Blake Masters blames Black people for gun violence. But remember, he's no racist
At long last, we have an answer to the (not-so) puzzling question of why America suffers from an epidemic of gun violence.
Why every morning there’s a sad, stunning roll call of new victims and every few weeks or months there’s a massacre in a church or a shopping center or a movie theater.
Or a classroom.
It’s not the guns, we are told, and it’s not the fact that a troubled teen can legally buy an AR-15 and large capacity magazines, to boost the body count.
And it’s certainly not the politicians who see any proposal to at least try to cut down on the carnage as an assault on their God-given, Second Amendment right to own a bazooka.
Nope. It’s Black people.
'It's gangs ... Very often, you know, Black people'
“We do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence,” Blake Masters explained on the “The Jeff Oravits Show” in April. “It’s gangs. It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly. And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that.”
Because ... what? ... Democrats enjoy seeing Black people get shot?
Arizona, meet Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate to represent you in the United States Senate.
Masters’ comments, reported on Sunday by The Daily Beast, came just weeks before an 18-year-old white supremacist traveled to a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y., where he proceeded to gun down 13 grocery shoppers, ages 20 to 86. Ten people died on that Saturday afternoon, all of them Black.
Masters went on in that podcast interview to explain that Democrats “don’t like the Second Amendment” because “it frankly blocks a lot of their plans for us.”
Masters wouldn’t talk to me to explain those plans. Perhaps he was referring to his previous comments endorsing the “Great Replacement” theory so popular with white supremacists who run around warning about a plot to replace white Americans with non-white people.
“Obviously, the Democrats, they hope to just change the demographics of our country,” he told the Patriot Edition podcast in April. “They hope to import an entirely new electorate. Then they call you a racist and a bigot.”
Masters blamed the media in a statement
Perhaps, sir, they've noticed your disturbing tendency to sow fear and blame a particular race of people rather than confronting the undeniable fact that America's gun violence problem extends far beyond the confines of Chicago and St Louis.
Masters wouldn’t consent to an interview to talk about his comments or his ideas for how to reduce gun violence in America. Instead, he went into default mode and sent me a statement bashing the media. That’s always a crowd pleaser.
And, of course, a way to avoid having to answer questions.
“The media backlash says it all,” Masters said, in a written statement sent by his campaign. “Journalists only cover shootings where the shooters and victims fit a certain profile. But most victims of gun murder in America are black men. And most perpetrators of gun murder in America are black men.
“These are simple facts, go look up the FBI crime statistics and CDC cause of death data while you still can. But since this is politically incorrect to point out, the media refuses to acknowledge it, and screams ‘racism!’ anytime someone says the truth. Meanwhile, there’s an epidemic of violence that’s killing young black men in America – I think that’s a huge problem, and unlike the Democrats, I actually want to solve it.”
Certainly, there is an epidemic of violence that’s killing young Black men in disproportionately high numbers. I know this because there have been almost daily news stories documenting Chicago's heartbreak. What I haven't read is anything on how Masters would fix it.
When pressed for an answer on how he would curtail gun violence, Masters' campaign sent me another statement, saying he would "crack down on crime, go after gangs, and build a culture and economy were families thrive."
He offers no acknowledgement that our gun violence problem extends beyond Black people and the streets of Chicago. That it also reaches inside a school in Uvalde, Texas, and a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., and into far too many cities to count, all across America.
The problem is the guns, plain and simple
It isn’t video games that are to blame. Or a lack of prayer in school or broken families or poor mental health or a particular race of people. Other countries similar to ours have all those things, yet they somehow manage to get their children through the fourth grade without having to bury them.
And before you go there, doors aren't to blame either, or unarmed teachers and grocery shoppers.
It’s the guns, Mr. Masters.
They’re being used by people of every color, race and religion.
By gang members on the streets of Chicago and by mentally disturbed teenagers who all too often legally buy and then gleefully employ their weapons of mass destruction.
To see this through the prism of race is a narrow view that misses, perhaps intentionally, the bigger picture.
And what do we get when we look to our leaders for leadership? When we look to them to do something to at least try to slow on our ongoing, never ending national tragedy?
All we get from Republicans are a lecture about their Second Amendment rights and the usual excuses for why nothing can be done. And now, an explanation from the man who wants to be our next senator that America's gun problem is really Black people.
Meanwhile, our national bloodbath oozes on, but here’s the funny thing about it, Mr. Masters.
It’s all red.
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Blake Masters blames gun violence not on guns, but Black people
