Donald Trump Unknowingly Revealed the Racism in the Gun Control Debate
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Republican nominee Donald Trump told "Fox and Friends" that his crime plan focuses on a national stop-and-frisk policy, and it would aim to take guns away from people in the street. However, his explanation exposes a racial bias in a different but related policy area: gun control.
Trump explained his "stop-and-frisk" policy as a "proactive" approach. He said that if police officers think someone has a gun they will "take the gun away."
"If they see a person possibly with a gun or they think they may have a gun, they will see the person and they will look and they will take the gun away. They will stop, they will frisk, and they will take the gun away and they won't have anything to shoot with."
Trump goes on to say that the local police will determine "who has a gun and who shouldn't have a gun."
"I mean how it's not being used in Chicago is, to be honest with you, it's quite unbelievable, and you know the police, the local police, they know who has a gun who shouldn't have a gun. They understand that."
Scott Davidson/Wikimedia - wikimedia.org
Beyond seeing someone holding a gun, Trump does not say how police would first determine who has a gun, and then how they would determine who shouldn't have it.
However, based on statistics about stop-and frisk, police would probably attempt to determine who has a gun based on appearance, including race.
Wikimedia Commons/Elvert Barnes - wikimedia.org
In New York City, where Trump said he drew his inspiration for his crime plan, a judge in Manhattan Federal Court said in 2013 that stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional because of racial profiling, according to the New York Daily News.
An analysis of NYPD reports by the New York Civil Liberties Union found that in the year preceding that decision, 87 percent of the people stopped and frisked were black or Latino. Also 89 percent of all the people stopped and frisked that year did not have illegal materials on them.
Basically, if Trump's plan went into effect it has the potential to disproportionately violate the constitutional rights of minorities even if they legally carry a gun.
Protecting the constitutional rights of gun owners is a focus of the National Rifle Association, who raised concerns about proposed "No Fly No Buy" gun control measures earlier this year. The proposed gun control reform would stop people who are banned from flying because they're on a federal watch list from buying a gun. The NRA has argued that "No Fly No Buy" lists violate gun owner rights because the lists are based on suspicion and lack due process.
The NRA and its supporters are open to delaying the sale of a gun, however, in order to protect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, they want to force authorities to get a court decision to block a sale.
However, in the case of the the NRA's endorsed candidate's national stop-and frisk-plan that could disproportionately affect the constitutional rights of black and Latino Americans, the group has yet to complain. (ATTN: reached out to the NRA and will update as necessary.)
Trump and the NRA, have routinely accused Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of wanting to "take your guns away."
President Barack Obama addressed this notion in a PBS townhall meeting in June.
"First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true." said Obama. "And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it."
