Gun-owning fathers in homes with good fences, make good neighbors

The shooting of an unarmed Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida has one again placed the issues of race, hate crimes and gun rights before the American public. Some Democrats have even dusted off their old gun control playbooks more than a decade after they shelved in the wake of electoral defeats attributed to their championing of the issue in the 1990s.

Previously in this space we have argued that the tape of Zimmerman’s neighborhood watch 911 call after spotting Martin “acting suspiciously in the rain” revealed no evidence of racial profiling and that the injection of race into the public discussion by Spike Lee-aided New Black Panther’s posting bounties, Attorney General Holder-praised Revs. Jackson and Sharpton alleging that Blacks are “under attack” in America, with even President Obama himself calling on Americans to search their souls over a shooting victim that looks like an imaginary son of his own would look like, was the height of irresponsibility.

The only “hate crime” we have been able to spot is the one regularly committed by Democrats and the media that assume white Americans must be presumed to be racists, thus requiring the government to afford them the extra-protection of “hate crimes’ legislation” and immunity from laws against vigilantism when a Black man is killed by non-Black men, including so-called “white” Hispanics.

But do hate crime laws really afford any extra protection from racist predators?

The question reminds of the vilification of then presidential candidate George W. Bush for opposing hate crime legislation while governor of the Lone Star State which would have allowed the murderer of James Byrd to have ten years tacked on to his sentence. All Governor Bush did was preside of the white racists murderer’s execution; but for the “civil rights” industry, justice for James Byrd mattered less than that governments maintain a public face riddled with white guilt.

No one ever asks if one of the reasons that the number of incidents of White-on-Black crime are puny as compared to the number of such Black-on-White incidents, is that blacks are constantly sent the message from media-favored Black leaders and Black Presidents with typical (racist) white grandmothers, that even whites that are not grandmothers are also, typically, racist.

It’s hard enough to convict killers with proof beyond a reasonable doubt that they intended to kill their victims, without also forcing juries into a whole other realm of mind and heart reading, especially when there exists no evidence that such examinations deter crime. One of the lessons this former criminal defense lawyer learned many years ago when a client of mine was jailed for contempt of court for rude behavior in the courtroom soon after being found not guilty, is to declare victory and leave the courtroom.

The victory, as best one can be achieved given the biting of the apple by Eve and her progeny, over racism was achieved in America many years ago thanks mainly to how a real reverend named Martin Luther King tapped into the moral consciences of white Americans raised on Judeo-Christian values. Who knows, maybe these Americans could one day even elect as president a man that doesn’t look like them. But if the civil rights industry were to declare victory, they would have to start doing real work.

Those same Judeo-Christian values also inform us concerning proportional punishments, deterrence and crime prevention. 

The “eye for an eye” legal proposition was “progressive” in the time of pagan virgin sacrifices and death sentences for crimes less than murder, rape or treason. Punish one for the intentional removal of the eye, not the condition of the heart of the eye remover. Let one man cleave to one woman and turn their born-wild issue into civilized human beings.

Finally, learn the lesson of Kennesaw, Georgia and apply it not only to the protection of the home, but also the sites of mass murder in public high schools like Columbine and college campuses like Virginia Tech, as March 25th marked the 21st anniversary of that city’s ordinance requiring heads of households (with certain exceptions) to keep at least one firearm in their homes.

The city’s population grew from around 5,000 in 1980 to 13,000 by 1996 (latest available estimate). Yet there have been only three murders: two with knives (1984 and 1987) and one with a firearm (1997). After the law went into effect in 1982, crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982.

And it has stayed impressively low. In addition to nearly non-existent homicide (murders have averaged a mere 0.19 per year), the annual number of armed robberies, residential burglaries, commercial burglaries, and rapes have averaged, respectively, 1.69, 31.63, 19.75, and 2.00 through 1998.

Finally, even if many Blacks won’t accept the fact that most Whites accept them as equals, they should still eschew special race-based laws that treat them like perpetual victims needing an Uncle Sam as daddy; and choose instead to embrace the U.S. Constitution whose 13th, 14th and 15th full-citizenship-granting “Civil War” Amendments were opposed by Democrats because, as Chief Justice Roger Taney said in Dred Scott, “[citizenship] would give [blacks] the full liberty to keep and carry arms wherever they want.”

Democrats were also the ones that passed race-based “Jim Crow” laws after the failures of Reconstruction to keep blacks unarmed and the Democratic Party has continued to this day, despite the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964, to betray the King “content of character’” legacy to favor laws based on race as if Jim Crow never died but just changed sides.

Mike DeVine

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist –  Examiner.com

Editor - Hillbilly Politics

Co-Founder and Editor - Political Daily

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Unified Patriots,  and all  Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.