Whatever their ostensible justification, the predominant effect of Open Carry and Stand Your Ground laws is to allow law abiding citizens (white folks) to defend themselves against (shoot and kill) people (blacks) whom they feel are (or might be) a threat to them.
In his excellent diary post "Why Black Men Don't Open Carry," http://www.dailykos.com/... Vyan contrasts the case of Steve Lohner (pronounced loner?) with that of 22 year old John Crawford. Lohner is a pink faced Colorado teen who was confronted by police for carrying a loaded shotgun through the streets of Aurora. Crawford was a bright eyed, dark skinned father who was confronted by police in an Ohio Walmart while carrying an air rifle he picked up for sale in the toy section. Lohner was uncooperative and refused to hand over his loaded weapon. Crawford was on the phone with the mother of his children who heard him tell the police the air rifle was not real. Lohner was given a citation and allowed to keep his weapon and his life. Crawford was shot dead. Presumably the police confiscated the toy.
In both cases, concerned citizens called 911, the police responded and while confronting the young men, came to opposite conclusions as to how to handle the incidents. I will come back to the topic of Open Carry laws, but first some data on institutional racism, the justice system and the other side of the vigilante empowerment coin, Stand Your Ground.
There are plenty of studies to show that people of color receive harsher treatment in our legal system than do whites.
A number of recent surveys have shown that there are profound racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, that African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to be tried as adults. They are more likely to receive longer sentences, they're more likely to be in locked facilities, and on and on and on, even when charged with the same offense as whites.
http://www.pbs.org/...
Undoubtedly a certain amount of this is due to institutionalized, socio-economic factors, but again those dots can be connected to the racism matrix, as former supervisor of the juvenile division of the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office, Bridget Jones points out:
The system is not fair. Institutional racism is alive and well in the juvenile justice system, as it is in the criminal justice system. It's easier to identify with people that are more like yourself, so if you have judges that are predominantly from that same community, they can identify. . . . The same thing happens with people who have money versus people who don't have money--if they can demonstrate a support system that can act as a safety net or think they can act as a safety net for them on the outside, judges are more prone to buy into that.
This association of people of color to criminality has deep psycho/sociological roots.
From previous research, we know that—among white Americans—there’s a strong cognitive connection between “blackness” and criminality. “The mere presence of a black man,” note Eberhardt and other researchers in a 2004 paper, “can trigger thoughts that he is violent and criminal.”
Indeed, they continue, simply thinking about black Americans can lead people to see ambiguous actions as aggressive and to see harmless objects as weapons. When Michael Dunn saw 17-year-old Jordan Davis and his friends, he perceived a threat, imagined a gun, and opened fire, killing Davis. “I was the one who was victimized,” said Dunn in a phone call to his fiancée before his trial. It’s ludicrous, but it’s not dishonest. Like many other Americans, Dunn sees black people—and black men in particular—as a criminal threat.
http://www.slate.com/...
For visual learners, I suggest the following episodes from ABC's "What Would You Do?" for real time visual evidence of the assumption of criminality. http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
Open Carry and Stand Your Ground laws exacerbate this psycho/socio/institutional bias by unleashing vigilantism into the equation.
A recent study suggests that [SYG] laws may lead to more deaths. According to a June study [pdf] by researchers at Texas A&M University, the rates of murder and non-negligent manslaughter increased by 8 percent in states with Stand Your Ground laws. That’s an additional 600 homicides per year in the states that have enacted such laws.
The study, which analyzed FBI crime data nationwide from 2000-2009, says it could mean either that more people are using lethal force in self-defense, or that situations are more likely to escalate to the use of violence in states with the laws. “Regardless, the study said, “the results indicate that a primary consequence of strengthening self-defense law is increased homicide.”
The same study goes on to examine data on how the justice system produces biased results in the Stand Your Ground defenses.
