CARTOON: ‘Red Blood/Blue Blood’

From cartoonist Clay Jones about ‘Red Blood/Blue Blood’

I drew this early Tuesday morning before the latest shooting of police in Illinois.

A policeman was shot in Houston, reportedly 15 times, over the weekend. The first response from the police was to blame the Black Lives Matter movement. I haven’t heard anything about an actual motive or how the suspect got the gun. There are new reports the shooter is mentally ill.

Black Lives Matter is not to blame for a crazed individual shooting policemen. No one from the movement has said anything about shooting police. A movement trying to prevent police brutality is not complicit when a cop dies. It’s a fact there is too much police brutality toward the black community in this country. It’s a fact.

Police say they’re a target just for wearing a uniform. Nothing justifies senseless killings. Hearing the police say they’re targets sounds like another group who believe they’re targeted just for the color of their skin. One thing just about everyone can agree on is that there is heavy mistrust between police and African Americans. How did this happen? This has been cultivated by police and authority for decades. Police say “Police Lives Matter.” Of course they do. But here’s the thing: Police lives have always mattered. This whole Black Lives Matter thing, it’s kinda new. When you say “all lives matter” you’re saying let’s forget the black part and go back to the way it was…you know, when black lives didn’t really matter.

Speaking of shootings let’s get a few other things clear that’s been brought up recently by the Dumb-Dumb Lives Matter movement:

You can’t compare the shootings of blacks by police to black on black crime. Why not? Because it’s a false equivalence. If a black man kills another black man and is caught he’s going to jail. The black suspect is not authority. Courts don’t let him walk because he’s black. If a cop shoots a black man he might be suspended with pay. Too often there’s not even an investigation unless there’s a riot and national outrage. We’ve even seen situations, like in Ferguson, where the grand jury is a joke and the prosecutor doesn’t even want to go through the motions. It’s always a shock when a policeman is fired and charged for shooting an unarmed person. Can you understand why this upsets people?

And while I’m at it I will set the record straight on this: Dylann Roof committed a hate crime. Vester Flanagan/Bryce Williams did not. Roof shot nine people he had never met. He even went to a city he didn’t live in to shoot up one of the nation’s most historic black churches. Flanagan had a grudge against a former employer and shot people he knew and who represented the former employer who fired him and who Flanagan later sued for discrimination (and his suit was thrown out). Roof was motivated by hate groups. Flanagan said he wanted to start a race war and wanted to respond to Roof shooting African Americans. Flanagan also ranted about other issues and his suicide letter was 23 pages long. Again, he shot people he knew. Race didn’t really have anything to do with it.

Other people who can’t understand how comparisons work have said the gay pride flag should be banned since Flanagan was gay. Of course these people are upset for the national scorn the Confederate flag has received. Except the Confederate flag is representative of racism. It stands for white supremacy and was waved by a secession movement trying to preserve slaving an entire race. The gay pride flag represents equality for homosexuals. It is not a hate symbol, and the gay movement isn’t out there yelling to enslave or kill straight people or encourage violence of any sort. A straight person isn’t in danger of a gay person killing them as much as he’s in danger of a gay person telling him he’s fashionably uncoordinated.

There’s too much senseless violence in this country. Some people want us to stop talking about it. They believe talking about it and bringing it to light is more dangerous than the actual violence. If you get upset when a cop is shot, good. If you’re silent when a cop shoots an unarmed black person then you’re a troll. You apparently have ulterior motives and I can guess what they are. It’s not pretty.

We need to respect police. And police need to earn our respect. Discrimination needs to stop. We need to stop leading the world in prison population. We need to stop shooting children for playing with a toy gun. We need to stop throwing black women in jail for a busted tail light. We need to stop killing black men for selling loose cigarettes. Cops need to stop sitting on top of black teenage girls while planting a knee to the back of her neck for going to a pool party.

We need background checks for guns. We need additional laws and we need to enforce them. We need laws that limit how much ammunition a gun can hold. We need to end online sales for guns. We need to end gun shows. We need to stop leading the industrial world in gun deaths. We need to abandon the idiotic, stupid and ridiculous argument that more guns mean fewer shootings. While no one is coming to take your guns, we need fewer guns in this country.

Maybe if we work toward those goals cops won’t be shot by crazy people while just sitting in their squad car or refilling their gas tank.

Guns are a bigger problem in this nation than immigrants crossing our border. Candidates need to talk about this more. You need to talk about this more.

http://claytoonz.com/2015/09/01/red-bloodblue-blood/