The real threat is entitled white men with guns
SAN DIEGO – Here’s A Christmas Carol I didn’t expect to be writing this holiday season: White men with guns scare the Dickens out of me.
I don’t know why Donald Trump – when he declared his candidacy for president in June of 2015 – zeroed in on Mexicans as “people that have lots of problems” who are “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime” and who are “rapists.”
I don’t understand how President Joe Biden earned the support of working-class white people by authoring the 1994 crime bill and offering himself as a protector of white people who felt threatened by Latinos and African Americans.
Because I’m not afraid of Latinos and African Americans.
I’m afraid of young white men, especially white men with guns. And I’m really terrified of young white men with guns who are emboldened by a sense of entitlement, invincibility and privilege.
Those people take liberties. In fact, they might even take your life, or the life of your child at a high school in Michigan, or a college in Texas, or an elementary school in Connecticut.
We got that message on April 20, 1999. That’s when high school seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris – two white males – shot and killed 12 of their fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. Another 21 people were injured in what was, at the time, the deadliest high school shooting in the United States. Klebold and Harris committed suicide.
Since Columbine, there have been more than 300 deadly school shootings. More than 278,000 students have been impacted by gun violence at school.
That includes students at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, where 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley last month allegedly shot and killed four classmates and injured seven others. Crumbley now faces a 24-count indictment, including four counts of first-degree murder and one count of terrorism causing death.
County Prosecutor Karen Mcdonald has also charged Crumbley’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, with four counts of involuntary manslaughter each.
If James and Jennifer are not the worst parents in the world, I’d hate to see who came in first.
At a news conference last week, Mcdonald said James Crumbley bought a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer pistol at ACME Shooting Goods in Oxford on Nov. 26. Ethan was with James at the time, according to a store employee. Also, social media posts from Jennifer referred to the gun as an early Christmas present for Ethan. And a post from Ethan’s social media included a photo of the weapon with the message, “Just got my new beauty today,” along with multiple heart emoji.
What is a civilized society to do? For one thing, law enforcement should be profiling and keeping tabs on white men who stockpile guns. That’s the most common sketch of mass shooters.
Mass shooters are almost always men. And according to one survey by Statista Research & Analysis, between 1982 and November 2021, out of 125 mass shootings in the United States, 66 – or 53% – were carried out by white shooters.
When there is a mass shooting in America, chances are that the shooter is going to be white.
There is no perfect solution to this problem. But greater surveillance of those who fit the profile of a mass shooter is a step in the right direction.
Law enforcement agencies know all about profiling. Are they not looking at white men who stockpile guns because they’re too busy profiling Black motorists?
Entitled white men with guns scare me because – as a Mexican American, and the son of a retired cop who was raised to respect law and order — there is a lot about this tribe that I don’t understand.
I don’t understand how then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse could be so bold that he shot three people, killing two, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and then just casually went home.
I don’t understand how Travis and Gregory Mcmichael along with William “Roddie” Bryan could be so brazen that they literally hunted a young Black man named Ahmaud Arbery and gunned him down in the street.
And I don’t understand the dangerously dysfunctional Crumbley family, whose hobbies apparently included playing with lethal weapons and who deserve to be locked up for a long, long time. Frankly I’m not sure I want to understand all that. But I understand this much: It’s time that Americans put white entitlement and reckless gunplay on trial.
In fact, look at a calendar. The proceedings are long overdue.
Navarrette’s email is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.