I have this nagging feeling that a great injustice is unfolding, right before our eyes–and those who should be protesting it are turning a blind eye.

We have all heard the recent story of the young cop who shot a black motorist after a routine traffic stop in Cincinnati. There’s been a lot of justifiable outrage about these cop-on-black violence stories lately. Law enforcement has been called on the carpet for many uncalled-for shootings of blacks, and especially the way the police seem to close ranks about officers accused of these crimes and cover for them. At the same time, no one can dispute that crime is rampant in the black community, and cops have some reason to be trigger happy. They are on the front lines, and there have been cop executions, genuine crime, and a growing feeling that violence and rebellion against an occupying army of police is becoming part of a rite of passage among ghetto youth.

Both sides have some justification, and a lot to answer for. But I’m not interested in pointing fingers here; victims of retaliatory violence are rarely the guilty. The abused, black and white, cop and citizen, are often good people caught in a spiral of hate and violence that feeds on itself. The guilty, on both sides, usually get away with their crimes.

The Cincinnati shooting illustrates another ugly consequence of this mutual self-fulfilling prophecy. The cop was wearing a TV camera that recorded the entire encounter between him and the deceased. It is pretty clear to me, and I am confident any dispassionate observer of the video will concur, that the officer was acting professionally and properly, but panicked when confronted by a sudden movement and misunderstanding on the part of the young man he was questioning. He fired his weapon and killed him instantly. In my opinion, this was manslaughter, perhaps even negligent manslaughter, due primarily to a breakdown in training, and a long history of hostility and fear between the Law and the young black men. But it was not cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The cop was caught lying on his incident report due to the incontrovertible evidence of the video, and in my opinion, this was a worse crime than the shooting. The latter was an unfortunate accident. The former was premeditated.

But this is not what the officer is being accused of. He is being accused of murder, and what’s worse, he was accused before news cameras by the public prosecutor using extraordinary charges and insults, an unprecedented spectacle that trampled on every defendant’s right to a fair trial and an unbiased investigation. But I believe there is an uglier motive for this move. This young cop is guilty, of manslaughter, in my opinion, of lying on a police report and falsifying evidence. He deserves to go to prison. But I think he is being set up by the authorities as a sop to the black community, to avoid the bad publicity and the potential civil unrest that may result if he gets off scot-free. He is being sacrificed for reasons that have nothing to do with his crime. In other words, to use the current colorful phrase, he’s being thrown under the bus.

It can even be considered the black motorist was a victim of gun violence caused by our nation’s lack of gun control. Not because he was shot by a gun, but because he was shot by an officer who was terrified he was very likely to have one.
This is why I do not get a firearms concealed carry permit, even though I am in favor of gun ownership for sport or self defense. I am perfectly ready to use my weapons to defend myself against an intruder in my home. In fact, I feel it is my human right to own firearms so that I may be able to do just that. But I simply do not have the confidence that I will be able to react properly under extreme pressure in a public, panic situation. I’m afraid I will either shoot when I don’t need to, or freeze and fail to shoot when I need to. If a trained officer can screw up like this, I have no reason to believe I (a naturally non-violent person who has never prepared himself for this kind of action) will be able to react any better. And I don’t think most other people can either. We all have a right to defend our homes. We do not have a right to carry weapons in public, or to own exotic, military-type weaponry. or munitions designed to defeat police armor and the surgeon’s skill. And the insistence of a tiny segment of the population to do so has led to a situation that threatens to make this nation uninhabitable due to a tsunami of easily available and unregulated firearms and the inevitable resulting gun violence. It should be a felony to have a firearm outside one’s home(or designated sport shooting area or event), unless it is being transported to and from one unloaded and dismantled. All firearms should be registered and the owners responsible for them–even if they are stolen or lost. Licencing and background checks should be standardized nationwide and strictly enforced with severe penalties. This will not eliminate gun violence and crime, nothing can do that, but it will reduce it substantially. No law can stop crime, the whole point of law is to make crime easier to avoid and harder to get away with.

If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Yeah, that’s the whole point. People will think twice about packing heat when they know its a ticket straight to the slammer.

As for that young cop, he will either spend the rest of his life in prison because he made an honest mistake in a moment of panic (and then tried to cover it up), or he will be set free by a jury who will rightly refuse to condemn him for the wrong crime. Either alternative is unacceptable.