Spencer Critchley

Politics & Society

What’s Next for the NRA: Arming Young Black Males

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According to the NRA, guns are life-savers. The group credits rising gun ownership (albeit among a shrinking share of the population) and the spread of concealed carry laws for the decline of violent crime from its peak in the 1990’s. According to the NRA, there are as many as 2.5 million defensive uses of guns per year.

“An armed society is a polite society,” goes a favorite NRA quotation, borrowed from science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein.

To say the least, these assertions are controversial (you can find objective discussions here and here). But let’s accept them for now, if only to see where they lead.

That would be to what surely will become the NRA’s next urgent priority:

Arming young black males.

The NRA’s own principles and policy positions cry out for it:

  1. Americans need to be armed, so they can protect themselves from violent crime. The police can’t be relied upon, especially since they usually show up after an attack has occurred. “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” as NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre says.
  2. Regulating guns is no good. It infringes Second Amendment freedoms, and only law-abiding people will obey the regulations — “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns,” as another favorite quote has it.
  3. There are also risks from terrorists, Latin American drug gangs, the deranged and even the imminent breakdown of society, according to LaPierre. Again, only by being armed can citizens defend themselves.

Obviously, the NRA should therefore focus its efforts on those who are most at risk from violence. Who are most at risk? By far, young black males.

Let’s look at the numbers, as collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control.

In 2010, for the first time since 1965, homicide fell off the list of the top 15 causes of death for the US population overall (see here, page 14).

But not if you were a young black male. According to the CDC’s 2009 figures, for you, homicide was the number one cause of death.

For black males aged 15 to 24, half of all deaths were by homicide. Think about that: half.

Here are some comparisons of percentages of deaths by homicide, by age group:

Source: US Centers for Disease Control. Chart: the author.

It’s a horrifying crisis, as many in law enforcement, public health and government have been saying for years.

So, since the NRA believes guns make their owners and others around them safer, I’m sure we can count on the group throwing the bulk of its effort into making sure young black males are carrying guns, ASAP. Subscribe to the Politics email. From Washington to the campaign trail, get the latest politics news.

Hang on a minute, some may say. Some of those young black males were probably criminals. After all, a higher percentage of black people live in poor, urban areas with high rates of violent crime. True, but remember what the NRA teaches us:

  1. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
  2. We can’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals by regulation, and regulation puts the Second Amendment at risk.
  3. Society is crumbling. According to LaPierre, our violence-plagued cities are a preview of what we can expect.

But hang on another minute. Doesn’t the NRA say we should enforce existing gun laws, which would help reduce gun violence among black Americans, and all Americans? Yes, but also per the NRA, that can’t be allowed to happen if it involves actual enforcement, because then the ATF would take away our freedoms. More research into gun violence is also off-limits.

Now, as it happens the NRA has already begun to reach out to black people. There’s room for it, given the profile of the current membership. March of this year saw the debut at NRANews.com of commentator Colion Noir, an African-American gun rights advocate.

No way this is just a token gesture. Given the critical need, I’m sure we can expect black-oriented gun rights organizing to become the lion’s share of NRA activity any day now.

Second priority will no doubt be given to young Hispanic males, who face the next-highest level of risk.

It can’t be that there are already too many guns flooding high crime minority communities. Remember, guns make people safer — if these particular armed societies are less than polite, obviously, they need to be more heavily armed.

Now perhaps you think I’m being ironic. You may be right.*

But it could be that the joke will be on me: after all, think of the profits being left on the table by the NRA’s clients, the gun-makers. They may want to go for this multicultural outreach stuff, big time.

Because no matter how confusing they may sometimes seem, there’s one simple thing that always makes the NRA’s positions perfectly coherent: the gun industry money behind them.

*Let me emphasize that the targets of my irony are the NRA leadership and its exploitation of fear, in particular xenophobia. I am not saying that all NRA members think of race when they imagine law-abiding Americans defending themselves against criminals, or even that all members buy into the NRA’s vision of an armed citizenry fighting crime and terror. For example, the great majority of NRA members disagree with the group’s leaders on the issue of sensible gun regulations, like universal background checks (which members overwhelmingly favor).

