Crime?! "Our Thoughts And Prayers..."

5 dead, 18 injured – at a Colorado Springs

LGBTQ nightclub, November 19th shooting

Crime?!

“Our thoughts and prayers….”

Legal assault weapons vs. lower violent crime rates – pick ONE

Inflation and crime rates were the hottest issues in the midterms. Protecting democracy was a major concern as well, but somehow protecting a woman’s right to an abortion slipped down the issue hierarchy but may have been that secret issue that produced an unexpected solid Gen Y and Z turnout that seems to have stopped the red wave. The Republican message on crime clearly resonated with the public, however. The pre-election polling was clear, letting Dems know their emphasis on abortion rights was not sufficient to protect the House from the shift to GOP control, however slight that majority might be. The mythology of exploding crime, fomented by “woke” prosecutors in Democratic cities, trumped all but the inflation issue.

Even in October, we knew that crime was more important than pro choice. “A Gallup poll from earlier this year found 72% of Americans were dissatisfied with the nation’s policies to reduce or control crime. Other polls, including a survey by Monmouth University released this month, have found voters see crime among the most important issues ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“In September alone, Republican campaigns and groups spent $39.8 million on 157 unique ads focused on crime, according to ad tracker AdImpact. Democratic campaigns and groups, mostly in response to the Republican attacks, spent $32.9 million on 119 distinct ads on the issue – a significant increase from the amount these groups were spending on the issue in August.” CNN.com, October 11th.

To those on the right, the BLM protests (purportedly part of some nefarious but non-existent group known as “antifa”) – as they focused on those rare instances of looting and arson – were symbolic of the Democrats’ failures against crime. That mass of insurrectionists, assembling at the then-president’s call to move on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, who broke into that sacred building and pillaged, attacked police officers, the fatalities and serious injuries to those protecting Congress, destroyed furniture, ransacked offices, helped themselves to “souvenirs” were, in official Republican documents, were declared to be “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Yet people everywhere were buying into the fear factor of a crime wave that really did not exist. That “make ‘em scared and blame liberals” political strategy seemed to be working.

If anything, with increasingly lax gun laws and judicial rulings, the only significant increase in crime was from gun-related homicides. And GOP legislators almost always opposed even common-sense gun limits. More on this later. But incenting angry citizens actually to use those guns against those liberal enemies was now one of the backbones of GOP policies. The culture wars, openly embraced by almost every GOP candidate running, attacked “woke” policies that supported diversity and challenged racism still deeply embedded in so much of America… manifest in a statutory assault on truth and increasing awareness and tolerance. That effort was punctuated with a litany of red state anti-CRT legislation, banning school recognition of gender differences or that racial, ethnic and religious discrimination is still a very big force in the United States today. The resulting crimes against those minorities, from vandalism to assault and murder, have only increased since.

Every legislator who supported this legislation, every governor who signed the bills into law, has aided and abetted – “morally” justified if you will – the litany of ultra-violent hate crimes against Blacks, Muslims, Jews, Asians and members of the LGBTQ communities. The atmosphere of hate and pointing fingers at “liberals” got Republicans elected, led by the bigotry of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott and every other leader who has encouraged such policies to fire up the base solely for personal political gain… no matter who would be killed or injured. “Us” vs “them.” If “hating” and “blaming targeted groups” is OK, why are we remotely surprised when hating those targets turns violent?

Now for some facts. During the pandemic, the only major increase in crime was homicide. Using CDC statistics, the November 4th Washington Post told us: “[T]he most serious and most reliably measured crime — homicide — went up an estimated 31% in 2020 and another 3% in 2021, resulting in the highest national homicide rate since the 1990s.” Those rates have slipped back 5% this year, but that massive crime wave upon which the GOP was surfing did not otherwise exist.

But notwithstanding a minor congressional concession to background checks, yet to be seriously implemented, there are more guns in this country than ever before. According to Bloomberg.com (May of 2022), the United States is the only country on earth that has more guns in civilian hands than people, including over 20 million AR-15-style military-grade semiautomatic assault weapons, guns that can kill dozens of people in under minute.

When I was first inspired to write this blog, it was going to be about the Colorado Springs shooting noted above. But there have been so many such attacks, I realized that one more story about a massing shooting was pretty close to “our thoughts and prayers…” condolences from politicians who have favored or enabled both the spread of increasingly efficient “people killing guns” and sewn the hatred to motivate too many to use them against hapless minorities. Or have appointed judges at every level who condone lax gun laws and disenfranchising minorities.

No, Mr Scalia, our Founding Fathers, who lived in an era of muskets and flintlocks, did not expect legislators and judges to permit super-sophisticated weapons to be allowed to be sold to the general public. The “well regulated militia” language of the Second Amendment was not just window dressing. And no, radical White Christian Nationalists, the First Amendment did preclude our officially declaring ourselves to be a “Christian Nation,” and the Second Amendment was not a backdoor to allow disgruntled voters to have a large array of weapons to overthrow a duly elected government. And finally, those same Founding Fathers expected our leaders to be “honorable” … most certainly not immoral or amoral candidates using false information to inflame their constituency to hate and then turn on vulnerable fellow citizens… just to be elected regardless of the consequences. Want crime rates to fall? Stop teaching hate and arming the haters!

I’m Peter Dekom, and those Americans who foment hatred against fellow citizens because of their beliefs and personal reality are as un-American as it gets and devoid of the personal qualities required for someone to be declared a “patriot.”