13 days, 22 murders

uh oh

More than half of US police killings are mislabelled or not reported, study finds

 

Shocking. Or not.

There's a reason Black Americans are scared of police.

 

‘We Can’t Endure This’: Surge in U.S. Shootings Shows No Sign of Easing

 

Lock down a country with 350 million guns for two years and this is what happens.

I think a good argument can be made for a huge increase in general recklessness throughout the pandemic.

Car deaths. Alcohol deaths. Drug deaths. Fireworks deaths. Ad inf., upupup

But maybe gun control is a thing we need to consider.

 

I think we've all changed too. Shorter tempers, less compassion. I think we all like each other even less now than we did before the pandemic.

 

Load up on guns! Bring your friends! It's fun to shoot and to pretend... that more guns are the answer to more shootings.

 

I don't advocate more murders. But murders in the United States increased from about 20,000 in 2020 to 25,000 in 2021. I could not find a number for 2022 but it seems they increased about 20% more so let's say there were 30,000. So the last two years there were about 55,000 murders.

The people who complaining about this basically decry the Black Lives Matter Movement and say that we are hamstringing the police. I believe that hamstringing the police means that they are reluctant should be allowed to sue more proactive tactics. That does not mean police beating the hell of someone but I think it allows means stop and frisk.

These aggressive tactics will not be directed at 64 year old white people like me. Instead, they will be directed at young black people. And it will be argued that is the price society has to pay for safety.

In the past two years about about 975,000 people have died of COVID. If a mask mandate saved 10% of that number of lives that would means it saved about 100,000 lives or basically twice the entire population of Americans murdered. Yet Republican politicians feel mask mandates, that all Americans, regardless of race or age would need to follow, are to high a price to pay in terms of our personal freedom even if it could have saved 10,000's of thousands of lives. Even now COVID is killing a little over a 1,000 a day so a 10% reduction in deaths would work out to about 40,000 lives a year.

A cynic would believe that these politicians believe in an expansive view of of freedom for white people and a not so expansive view for black people.