3 charged in shooting of 4-year-old girl

[branford]

33. Bubba???

Although I'm just a white, liberal, yankee lawyer in NYC, who does not own a gun nor has any desire to do so, I know of few cultural similarities between our urban minority youth and southern rural whites. Accordingly, if you believe (as do I) that "thugrap" is a major contributor to the problem of intra-racial handgun violence among young, black, inner city males, none of whom could ever legally own a gun, I cannot honestly comprehend how you believe that a "Bubba," a poorly educated, middle-aged, southern while male, who uses various rifles that are virtually never used in crime, is representative of the problem you cite. The "Bubba" association with the horrible crime referenced in the OP could be uncharitably viewed as bigoted.

If a poster presented a picture of any number of various minority rappers as representative of gun crime, I'm confident that numerous DU members would howl in protest at both the express and implied racism. I would certainly agree with many these posters. Crime, gun crime in particular, has many causes and symptoms that vary among the different and diverse communities in our country. Broad solutions have been historically elusive, even while acknowledging that gun crime has been steadily decreasing in recent decades while the amount of guns in the country has significantly increased.

If you want to properly protest those who support gun rights, I respectfully suggest it would be far more appropriate to include portraits of James Madison, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father who fervently supported the inclusion of the Second Amendment in our Constitution, and the "gun culture" that inevitably followed. I, for one, would be honored to be associated with leaders of such wisdom and renown.

Simply, racial and geographic stereotyping and demagoguery is neither representative of the problem of gun crime, nor particularly useful in the search for solutions.