Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police.
(Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the police" or "defund the police", because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals)
> “Young teens or pre-teens of color were handcuffed, arrested, or held at gunpoint while participating in age-appropriate activities such as running, playing with friends, high-fiving, sitting on a stoop, or carrying a backpack.”
This is child abuse.
They are both worried about criminals. The fact that some criminals have badges and guns and a conspiracy of accomplices in positions of power shielding them from accountability for their crimes doesn't make them any less criminals.
> Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the police" or "defund the police", because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals
That's starting in the general direction of the truth, but not correct. It's not so much that Black community members (much less BLM activists, who are more likely to have detailed statistics at hand) think police are the most likely threat, but that police as currently constituted are a threat that Black communities both pay for and get poor returns from, both because of actual abuse by police and because their actual law enforcement needs (and other needs which society has shoveled into the police portfolio) are simultaneously underserved (and not just when it comes to crimes by cops; BLM, after all, didn't start in response to police violence.)
For comparison in Italy in 2019 there have been 3 people killed by the police, and people have - rightfully IMO - complained every single time.
In US more than 1k (1040 to be precise) died shot by cops
If we compare the population, there should have been at least 180 victims of police gunning in Italy
That's clearly unacceptable.
Or, from another angle, it means that criminality in US is so much worse than the average EU country that it's ok to kill so many people in the name of safety.
Number of homicides in the USA in 2017: 19,510
Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.0
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
Number of homicides in Italy in 2017: 357
Deaths per 100,000 population: 0.6
The increase in crime in the 60s and 70s didn't correlate with more guns, the decrease in crime in the late 90's didn't correlate with fewer guns.
There is clearly something going on in the US that drives crime that is not guns. Culture, welfare state, war on drugs, inequality, segregation, failure of the family. Better cases to be made on any of those things than guns.
I didn't say they don't affect crime, but if crime spikes, then drops then spikes, while gun ownership remains steady, then it is a piece of evidence that crime is largely driven by something other than the quantity of guns.