so just to immediately step in… we have a better source for this than Instagram, and i’d prefer if the OP link were changed to this one. this story is a few months old, and was picked up by Capital B.
BRAXTON, Miss. — A 32-year-old Black man came close to death last month when he was shot in the mouth while handcuffed during a drug raid in this small, predominately white village, according to an attorney for his family. Six white sheriff’s deputies falsely accused him and a friend of selling drugs and “dating white women,” according to Malik Shabazz, who is representing the family of Michael Corey Jenkins.
Jenkins was inside the home of Eddie T. Parker in Braxton, Mississippi, the evening of Jan. 24 when the deputies burst through the front door and handcuffed the men while searching Parker’s residence. When the officers didn’t find anything, they used “excessive interrogation methods to coerce a confession,” Shabazz said in an interview with Capital B.
For nearly two hours, the men were held by officers with the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, and repeatedly punched, kicked, slapped, and shocked with stun guns, Shabazz said. In a press release, the attorney called it a “free-for-all intimidation and torture session” that included death threats by the deputies. They also poured liquids from Parker’s refrigerator — beer, milk, water — over their faces, Shabazz said.
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Holy fuck this is disgusting and just the other day someone was trying to tell me that people don’t need to be armed because of the color of their skin, gender, or sexuality.
in fairness, i am kind of skeptical that being armed will really help you against the literal, actual cops, particularly if you’re a minority in this kind of situation. maybe it’d act as a preemptive deterrent—but if it doesn’t they’d then have pretext to murder you, and they’d probably get away with it.
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Either of these men being armed would have resulted in both of their deaths, without doubt.
Suggesting that more firearms could have prevented or solved anything here is ludicrous.
Suggesting that vulnerable people avoid guns or disarm in the face of rising fascism targeting them is ludicrous. That’s not to say every situation would improve, or that this situation would’ve been different.
Edit: Also, lets be clear, the police don’t need the excuse of you having a weapon to shoot you, they’ve demonstrated repeatedly they will come up with an excuse and likely get away with it.
As the kind of person who is targeted by rising fascism, I would prefer you did not speak for us. I am firmly against gun ownership. The statistics show that having a gun on you makes you less safe, not more.
As the kind of person who is targeted by rising fascism, I would prefer you did not speak for us.
As someone who knows that you have no idea what “kind of person” @kool_newt@beehaw.org is… I would suggest you don’t act like you can take away someones voice on behalf of “your” category of people.
Nobody can speak for a whole race, color, creed, type, or any other aggregate of people that includes the “whole” of people. They very well could be “vulnerable” themselves and you’ve just dismissed their statement in the affirmative against your stance.
And to preempt it. You also don’t know who/what I am. So don’t bother with your crappy logic on me either.
I didn’t say they weren’t a vulnerable person, merely that even if they were they did not speak for us.
I would prefer you did not speak for us.
If they cannot represent the entire class of people… Then you can’t either.
Next time just say “Don’t speak for me”.
Who said I was speaking for “us”? And what makes you think I’m not in that group?
You are statistically much more likely to–accidentally or intentionally–kill yourself with a gun than successfully defend yourself against an attacker. Arming minorities will just result in more dead minorities.
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People are numbers. Thinking you will be the exception to statistical realities is a fool’s errand. And it would be all well and good if the only people who suffered from the myriad gun deaths in this country were the people who bought the guns, but that’s not the case. They are also endangering their families and neighbors. It is just objectively true that you and the people around you become less safe, not more, the moment you buy a gun.
As someone who nearly killed myself with a gun and was only stopped because I was too depressed to fill out the paperwork to buy one, my life was directly saved by gun control. If I had lived in a state where buying a gun was easier, I would be dead. If I had still been living with my dad who owns guns, I would be dead. And I am part of a hated minority, just like the people you seek to protect. The statisical reality is that people like me are still more likely to kill ourselves with guns than to be killed by bigots, and moreover, that having a gun on you does not protect you from bigots. It only gives them something to take from you and use against you. Adding a gun to a situation only ever benefits the most violent and unhinged person in that situation.
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This is not about terminal illnesses. I too support euthanasia. This is about mental illness. The fact is that if more guns are purchased, more mentally ill people will die.
As someone who has attempted suicide many times, I have no idea what you’re talking about. The fact is that if you want to end your life reliably and quickly, guns are your best bet by far. As part of being suicidal, I did intensive research into what the best way to kill myself was. The universal conclusion was guns. My other attempts did not work, obviously, and not for lack of trying. It is much, much harder to kill yourself than most people realize. Besides, statistics show that having a gun in the home significantly increases the likelihood of suicide.
Gas stoves used to be a popular method of suicide. Do you know what happened when they stopped being made? Suicides went down. So yes, the method of suicide IS responsible for suicides. It’s not true that people will just find another method of killing themselves. Suicide is often undertaken on a whim and people who survive attempts often never wind up killing themselves.
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