Word: naacp
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Proceedings recently began in a suit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against 85 gun makers and distributors. At first glance, this would seem to be a commendable action: guns currently pose a serious threat to the safety of Americans that is impossible to ignore, and their production and sale must be extensively restricted...
...while the measures the NAACP suit aims to bring about—tighter regulations on the sale and distribution of guns—are admirable, the organization’s rationale for this suit is badly misguided...
...NAACP presents gun violence as a racial issue, adducing the statistic that African-American teenagers were 16 times more likely than white teens to die from guns between 1990 and 1998. But gun violence is an issue that affects all communities, and it is a major mistake to define it to terms of black and white. Guns can kill and be wielded by anyone, and they need to be more strictly regulated to protect everyone, not any specific minority. Gun advocates comparing the suit’s tactics to those of the Ku Klux Klan are clearly off base...
...just gun control that the suit has muddled and obscured; the NAACP’s suit has also, paradoxically, distracted from the very real issue of violence in minority communities. Many of the problems cited by the NAACP relate to the shamefully slow ambulance and police response times in low-income, minority communities; the statistics to which they point should be a spur for increased government funding to these communities, so that these problems can be effectively addressed...
...Organized by the Win Without War coalition, an umbrella group whose members include big names such as the NAACP, the Sierra Club, NOW, Oxfam America and the Rainbow/Push coalition, the "march" took the form of a barrage of faxes and phone calls directed at the phone lines of the White House and selected members of congress. And, perhaps mindful that most callers wouldn't get as far as a "your call is important to us" message, a primary goal was to drown out the drumbeat of war with a busy signal...