When discussing shootings’ causes, conservatives will say it’s the people, not the guns; liberals will focus on the guns, not the people. And does it not accord with the latter theory when, in the Kansas City shooting’s wake, authorities are withholding the identities of the “people” responsible and are fixating on guns?
Why, a cynical person might almost think it’s contrived — a strategy.
For sure, say many, it’s odd that a full day after the mayhem at the Wednesday parade celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl LVIII victory, authorities still (as of this writing) haven’t revealed anything about the shooters’ identities or background. It’s even odder given that two good Samaritans tackled one of the suspects — knocking his gun from his hands and enabling police to take him into custody. Authorities surely know the individual’s identity.
Of course, critics would aver that were the shooters white, and especially if they were “white supremacists” (those elusive creatures observed with the frequency of unicorns), we’d have known their identities almost immediately.
And keeping the perps off the radar screen has allowed firearms to be put front and center. Sure enough, too, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their media minions wasted no time using the event to push for more anti-gun laws. As Fox News writes, “Biden issued a statement specifically recommending that lawmakers ban assault weapons among other gun control laws….”
Interestingly, Assault Weapons™ (a propaganda term for some semiautomatic rifles) were not used in the KC shooting; handguns apparently were. This isn’t surprising since, being concealable, they’re criminals’ favored weapons and are used in approximately 60 percent of all gun homicides. (Rifles, of any kind, are used in only three percent.) Apparently, though, the facts don’t matter in this debate any more than the KC shooters’ identities do.
As for the shooting, reports now hold that it resulted from a dispute among several individuals, which makes sense. When 23 people are shot and only one (thankfully) is killed, it indicates they were not the targets, but “collateral damage.” Also know that KC has the U.S.’s sixth highest murder rate and that, just as was the case at the parade, arguments are the most common cause of shootings there.
So the story here isn’t “assault weapons”; they had nothing to do with Wednesday’s incident.
The story here isn’t even guns in general, as there’s actually no positive correlation between firearm-ownership level and murder rates (e.g., New Hampshire’s gun-ownership rate is more than 10 times as high as Britain’s, but its murder rate is lower). In fact, there may be a negative correlation between these two phenomena. The story is this:
Kansas City recorded its deadliest year in history in 2023, with 185 homicides; its non-fatal shootings’ rate has been rising as well, with the figure being 537 in 2022. Again, too, disputes most commonly drive these crimes.
In other words, the Wednesday shooting was just another day in KC — the only difference is that with approximately one million parade attendees, it was assured that a high number of innocent bystanders would be struck.
Yet there’s more to the story, too — a deeper reason why KC’s violent crime rate is so high. As commentator Stu Tarlowe writes:
The climate of crime and murder in Kansas City, Missouri, has been fostered by the city’s so-called leaders, who for years have pandered to and even celebrated the “gangsta rap” mentality that violence and gunplay are viable ways of dealing with conflict.
Nothing points this out better than how the city has fêted a particular gangsta rapper, “KC’s own” Tech N9ne. This so-called “artist,” whom I wrote about in 2013, named himself after the submachinegun-style handgun that “gangstas” think is just too cool (even if they can obtain only the semi-automatic version). In that article, I took then-mayor Sly James to task for presenting Tech N9ne as a role model for the city’s youth; my article included some of the vile lyrics that have made Tech N9ne rich and famous.
Tarlowe then presented the following expurgated version of those lyrics:
“Gunz Will Bust”
[Verse 1]
I know you know this is Kansas City
Where n*gga life don’t mean sh*t
So step to and immediately get yo dome split
I pack heat for days run street wit K’s and hollow’s
On a concrete crusade you made the pill now swallow
You never thought tomorrow
You see me beam up all strapped down wit a pump
Searchin’ for the n*ggas on a hunt
Jerkin’ on the trigga when I dump
It’s not a game dude my killaz will mangle
Anything in my range fool
When hatin’ get framed moved
We play the same rules…
[Chorus]
Rough n*ggas in the street will bust 4 the bread
And meat deuce 57th Street and 7 deuce be packin’ heat punks
Get the f*ck away from we, for we buckin’ these mutha f*ckin’ G.U.N.Z.
Shakespeare it’s not. And what effect does it have on KC’s black boys — who already often come from broken homes with no father figure present — when the world’s Tech N9nes are held up as role models?
Note here that Tarlowe provides numerous examples of how Tech N9ne has been fêted by city officials. In fact, he was a “celebrity guest” at the Super Bowl parade.
The even deeper issue is that, as Professor Thomas Sowell has pointed out (videos below), this “black” gangsta culture actually derives from redneck culture, which once plagued many poor whites and blacks in the South. But while most whites dispensed with it and embraced mainstream American norms, it was retained in black ghettos.
Tragically, instead of stigmatizing this “redneck” culture and discouraging it among blacks (as happened with whites), it’s glamorized and portrayed as “authentic black culture,” which ensures many blacks will embrace it as part of their identity. So, ironically, if you wanted to handicap blacks and encourage their failure, promoting this gangsta culture — as the Left does — is precisely what you’d do.
As for the KC shooters, odds are that their identities will be released — as soon as the story fades from the front pages.