A field of research confirms the racial bias that comes into play when juries and judges consider Stand Your Ground defenses. According to the Urban Institute, in Stand Your Ground states, white-on-black homicides are 354 percent more likely to be ruled justified than white-on-white homicides.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
John Roman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, recently published the results of a study titled Stand Your Ground Laws and Miscarriages of Justice (2012) examining racial disparity using FBI data. He found that the killings of black people by whites were more likely to be considered justified than the killings of white people by blacks.
But the analysis didn’t compare Stand Your Ground states to those without the laws.
So Roman next, at the request of FRONTLINE analyzed a pool of 43,500 homicides by race in states with and without Stand Your Ground laws and found that a greater number of homicides were determined to be justified in Stand Your Ground states in all racial combinations because those states had higher killings overall.
Roman also found that Stand Your Ground laws tend to track the existing racial disparities in homicide convictions across the U.S. — with one significant exception: Whites who kill blacks in Stand Your Ground states are far more likely to be found justified in their killings. In non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent.
So this finding shows that while the existing homicide conviction bias in non-SYG states is shameful, it is significantly worse in states with SYG laws in SYG cases.
Last week's conviction of Theodore Wafer for the murder of Renisha McBride in a Detroit Stand Your Ground case offers a counterpoint to these otherwise grim findings, but it doesn't change the fact the McBride was killed because Wafer had a shot gun and felt empowered to use it to defend himself against the perceived threat of a young black woman in need of assistance knocking on his door at 4:00 in the morning.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
At the nexus of Stand Your Ground and Open Carry exists the latest revival of American vigilante justice with black Americans in the cross hairs. Angry white men with guns feel the adrenaline rush of legal empowerment and the testosterone boost from handling their weapons. Stand Your Ground and Open Carry amplify the already horrific dissonance of psycho/socio/institutionalized racism, placing blacks who live in these states at greater and greater risk of being shot just for being black. The killing this weekend of an unarmed Jackson, Missouri teen who was shot multiple times by a police officer is technically neither Stand Your Ground nor Open Carry--as is the Crawford shooting in Ohio--but the point is, whether they are packing or not, whether they are a threat or not, it doesn't matter because they are perceived as such. White men with guns get a pass because they are assumed to be harmless until they actually shoot somebody white. Unarmed blacks are assumed to be in the process of committing a crime and therefore shooting them is justifiable.
Authorities were vague about exactly what led the officer to open fire on Brown, except to say that the shooting was preceded by a scuffle of some kind with a man. It was unclear whether Brown or the man he was with was involved in the altercation.
Investigators have refused to publicly disclose the race of the officer, who is now on administrative leave. But Phillip Walker said he was on the porch of an apartment complex overlooking the scene when he heard a shot and saw a white officer with Brown on the street.
Brown "was giving up in the sense of raising his arms and being subdued," Walker told The Associated Press on Monday. The officer "had his gun raised and started shooting the individual in the chest multiple times." The officer then "stood over him and shot him" after the victim fell wounded.
http://www.aol.com/...
The shooting of John Crawford in the Ohio Walmart , is equally disturbing. The non-lethal air rifle was on the shelf, for sale. Did not any Walmart employee notice that the police were in their store pointing their guns at a customer carrying one of their products? Did not the police think to communicate with a manager, supervisor or any other employee? Why would they place a product in the toy section that looked so realistic that it frightened their customers and fooled the police? Why is it that Steve Lohner can walk around Aurora, Colorado with a loaded shotgun, is uncooperative with police and lives to post his selfie video online? Why is it that a bunch of white men can carry real life semi-automatic rifles into Target or Starbucks or Chipotle or to a Moms Against Guns meeting with nobody calling 911 and them all living to boast and post on the internet? Why is it that a white man and woman can exclaim to people that they intend to kill police and then proceed to walk through Las Vegas with a shopping cart full of weapons, and nobody calls 911 until they actually kill two cops?
As Vyan asks "can you guess . . . ?"