By Mansfield Frazier
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently ignited a minor firestorm by stating in an interview: “I mean, we’re all prejudiced in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of. So in my businesses, I try not to be hypocritical. I know that I’m not perfect. I know that I live in a glass house, and it’s not appropriate for me to throw stones.”
Fair enough. Quiet as it’s kept, most liberals — even those who roundly criticized Cuban — would do the exact same thing … I know that I would since self-preservation is the first law of nature.
But what if Cuban (or any of us), perceiving a threat when encountering one of the bogeymen our culture has created, elects to cross the road to get out of harm’s way and runs smack dab into an Elliot Rodger, the middleclass looking white kid who stabbed three people to death in his Isla Vista, CA, apartment and then mowed down three others before taking his own life? Indeed, none of the recent mass killers — at least to my recollection — wore hoodies, were bald-headed, or had tattoos on their faces. In fact, they were all fairly normal looking (and in some cases acting) before going off the deep end.
As a side note, it’s understandably difficult to protect one’s self from a bullet being fired by a madman, but for the life of me I can’t understand how someone can stab three people to death in an apartment … without at least one or two of them fighting back with all their might.
Given the timeline the shootings took place (around 9 pm), it’s safe to say the three people in the apartment were not asleep when the rampage began. Was there screaming? Did someone attempt to flee?
As gruesome as this sounds, killing someone with a knife is not an easy task; it’s not like in the movies. People usually take a number of minutes to bleed to death, even if their throats are slit. So, again, what were the other two people doing while the first one was being attacked? We’ll never know.
But this brings us back to who we should be afraid of, who we should cross the road to get away from. Might I suggest that the monsters we should be avoiding are those gun-toting NRA nuts, those dangerous people who block every attempt to bring sanity to our nation’s gun laws.
I know I’ll catch hell for writing this, but the only way to bring about change in our gun laws (we could start off by requiring that all new guns be equipped with the technology that only allows the owner to fire the weapon) is for the number of mass shootings to increase dramatically. Rather than one or two killings every month or so, there needs to be one or two outbreaks of mass gun violence every day in America … then, and only then, will sane citizens and politicians find the courage to stand up to the gun nuts.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Who Do YOU Fear?”
Dwyer
Mansfield, this column seems to be out of focus. It claims to be about who we should fear and then gives the example of Elliot Rodger and then says fear NRA gun nuts. Elliot Rodger’s problem wasn’t guns it was his mental health, his inner demons. I doubt the strongest guns rights advocate would argue that people as mentally and emotionally damaged as Elliot Roger should own guns. Should not the focus of this piece be placed on mental health, its detection, treatment and funding?
Bill Wiltrack
It sounds great and perhaps, one day Mansfield, that new technology will be in-place.
However, right now there are over 600,000,000 working firearms in this country. Registered & non-registered.
Two guns for every man, woman, and child that takes a breath today in these United States of America.
That’s not an accident.
It’ also not an accident that guns are becoming easier and easier to obtain and use. Regardless of conceal carry restrictions.
And EVERY American that lives in this vast frontier called America is already just a captive.
A war captive that is now being stripped-of any capitalist value that it once possessed.
Yet with all of this available firepower, this once GREAT country has already been taken over by a foreign enemy. It’s name is multinational corporation. And they didn’t have to fire a single shot to win.
We will soon do that for them.
We, as American citizens, we now have the firepower, the freedom, and soon the opportunity to blow each others’ fucking heads off.
Which we will gladly do as soon as the electricity is off for any extended period of over 4 or 5 days.
Or, in the next presidential election the Red team decides the Blue team cheated…or vise versa. Just like is happening today in Thailand. Only our demise will be much more violent & widespread.
The war was certainly televised but we were captive. Neutralized while we merely observed.
TV. Oh you beautiful wasteland.
We gave-up everything for you…just to watch.
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