If we can’t get rid of the guns, we have to get rid of the prejudice

Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Twenty-eight-year-old Atatiana Jefferson was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew in her home in Texas when she heard a strange noise outside her bedroom window. She grabbed the gun she kept in her home legally for self-defense and approached the window. A Fort Worth police officer outside the window shouted for Jefferson to put her hands up and then immediately fired through the bedroom window.

Jefferson’s nephew watched his aunt bleed to death wondering if the entire incident was a dream. It wasn’t.

Jefferson was Black. The officer who killed her, Aaron Dean, is white.

Dean was subsequently charged with manslaughter and at his trial he claimed he saw the gun in Jefferson’s hands and fired in self-defense. He admitted that his response “could’ve been better” when a concerned neighbor asked for a welfare check after seeing Jefferson’s front door open. He then quickly returned to his self-defense claim, arguing he was trained to “stop the threat.”

Dean was convicted of manslaughter earlier this week, but his claims of acting in self-defense against a Black woman in her own home resurrected questions about the confluence of race, gun culture and policing in the United States; what constitutes a credible “threat” to officers and when lethal force is appropriate.

Gun culture tells Americans of all races that they have a right to own and use a gun to defend their home and family. But policing culture and deeply rooted societal norms teach police officers that Black and brown people with guns are threats even if the gun is legal and they are in their own homes.

It’s a legal and cultural stalemate that all too often results in bullet-ridden bodies of Black and brown Americans who did nothing more than exercise what the National Rifle Association describes as the “God-given right to self-defense.”

Jefferson died for defending her home while Black. Breonna Taylor died because her boyfriend defended her home while Black.

Twenty-three-year-old Casey Goodson wasn’t even trying to use his gun when police shot him in 2020. He didn’t even know police were looking at him. Rather, a sheriff’s deputy saw a Black man with a concealed weapon and shot and killed him as he put his keys into the door while entering his own home in Columbus, Ohio. Goodson’s gun was licensed and registered, and he had a conceal-carry permit. Unfortunately, permits and licenses couldn’t save him or his 5-year-old brother from watching his big brother collapse onto the floor of the family kitchen as he entered the home with a bullet in his back.

Nor could it save Philando Castile or save the 4-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, who watched from the back seat as Castile took five bullets from a St. Anthony, Minn., police officer at close range during a traffic stop. Just seconds before being shot, Castile had disclosed to the officer that he had a conceal-carry permit and that there was a legally licensed and registered firearm in his glove box.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice didn’t even have a real gun when he was shot and killed by police. An airsoft replica and a two-second delay in the preteen’s compliance was all it took to end his life. The same was true for John Crawford III, a 22-year-old Black man who was shot by police in a Walmart for carrying a BB-gun he was intending to purchase from the store.

Take note, for the sake of this editorial, we’re giving police the benefit of the most generous interpretation of their actions. We’re setting aside our doubts and, at least for the sake of this particular discussion, giving credence to the officers’ claims of feeling threatened. The issue is the “why” behind their fears.

Even if we accept the bizarre proposition that the Second Amendment provides an essentially unlimited right for private citizens to possess firearms (which we do not) and accept that “feeling” threatened gives police the right to use lethal force (which we do not), the reality is that these rights cannot coexist if all Black and brown people with firearms are immediately considered threatening. Something’s got to give.

Vigilantes at the Bundy ranch got to walk away without injury after pointing long guns at law enforcement and vowing to kill law enforcement officers for doing their job. That was an actual threat, perceptions not necessary. After Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed a person on the streets of Kenosha, Wis., police didn’t even stop to question him, let alone disarm him. And Mark and Patricia McCloskey brandished an assault rifle and a pistol at participants in a St. Louis march in 2020, but they didn’t even lose their law licenses, let alone their lives. In all three cases, the people with guns were white.

More than a dozen studies conducted over the past two decades show that the perception that Black people are more dangerous than their white counterparts is troublingly persistent.

One study found that white Americans judged Black men to be larger, stronger, more muscular and more capable of causing harm than white men with nearly identical builds. Participants concluded that “police would be more justified in using force to subdue them, even if the men were unarmed.”

And data collected by The Washington Post showed that people with guns are more likely to be shot by police than those without guns — and Black Americans with guns are twice as likely to be shot by police as their white counterparts.

The Constitution requires the government to treat all Americans equally under the law. If we’re not going to rein in the prevalence of guns, then we must expect more from law enforcement and from society. Black people shouldn’t be expected to shoulder this burden or to sacrifice their rights because of law enforcement’s — or society’s — insecurity, fear or intolerance.

Law enforcement must receive more and better training. And officers who are unwilling to engage in good faith learning should not be allowed a role in “protecting” our community any more than vigilante white-supremacist groups should be. Too many lives are on the line.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated that Philando Castile's daughter was in the car when he was shot. Castile had no children, but his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter did witness his killing. | (December 19, 2022)