If you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
Think for just a moment about a society in which black teenagers like Michael Brown are all armed - and many currently are - and employ a "stand your ground" policy. Surely every black teenager approached by the police would be entitled to feel threatened for their safety and to shoot without taking a backward step. That they are entitled to feel threatened would be a no-brainer. All they would need is some ambiguity about the identity of the approaching figure. "I didn't know he was a policeman. It was dark. There was no time. My back was turned and all I saw was a drawn gun."
Of course, "stand your ground" wasn't written for blacks to kill whites; it was written so that whites could (if necessary) kill blacks. And it certainly wasn't designed to kill law enforcement figures. But there seem to be no good reasons why it wouldn't. What does this say about us? More below the fold.
This awful tragedy and its implications tell us several things, and none are pleasant.
1. The underlying narrative justifying the NRA's horrific promotion of the right and means to kill indiscriminately is of course racist. If the subliminal vision informing its claims is of a white person slaying a threatening black figure, many people are fundamentally comfortable with it. But if the underlying vision is of a black figure slaying a white figure, and perhaps one in uniform, the entire situation is reframed. Suddenly, it begins to look really nasty (which it is), and even out of control (which it is as well). The NRA is unleashing civil breakdown on the good people of the United States. The obvious next step here is justified cop killing.
2. That the police could find themselves in a legitimate "stand your ground" situation, even in our imaginations, speaks to the awful chasm in trust that still exists in the US between the forces of law and order and the black community. Unaddressed racism will do that.
3. And underlying all the sinister extrapolations is the fundamental evil that guns kill people. Lives are suddenly terminated with the pressure of a finger on the trigger of a commodity that is beautifully designed and widely available. Place that thing of beauty in the hands of someone who is afraid, angry, confused, ill, mad, or too young, and people die.
Let's address the racism still too prevalent in the USA.
Let's address the policing of minority communities.
Let's vote against the NRA.