For years, activists have demanded stricter gun control in America, on the cogent (though perhaps unconstitutional) grounds that fewer guns will save the lives of young people in American cities.
Cockburn has an alternative proposal: instead of gun control, America needs celebrity control. Lacking any skin in the game and let loose on Twitter, famous people are saying extremely insane things that are going to get people killed.
The chief honor this time goes to alleged ‘comedian’ Chelsea Handler, after the shooting death of Minneapolis’s Daunte Wright. Wright tragically learned the hard way that resisting arrest puts you at risk of being shot by a birdbrained police officer who confuses her taser with a pistol. There are many valid takeaways from this, one of which is that it is a very bad idea to aggressively resist arrest. Sadly, Handler has taken the exact opposite lesson:
Why would any person of color ever comply with a police officer when there is a 50/50 shot of getting “accidentally” shot?
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) April 13, 2021
Mercifully, young black men are unlikely to listen to anyone named ‘Chelsea.’ If they did, her advice could cause droves of young black men to be beaten, maimed, shot and killed. Anybody genuinely concerned with the Mattering of Black Lives ought to be denouncing such madness. But they don’t.
Handler is able to spout deranged nonsense because of her position. She lives in Bel Air. She has no children who might be shot after taking bad life advice like ‘resist arrest because it doesn’t matter’. She may not even know a single police officer, just people who play them on TV. In other words, she has no skin in the game. Like a DC insider selling another foreign war, Handler faces no downsides if she is catastrophically wrong.
This is the theme for many blue-check reactions to the events of Brooklyn Center. The desire for an overwrought emotional reaction outweighs common sense, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Daunte Wright was murdered by police for hanging an air freshener from his rearview mirror while white domestic terrorists violently stormed US Capitol with impunity
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) April 12, 2021
Welcome to America, where a Black man is pulled over and murdered by police after hanging an air freshener on his mirror, but white men walk away unscathed after carrying out mass shootings.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 12, 2021
I want to know why cops are pulling black motorists over because of expired plates and hanging air fresheners. Why are they even using tasers let alone guns in these situations?
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) April 12, 2021
Do these people really imagine this is healthy? Not all Americans have learned the appropriate amount of stock to place in pronouncements by journalists and public officials (i.e. none), so they might actually believe this sort of thing. Wright wasn’t killed for having an air freshener, despite what so many reports claimed. He was stopped for expired tags, was under arrest for a prior warrant and was only shot (even accidentally) because he fought back. Instead of being given the truth, black Americans are told they might be randomly murdered by police just for going outside. They are being taught to live in a state of racial terror. Even though fatal police shootings have long been in decline, the press and the elites tell them to fear police officers and not the ordinary criminals who are far more likely to end their lives.
When this sort of deranged narrative is allowed to spread unchecked on Twitter, it’s no surprise that a few unbalanced individuals take it seriously. That’s why on Monday night Congresscreature Rashida Tlaib openly called for the abolition of all police and all incarceration, everywhere:
It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist.
Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder.
No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed.
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 12, 2021
Crazy? Sure. But if police really were as dangerous as Chelsea Handler and so many others believe, then Tlaib’s response would be correct. Twitter blue-checks fan a frenzy of racial terror and hatred. The consequences of such talk could be far worse than one accidental shooting.