Paul Ryan is Romney’s Sarah Palin

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Cross-posted at Huffington Post. Of all the obvious blunders Republican leaders didn’t want Mitt Romney to make, it was choosing a Sarah Palin as his candidate for vice president. The possibility scared even Dick Cheney.

But that’s exactly what Romney has done.

What, you say? Paul Ryan, like him or not, is a person of substance, and Sarah Palin is, well, Sarah Palin. But if you look at why Romney chose Ryan, and why John McCain chose Palin, it becomes clear.

McCain was seen by the conservative base as far too impure ideologically, palling around with liberals on bellwether issues like immigration, global warming and campaign finance reform. He was also proving to be a disappointing campaigner: lacking a coherent message, committing gaffes and never really firing up any part of the electorate.

Sound familiar?

McCain chose Palin in a desperate attempt to buy credibility with the base of his own party. Same with Romney and Ryan. Romney, a man who apparently has no core, has attempted to hire one.

But what about Ryan’s intellectual gravitas, as compared with Palin’s anti-gravitas? Ryan’s famous plan, the Roadmap for America’s Future, may be radical and heartless, but as the GOP mantra goes, at least he has a plan.

Gravitas? People, Paul Ryan is a big fan of Ayn Rand. This counts as gravitas?

Only in Washington, as they say, though we shouldn’t overlook Star Trek conventions.

As any psychologist could tell you, if you’re obsessed with escaping someone, you are not free of that someone. In fleeing Sarah Palin, anxiously looking over his shoulder, Mitt Romney has run around in a circle, smack into Paul Ryan.

Don’t vote for anyone who looks like he should be president

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A great insight from Moneyball author Michael Lewis this morning on Fareed Zakaria GPS:

Maybe you don’t want to vote for the guy who looks like he should be president. Because the only reason he’s gotten as far as he’s gotten is because he looks like he should be president.

In studying rich and poor baseball teams for Moneyball, Lewis found that rich teams invested in the wrong players — in effect, the players who looked good, as opposed to the ones who actually were good.

It does sound like more than a few presidential candidates, not to mention much of the Senate.

A corollary: If there are two barbers in the shop, ask for the one with the bad haircut.

Prepare for Republican Dirty Tricks in the California Attorney General Squeaker

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Written with Zach Friend for the Huffington Post.

As we watch the final vote count in the oh-so-close contest between Steve Cooley and Kamala Harris, watch for a California replay of Bush-Gore 2000. Already, Cooley consultant Kevin Spillane has promised to fight any supposed “manipulations of the ballot counting process by the Harris campaign.”

There is of course no evidence of such manipulations. Republicans are by far the most aggressive practitioners of ballot chicanery, up to and including the shameful intervention by the Supreme Court in 2000. And they are always first off the mark with charges of same against the other side. Kamala Harris received more votes on Election Day than Cooley did, so it’s predictable that Republicans would immediately launch their usual program of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

The Democrats this time appear more prepared to protect the vote and more willing to recognize that they have a reason to take ownership in this race’s outcome. California Democratic Party Chair John Burton has put out an appeal to have election monitors present at all county vote counts, and Harris campaign officials have been actively fighting all Republican smears.

Unlike Republicans, Democrats have reason to be worried about dirty tricks. The Cooley campaign had major support from Karl Rove, who of course had a leading role in the 2000 travesty. Rove has made his career on dirty tricks since he won a bitter 1973 campaign for Executive Director of the College Republicans — in part by getting votes for his opponent disallowed. Although Rove was caught on tape counseling other young Republicans on how to cheat, then Republican National Committee chair George H.W. Bush chose Rove as the winner and later, fatefully, connected him with his son, George W.

As we have noted previously, Kamala Harris is a logical target for Rove and company. She has had an impressive rise on the way to her current post as District Attorney of San Francisco. She is California’s first African-American DA, and has scored big successes in that office, showing a combination of toughness and brains. She would be the state’s first female Attorney General. It seems obvious that Rove (and partner Ed Gillespie) should fear Harris’ potential to win higher office. Many former Attorneys General have been governors, members of congress, and presidential candidates.

Democrats need to stick to their guns and fight hard for a clean result, because it’s the right thing to do, because of what’s at stake politically, and — not least — because voters want to see that they have the gumption to do it.