If we Black people of African descent here in America had spears, there would more than likely be less murders or Black on Black crime. I mean lets face it, the Bloods & Crips in Africa never really ran around doing throw bye’s, and killing innocent bystanders like they used to do out in L.A. back in the 90′s did they? Seewhumsayin? I mean, just keeping it real, a spear is kinda hard to hide and tuck into the small of your back under a jacket.

Seriously, I think it would be quite uncomfortable to carry a concealed spear. Yeah, you just cannot expect to sneak a spear up in the club, and shit just like that. Are you crazy? And what would that mean for the Black community? Less Black on Black crime, or in particular murders. Not just that, but less cops harassing Blacks like they do looking for guns. Yup, no more racial profiling and all of that racial shit, and we would all be able to live in peace and harmony. Yes, life in America would be different for us folks of African descent if they had just left their guns at home. Now all we have to do is figure out how all these guns get onto our streets everyday.

Can you take a guess how they do?

The post Gun Control: If Only We Could Be Spearchuckers Again appeared first on Madness & Reality.