What didn’t happen in Dallas last week when a sniper opened fire on police during a protest march is more proof that the gun prohibition lobby’s rhetoric is simply nonsense, as evident by a report Sunday from the Associated Press.
According to that story, the parade through downtown Dallas included several visibly armed “gun rights activists.” Yet when the shooting started, none of these people irresponsibly opened fire and police officers did not shoot any of the activists by mistake. Contrary to how anti-gunners have portrayed open carry advocates and their alleged “Wild West” mentality, the armed marchers headed for cover like everyone else.
There was no wild shooting melee with good guys shooting at other good guys. This says plenty about restraint shown by police under deadly fire, as well as those armed citizens who did not panic and shoot at anything that moved.
Compare that situation, which included scores of heavily-armed cops and armed citizens, to the weekend bloodbath in Chicago. Monday’s Chicago Tribune updated the Windy City body count and it’s not good.
Over the weekend, 43 people were shot and four of them were killed, the newspaper said. There were 19 shootings between Friday night and Saturday morning. The carnage brings to at least 344 the number of people killed so far this year in Chicago, and that’s 102 more people than had been killed by this time last year.
This may be a good time to ask the organizers of “Black Lives Matter” marches where they’ve been, say critics, who wonder why nobody has protested the Chicago slaughter. The majority of victims in that city have been black.
By no small coincidence, this all comes as the New York Times reported about a new study that reveals there is no racial bias by police in the use of lethal force. Harvard Economics Professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr., author of the study, is quoted by the Times article. That study can be found here.
“It’s the most surprising result of my career,” he admitted.
According to the New York Times, “The result contradicts the mental image of police shootings that many Americans hold in the wake of the killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Laquan McDonald in Chicago; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota.”
The Associated Press noted that Dallas Police Chief David Brown “estimated that 20 to 30 open-carry activists attended the rally.” When the shooting erupted, they ran for cover, but there was “instant confusion.” That confusion did not translate to tragedy, however.
