• People shot to death by U.S. police, by race 2021 | Statista
Black Lives Matters didn't start out as an anti-police group, it started as a group to make people aware of the justice inequality faced by black people. Trayvon Martin was it's poster boy.
But the deaths of black people at the hands of police quickly provided them with an even bigger target---the killing of unarmed people by the police, before they are found guilty of a crime, before they made any attempt to harm anyone; for having a mental health issue, for having a big mouth, for admitting they owned a gun, for being high, for not following directions fast enough. It soon became obvious, due to the increased awareness of the public and the access to video and audio that most of us now have, that the police are not about justice---they are about obedience, getting their respect, and their right to shoot anyone that looks at them cross-eyed.
Our current policing methods are not shared by all other countries.
Countries Where Police Do Not Carry Guns - WorldAtlas
There are 18 countries in the above group. They do not have a higher crime or death by gun rate because of this. It is working for them
Murder Rate By Country - WorldAtlas
Countries with the widest gaps between rich and poor are four times more likely to experience violent crimes than other countries. These inequitable societies are found most often in developing countries, where high poverty lacking infrastructure is commonplace. Poverty and crime go hand in hand; crime drives away businesses and investors, reducing available human capital and creating an insecure environment, which, in turn, leads to more poverty. Organized crime, like gangs and drug trafficking, also contribute to high murder rates.
Gun ownership is not associated with lower crime or better democracies.
Currently, over 175 nations allow their citizens to own firearms, but only three constitutions in the world still include the right to own a gun, and these are the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala. Other than the United States, the other two constitutions have specific restrictive conditions on gun ownership. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-highest-rate-of-gun-ownership.html
Our own country has a murder rate of about 5/100,000. That places us at 89th in the world. I have no idea if being shot by the police is counted in this number. I do know that the countries worse than us are not on most of our bucket list of vacation spots.
The crossover of so many things with poverty is bizarre. We never try to fix poverty. We never try to create better opportunities for everyone starting at birth. Never try to make sure no one makes too little to live on, can't afford a decent place to live, can't get a decent meal, a decent education, or good access to healthcare.
The maps for poverty, republicans, poor education, unemployment, crime, deaths by police, teen pregnancy, untreated mental illness, prison populations and drug addiction are the same maps.
Why can't anyone recognize that the thing that bonds them all, the thing that drives them all is poverty.
And we can do something about poverty.
But first we have to stop acting like being poor is a birth defect.
We have to stop acting like money is a score card.
We have to stop trying to make being poor proof that poor people are genetically inferior and start recognizing that poverty is hard to get out of, hard because when born into it, you will never get the same opportunities that a person that isn't born into it has.
You can't spend the first 5 years of life being hungry, or watched by people that have never seen good parenting---not because they are bad, but because they only learned what they saw. Then go to school in a system made for people that had a very different life experience. Then treated like they are stupid because they don't know milk comes from cows or flowers grow in the woods or, flip side, that cities have subways or airports but no cow and no tractors.
You can't expect children that spent the night listening to dad and mom fight over the last bottle of beer or, worse, cower in the center of the apartment because of the gunfire, then get up and think that the poster contest is exciting.
You can't throw kids out for swearing when everyone they knows uses far worse language, from grandpa to big sister.
You can't judge kids for being sexually active when mom has been supporting them for 14 years as a sex worker.
You can't expect kids to be at school everyday to get a perfect attendance certificate when they have to be working for the neighborhood dealer or the pimp to pay for rent and food or out baling hay or picking strawberries.
Poverty is the enemy.
And our system is currently making it harder and harder to get out of poverty.
The score card shouldn't be dollars but happy, self-actualizing lives.
There should not be one person whose lack of money is preventing them from reaching their dreams. We all have plenty of road blocks without making money a part of the equation.
Our country is no better than the worst conditions we allow to remain in existence.
