How Sharpton and the NYPD Can Help Us All With Gun Violence

Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama, Race and Civil Rights

The Rev. Al Sharpton works with the NYPD as much as he critiques them. While he has challenged the police and their tactics when dealing with citizens, he also partners with them on important issues, such as controlling gun violence and community policing.

This week, Sharpton held a joint press conference with the NYPD to announce that they are offering incentives to get guns off the streets. Anyone turning in a gun can do so with no questions asked and get a reward for their efforts. The program has proven itself to be effective in the past, and the offer is likely going to have quite a few takers.

Part of the reason that it's so important to get guns off the street is because gun violence has had a tremendous impact on African Americans. According to the FBI, guns are used in 63 percent of all robberies and 64 percent of all assaults. The leading cause of death for African-American males is homicide, and the majority of these murders are committed with guns. We didn't put the guns in our community, but we've got to do all we can to get them out.

While I love the idea of offering rewards to get guns off the streets, I wonder deep down why such an act is even necessary: I wonder why our nation leaves the door open for gun manufacturers to profit off the death and destruction of the black community in the same way that weapons traders get rich off of war in Third World countries.

In some ways, we must ask in a vocal way whether there is a corporate incentive for African-American genocide, which is built on the fact that making and selling guns provides a huge financial windfall for companies unethical enough to create these weapons.

Gun makers must be confronted by all of us. Those who sell these products must be forced to pay when their guns end up in places where they should not. We should treat them the same way we treated tobacco companies who've killed millions with their toxic products. Something has got to change at the highest levels for any of this to work, and it must preclude us from having to give them a reward for doing the right thing.


Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

 

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