PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Baltimore Mayor Jack Young sounded a curious plea this past Wednesday: “We cannot clog our hospitals and their beds with people that are being shot senselessly because we’re going to need those beds for people infected with the coronavirus.”
Yet it seemed commendable nearly a month earlier when the House of Representatives passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act which, true to its name, would make lynching a federal hate crime.
It occurred to me that perhaps a century from now the House will vote to make gun violence a federal hate crime – thousands of bullet-ridden bodies later.
The mayor might have been a tad clumsy in voicing his concern, but he is right. We are entering an era when hospital facilities could be crushed with demands for medical attention because of the coronavirus crisis.
The perpetuation of gun violence is horrid enough, but soon gunshot victims could be competing with coronavirus patients for medical care. Not to mention patients for all other health woes served by hospitals.
Who could have predicted that gun control could not be more crucial? Of course, Republicans will likely deny that the coronavirus spread makes gun control compulsory, but it sure does. Scientists and responsible politicians – as opposed to President Trump and his helpers – are warning us that our hospitals may soon be overwhelmed if we cannot control this virus.
When the massacre occurred at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh 17 months ago, what if the wounded were turned away from hospitals because there were no beds? The medical facilities were too consumed with treating coronavirus patients.
Baltimore’s Mayor Young could only help by warning of future health facility conditions compounded by the combination of gun violence and coronavirus cases.
The night before, seven people were seriously injured in a shooting west of midtown Baltimore as police continued the hunt for the gunman who committed the crime, according to The New York Daily News.
“I want to reiterate how completely unacceptable the level of violence is that we have seen recently,” the mayor said. “We will not stand for mass shootings and increasing crime. We will not stand for this level of violence.
“I’ve instructed (Police) Commissioner (Michael) Harrison to do everything in his power to combat this crime,” he continued. “We’re dealing with the COVID virus, and those of you who want to continue to shoot and kill people in this city, we’re going to come after you and we are going to get you.”
One can wonder what Young is trying to accomplish with these semantics. I wish he had emphasized national gun control legislation, the only means to prevent smuggling guns across state lines. Though gun control is not a panacea, it would cut off the supply of weapons.
The Republican response to gun control of prayers for the victims, which amounts to an empty gesture. compares to the anti-lynching bill’s impact. As lynchings of mainly black males swept the nation after the Civil War, Rep. George Henry White, the only black member of the House in 1900, proposed a bill to prosecute lynchings at the federal level at a time when such a law probably would have done some good.
Maybe the very existence of the law would have convinced Emmitt Till’s killers to leave him alone. At 14, Till was beaten and lynched in a small Mississippi town in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman at a grocery store, according to The Washington Post.
When the bill was passed on Feb. 26 – not Feb. 26, 1990, but Feb. 26, 2020 – Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois said during the House floor debate that the bill would “send a strong message that violence, and race-based violence in particular, has no place in American society.”
It is always helpful to “send a strong message” against violence, but must it be limited to lynchings? Lynchings have for decades been nearly unheard of.
However, lynchings are personal for me, too. Leo Frank, at 31, was lynched on Aug. 17, 1915, after his false conviction of murdering a 13-year-old girl at the pencil factory he managed in Atlanta. Anti-Semitism and his northern background were thought to influence attitudes against him.
Lynchings could still happen today to blacks, Jews and anyone else, but gun violence is now the reality – whether it victimizes Jews at a Jersey City kosher grocery store and synagogues in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Poway, California, or African-Americans in the inner-city. Or anywhere else.
Ask the seven victims of Wednesday’s shooting rampage in Baltimore.
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Bruce S. Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He may be contacted via bruce.ticker@sdjewishworld.com
So we don’t have capacity for shooting victims, but I’m certain that beating & stabbing victims. You seem to have this silly idea that if there wasn’t any gun violence that there wouldn’t be any violence. I’m betting the violence gets worse.
Just another hit piece to promote a failed anti-freedom agenda to control the sheeple by demonizing certain inanimate objects.
Don’t worry. Bars and liquor stores are closed. The reduction in drunk driving accidents will more than compensate for any perceived glut of gunshot victims.
“Never Again! …but only the police and military should have guns.”
I simply cannot understand the willful insanity of such a position.
It is truly mind-boggling, isn’t it, that a person of Jewish persuasion could be so blind to what can happen to an unarmed people.
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