Far right Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, recently endorsed by fat former President Trump, told a podcaster in April he blames Black Americans for the gun violence epidemic in the United States, the Daily Beast reports. “We do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence. 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,” Masters said on the Jeff Oravits Show on April 11th, without explaining what he thinks Democrats are supposed to do.
Does Masters want Democrats to just add an asterisk to all proposed gun control legislation that says “* Background checks, red flag laws, waiting periods, and bans on assault rifles apply to Black people only” or similar? Would their bills gain Republican support then? Does he think MAGA terrorists like Kyle Rittenhouse, Patrick Cruisus, Nikolas Cruz, Payton Gendron, Dylann Roof, Stephen Paddock, and the rest of them were somehow unfairly singled out while urban gangbanger assholes settling scores with each other are swept aside by Democrats? Just asking questions, because while “But Chicago” is the go-to for MAGA trolls like Masters and his ilk every time some Trump fan goes on a shooting rampage, they never seem to want to actually follow through on why they think the urban gun violence problem is somehow separate from gun violence overall.
New York City and Chicago are remarkably similar demographically. Both have a poverty rate of around 18% and are circa 30% non-Hispanic white (to entertain Masters’ racist bullshit). Yet Chicago’s gun homicide rate in 2020 (25 per 100,000) was more than eight times higher than NYC’s (3 per 100,000). It’s not policing either because the Chicago PD have one cop for every 228 residents while the NYPD have one for every 251 New Yorkers. The biggest problem for Chicago is its source of guns: Indiana. Gangs send straw buyers across the nearby border into the ruby red state with its lax regulations, flooding the streets with illegal weapons. New York City is far further removed from states with low barriers to purchase firearms, increasing the costs and lowering supply for the illicit trade. Of course there are probably plenty of other variables at play here, but it’s hard to think of what else could be pointed to as a more salient reason for the disparity.
At the end of the day mass shootings and urban gang violence and everything in between are all part of the same problem: It’s too easy for angry assholes of all races and religions to buy guns.