#459. The Loss of the Washington Bullets Nickname

Black people seem to have no problem with gun violence. Inexplicably, gun violence seems to pervade communities as diverse as the cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC.

The common denominator among all of these cities is – besides a populace brimming with disingenuous white liberals – Black people committing high levels of crime through the usage of guns.

Gun violence is no laughing matter, but hate facts support theories that Black people are incapable of staving off this pusillanimous form of faux-machismo and provide the powder that ignites a shocking number of the gun deaths in this nation:

“Too often, African-Americans cover their ears when the talk turns to black homicide rates. Yet the statistics are beyond alarming: Blacks make up nearly half of this country’s murder victims, and nine out of 10 times those deaths are the result of a black hand squeezing the trigger of a gun.

It’s time that we talk about — and better understand — the factors at the core of the black-on-black violence that exists throughout the nation.

Some groups are doing just that. Projects like CeaseFire in Chicago, where community leaders intervene in conflicts and promote alternative solutions to violence. In the Dallas area, Vision Regeneration focuses on violence prevention, gang intervention and youth rehabilitation.”

Yes, it is past time this discussion occurs. Some would argue in favor of imposing massive restrictions on who can garner a firearm, through gun control legislation. Unfortunately, the reality of gun control is once you ban gun ownership by law-abiding citizens, those with criminal-leanings will find ways to maintain their firearm possession (take a look at this harrowing statistics of Washington DC once they implemented a weapons ban).

Or, how about this from Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame?:

The problem here is that crime rates are volatile and it really matters what control group you pick. I would argue that the most sensible control groups are other large, crime-ridden cities like Baltimore or St. Louis. When you use those cities as controls, the gun ban doesn’t seem to work.

What about indirect evidence? In Chicago we have a gun ban and 80 percent of homicides are done with guns. The best I could find about the share of homicides done with guns in D.C. is from a blog post which claims 80 percent in D.C. as well. Nationwide that number is 67.9 percent, according to the F.B.I.

Based on those numbers, it is hard for someone to argue with a straight face that the gun ban is doing its job. (And it is not that D.C. and Chicago have unusually low overall homicide rates either.)

It seems to me that these citywide gun bans are as ineffective as many other gun policies are for reducing gun crime."

Gun bans don't work, nor will they ever. Walter Williams, a Black intellectual, wrote these words in 2007:

"Last year, among the nation's 10 largest cities, Philadelphia had the highest murder rate with 406 victims. This year could easily top last year's with 240 murders so far.

Other cities such as Baltimore, Detroit and Washington, D.C., with large black populations, experience the nation's highest rates of murder and violent crime. This high murder rate is, and has been, predominantly a black problem.

According to Bureau of Justice statistics, between 1976 and 2005, blacks, while 13 percent of the population, committed over 52 percent of the nation's homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer.

Blacks are not only the major victims of homicide; blacks suffer high rates of all categories of serious violent crime, and another black is most often the perpetrator.

Liberals and their political allies say the problem is the easy accessibility of guns and greater gun control is the solution. That has to be nonsense. Guns do not commit crimes; people do.

Up through 1979, the FBI reported homicide arrests sorted by racial breakdowns that included Japanese. Between 1976 and 1978, 21 of 48,695 arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter were Japanese-Americans. That translates to an annual murder rate of 1 per 100,000 of the Japanese-American population. Would anyone advance the argument that the reason why homicide is virtually nonexistent among Japanese-Americans is because they can't find guns?"

An interesting map of the Black crime rate can be found here. But again, we are primarily focusing on Washington DC, a city where even Black officers find it necessary to brandish a weapon at a snowball fight.

Washington DC has long been a city proud of its majority Black population, yet repulsed by its high rate of crime. Of course, pointing out a correlation between the two might result in the wanton usage of hate facts that merely makes any argument unsuitable for polite conservation, thus this relationship is strictly verboten.

In DC, more than 80 percent of young Black people are exposed to gun violence:

Barnes formed his anti-violence group, Reaching Out to Others Together, after the September 2001 slaying of his son, Kenneth Barnes Jr., in a robbery on U Street NW.

