Intersection. Race to the Bottom

• Author: Liane Jackson
• Pages: 11-12

INTERSECTION

Race

to the

Bottom

Guns, vigilantism and unequal

‘justice’

BY LIANE JACKSON

Intersection is

a column that

explores issues of

race, gender and law

across America’s

criminal and social

justice landscape.

Years ago as a TV reporter

working with our chief

photographer out in the

eld in Nashville, Tennes-

see, I was surprised to learn he always

carried a gun “just in case,” he told me,

patting his hip.

Certainly, the job of a TV news

reporter often meant heading toward

danger instead of away from it—such

as when covering a hurricane or re;

descending on the scene of a crime or

SWAT standoff; or knocking on doors

in inhospitable situations, desperate

for on-camera interviews. I’ve been

warned threateningly to leave the

premises; while working in Florida,

I’ve had racial epithets hurled at me or

at the Black photographer with me by

men driving by in pickup trucks; with

my cameraman, I’ve walked the streets

of seedy parts of myriad towns at all

hours of my nightside shifts. But in

10 years on the street covering danger

and depravity, I never thought, What I

need is a gun.

Living in this country, I’ve personally

never felt a rearm would make me feel

more secure. But it’s clear there are a

startling number of people who believe

otherwise and are xated on gun

ownership. And the resultant prolifera-

tion of rearms, from hunting ries to

semiautomatic weapons, has earned the

United States the dubious distinction

of being the deadliest country in the

Western world.

Some people say their guns are for

self-defense. Often, guns are carried by

bad actors to perpetrate violence or as

a means of intimidation. Whatever the

motivation, there is an explicit potential

for violence when a rearm is present.

And now, carrying, brandishing or

waving guns around—particularly at

Black Lives Matter protests—has been

endorsed by a segment of the popula-

tion, despite the lawless aggression and

vigilantism it promotes.

Reframing the narrative

It is impossible to close your eyes and

reframe the Kyle Rittenhouse trial

making the defendant a Black man with

three white victims, have an all-white

jury and a white judge and imagine

the same result. The idea that the

jury would still have found justiable

self-defense would require a fantastical

contortion of reality. In Rittenhouse’s

case, it is certainly within the realm of

possibility that the jury would conclude

he was shooting because he felt an

imminent threat. But on the ip side,

the success of our country’s multibil-

lion-dollar prison-industrial complex

FPO

Kyle Rittenhouse, left, in Kenosha, Wis-

consin, on the night he fatally shot two

men. He was acquitted in November.

ABA JOURNAL | FEBRUARY–MARCH 2022

11

Inter Alia | INTERSECTION

Inter Alia edited by

LIANE JACKSON

liane.jackson@americanbar.org

Photo by Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via AP, File