Just when you think Republicans can’t get any more loathsome, another steps up to unleash even more racist, conspiratorial rhetoric. Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters is the latest gem.
As first reported by The Daily Beast during an April interview on The Jeff Oravits Show podcast, Masters offered his half-cent theory on why America has such a horrific gun violence issue: It’s the “Black people,” he says. No wonder he’s endorsed by former President Donald Trump. It all makes sense.
Masters acknowledges that there is a problem with gun violence in the nation, but it’s not the proliferation of weapons or the fact that it’s easier to get a gun than Sudafed. Nope. The “gangs” are the problem, he claims. “It’s people in Chicago and St. Louis shooting each other,” he says, and “very often, Black people, frankly.”
Now we get it: It’s the Black people. If we just got rid of them, we wouldn’t have any more gun violence. Why didn’t we think of that before? Oh, and by the way, Masters alleges that the “Democrats don’t want to do anything” about gang violence.
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But just when you think Masters is racist, he doubles down and calls Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson an “affirmative action candidate” for the Supreme Court.
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“It’s her legacy. She was chosen for her race and gender, and I think that’s pretty messed up,” Masters says, claiming that “most Americans want to stop obsessing about race all the time.” And then he blamed the Democrats again, only this time it's for “dividing people on the basis of race.”
Masters is skillful at diverting attention. Business Insider reports that at one point, Masters’ campaign posted a pledge on its website plainly stating he would only vote to confirm federal judges “who understand that Roe and Griswold and Casey were wrongly decided and that there is no constitutional right to abortion.” That has since been removed. So Masters not only claims that President Biden nominated Justice Jackson based only on her race and gender, he also wants Roe overturned as soon as possible.
To give you some background on Masters, he’s a tech entrepreneur who’s generously supported by Peter Thiel, a conservative Silicon Valley billionaire. He’s also a darling of the white nationalist group VDARE for his xenophobic stance on immigrants, according to The Daily Beast.
Trump has called Masters “a great modern-day thinker,” CNN reports, and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson refers to him as “the future of the Republican Party,” according to Politico.
“President Trump is a great man and a visionary,” Masters said in a statement to CNN. “It’s incredible to have his endorsement. I wish everyone could know how this feels.”
Masters is also a “Big Lie” theorist and a proponent of the “great replacement” ideology.
“Blake knows that the crime of the century took place, he will expose it, and also never let it happen again,” Trump said.
The Associated Press reports that he has accused the Democrats of attempting to bring immigrants into the U.S. in order “to change the demographics of our country.”
But let’s get back to Masters’ blaming of gun violence on Black Americans.
Perhaps the Stanford University grad, who “hates” Silicon Valley but has financially benefited from it, missed or didn’t take any classes in American history. He seems to be blanking on the parts about racial disparity as a result of centuries and generations of oppression and bias, and how this country is based on a system that keeps Black and brown communities chronically underfunded and over-incarcerated.
And by the way, most mass shootings are committed by white Americans, according to Statista Research Department. “Between 1982 and June 2022, 68 out of the 129 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters. … Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the U.S. population as a whole.”
What Republicans like Masters need to do is stop pointing the finger at everyone and everything except guns, the ease with which Americans can get guns, and how we’re perpetually incapable of passing even the most modest of sensible gun reforms.
We need to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and bump stocks today. And we need to have required background checks and waiting periods. This is not a Black people issue or a gang issue. This is a gun issue.