The one-page survey was completed by 1,512 students ages 9 to 19 from at least 18 predominantly black middle and high schools in the District, as well as youths at Boys and Girls Clubs and other venues.

According to preliminary results, 80 percent of the respondents were "highly exposed" to gun violence, meaning a loved one had been shot or the sound of gunshots is common in their community, and of that 80 percent, 67 percent reported that they received no form of counseling or therapy. The survey also included Prince George's youths; numbers for them had not been finalized, but Barnes said they were similar to those for D.C. respondents."

Washington DC, a city that is traditionally blessed and enriched with a lively Black population, is in the midst of massive gentrification that threatens to loosen the vice that Black people have on the local government, and worse, lower gun crime to such rates as seen in Whitopia's across the nation.

The city once had a National Basketball Association (NBA) team nicknamed - aptly - the Bullets, but outside pressures threatened that appropriate nickname for Washington DC's team. A high preponderance of crime in the city, conducted with incredible efficiency, brought undue attention to the teams moniker and had to be scrapped:

"The Washington Bullets will change their nickname because of its connotation to street violence and will hold a contest to choose a new name, the club owner, Abe Pollin, said today.

"Unfortunately, far too often these days 'bullets' in the news does not have anything to do with basketball," Pollin said. "I realized we should consider changing our name."

Fans will be able to recommend new nicknames by submitting suggestions at Boston Market restaurants in the Baltimore-Washington area, club officials said. The new name will take effect in time for the 1997-1998 season."

The team is now known as the Washington Wizards. However, as Horace admonished, "you can throw nature out with a pitchfork, yet she will always return," for the Wizards were recently in the news for the Bullets that didn't fly:

"Guess they're still the Bullets at heart.

NBA all-star Gilbert Arenas and his Washing ton Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other in the team's locker room during a Christmas Eve dispute over a gambling debt, The Post has learned.

League sources say the pistol-packing point guards had heaters at the ready inside the Verizon Center, the Washington, DC, home of the Wizards -- whose name was changed from the Bullets over gun- vi olence concerns.

It was the three- time all-star Arenas, 27, who went for his gun first, sources said, draw ing on the 22-year-old Crit tenton, who quickly brandished a firearm as well.

The duel in DC -- unprecedented in sports history -- was sparked when Critten ton became enraged at the vet eran guard for refusing to make good on a gambling debt, a source said.

"I'm not your punk!" Crittenton shouted at Arenas, according to a league source close to the Wizards.

That prompted Arenas to draw on Crittenton, who then also grabbed for a gun, league security sources said."

The NBA is nearly 80 percent Black. Gun violence, like NBA basketball athletes, appears to be primarily an event that only Black people participate in (see here for Jeff Benedict's book, Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence and Crime).

Remember, even DWL's admit where gun violence is coming from:

"Gun violence disproportionally harms people of color and women. More than half of the teens who die as a result of gunshot injuries are African American, the rest are evenly split between Caucasians, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.

On average, we lose about 21 African Americans to gun violence every day, and the leading cause of death for African Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 is homicide, which is committed with guns over 90 percent of the time.

African American women are five times more likely to be murdered by guns than young white women. Moreover, between 1990 and 2005 over two-thirds of the spouse and ex-spouse murders, which feature female victims the majority of the time, were committed with guns."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the loss of the Washington Bullets nickname, for Black people have scandalously few teams that have a nickname which reflects their community. The Bullets' was one of those lost to the boring notion of a Wizard (which looks like Gandalf), which is a white guy:

And even more frustratingly, poor good-intentioned Pollin had stepped from one socially insensitive mire only to land right in another. Local NAACP chapter president Morris Shearin complained that the name "Wizards" carried Ku Klux Klan associations, as the Klan's supreme leader is called the Imperial Wizard, while state leaders are "Grand Dragons." Others observed that the new logo featured a ball-handling, robe-clad wizard wearing a pointy blue brimless hat – just like the KKK! Well, except for the ball-handling part.

It's time to bring back the Bullets nickname. Just ask Mr. Arenas.