Mark Steyn, author and substitute host of the Rush Limbaugh Show, suggested the media would cover Chicago gun deaths if black lives really mattered to them.
As it stands, he noteed that Chicago is a killing field for black men, but the establishment media is too busy maintaining their template to spend time reporting on the ongoing carnage.
During the June 9, 2020, airing of Limbaugh’s show, Steyn focused on a block in Chicago where 18-year-old August Gills was shot over the weekend and killed. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Gills and a woman “were in the 800 Block of East 98th Place” when a Dodge Charger pulled up and the occupants opened fire. Gills was shot in the head and shoulder and died a few hours later.
The story was covered by some local outlets, while the establishment media kept up its rabid focus on defunding police.
Steyn talked of how actual police reforms that could be helpful are simply being ignored, as the media reports on leftist ideas. He observed that the result has been to inflame riotous behavior that has “[reduced] the downtowns of many other American cities to the state of that block in Chicago, where 18-year-old August Gills got shot, simply because a couple of guys pulled up in a car and they’re looking for people to shoot.”
He added:
This goes on and black lives don’t matter because nobody cares about it. I look at all these dishonest things showing the rate of incarceration among the black population versus the rate of incarceration among the whole population. The relevant statistics are that blacks commit more crime, and partly because of that, you have the complimentary statistic that blacks are overwhelmingly the biggest victims of crime. Which is why all the polls, all the surveys that have ever been taken, show that blacks want more policing.
It’s cute if you’re an ANTIFA, if you’re some little white, trust-fundy, liberal progressive who’s had such a charmed childhood that you’re bored by it and you want to tear the whole of society down. And this last ten days offers a perfect opportunity for that. It’s cool for you. It’s groovy for you. That a little trusty-fundy white, liberal, girly can go out rampaging through the town and demand the complete abolition of police. Then you can go back to mommy and daddy for the summer and live in the gated community.
But the first victims of reducing policing are always the black neighborhoods. Because the police retreat…to the quiet wealthy, neighborhoods, and every block in Democrat cities will wind up looking like the block on which August Gills was shot.
Steyn stressed that we live in “a media age” where the deaths in Democrat cities are just more statistics.
He noted that 18 people were fatally shot in Chicago on May 31, 2020, and they are simply “weekend statistics.”
Steyn observed that the gun deaths in Chicago are unreported because “they don’t fit the narrative.”
He said everything would be different “if black lives matter was a sincere slogan, but it’s not.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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