#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.

The Ninth Day of Christmas at SBPDL - Errant Snowballs

Washington DC is a town known for safety. However, Black people are already known not to like the snow and have a difficult time discerning the myriad complexities of gun safety.

Now, combine snow with gun safety and put these two combustible Black elements into Washington DC and you have a recipe for an ultimate SBPDL.

Black people have long been incapable of cooperating with the police, and this difficulty is exasperated exponentially when a Black person is the one carrying around the badge. There are many competent Black police officers in the United States (Chief Moose and Carl Winslow come to mind), and yet the power of the law in their hands leads to a crippling arrogance that, when compounded with high levels of snow fall and a massive snow ball fight, spells trouble:

WASHINGTON — Washington's police chief criticized a veteran detective Monday for pulling a gun during a mass snowball fight. Authorities said the officer is on desk duty while the case is under investigation.

Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said she had watched video clips from the weekend confrontation and has no doubt that the off-duty officer pulled his gun after snowballs hit his personal vehicle during Saturday's record snowfall.

Click here for video of the event.

"Let me be very clear in stating that I believe the actions of the officer were totally inappropriate!" Lanier said in a statement. "In no way should he have handled the situation in this manner."

When you click on this story, it takes you to a Fox News link (remember, Black people don't like Fox News, even though the network does little to encourage racism. Here, they picture a white cop with the story who was trying to get the bottom of the event, for a Black detective became irate when he was pelted with numerous snow balls).

A better story can be found here, which delineates the race of the individual who became noticeably offended by the icy projectiles that were flung his way:

"Washington, D.C. police are investigating reports that a detective brandished his gun during a mass snowball fight on a city street after an Internet video surfaced that appears to show the incident.

Police said Monday they were looking into reports that a plainclothes officer pulled a gun after he and his personal car were hit by snowballs. Police say witness accounts and videos from the scene appeared to support the claims.

Hundreds of people were involved in the snowball fight during Saturday's record snowstorm.

Sadly, this Black police who had a difficult time cooperating with snow balls and goofy white liberals (watch the video and tell us these aren't the kind of goofy white people that Stuff White People Like bashes) has been reprimanded:

"A Washington, D.C., police detective has been put on desk duty after pulling out his gun during a snowball fight Saturday.

The off-duty detective, whose name has not been released, was driving past a snowball fight in the city when his Hummer was hit by snowballs. He allegedly stopped the car, got out, and took out his gun. He also pulled out a walkie-talkie and called for backup.

Most of the incident was caught on video and quickly posted to YouTube.

According to an eyewitness, a D.C. Police detective (pictured above with gun) went nuts after kids pelted his Hummer with snowballs at 14th and U Streets NW this afternoon. The veteran detective got out of his car and eventually grabbed for his gun, displaying it to the crowd. He did not immediately identify himself as a police officer. He calmed down once his fellow uniformed cop arrived."

Black people don't like the snow and worse, they find the idea of balls of snow being utilized as weaponry offensive to the rules of civilized war and thus it is incumbent upon them to brandish guns in retaliation for this grievous insolence on the part of goofy white liberals in Washington DC:

A plainclothes police detective allegedly pulled his gun out and waved it at a large group of people in a snowball fight at the corner of 14th and U streets NW Saturday afternoon.

An off-duty member of the Metropolitan Police Dept. was reportedly driving his personal car in the area when the car was suddenly pelted with a barrage of snowballs, according to a statement from the MPD.

The detective stopped his car, got out and approached a crowd of people that might have thrown the snowballs. He then got into a verbal fight with members of the crowd, according to police.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes errant snowballs, for if an officer of the law can be put in an untenable situation where only a gun can even the score, then it is wise to refrain from throwing snowballs at any Black people. Ever.

As the goofy white liberals in the video state, "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight," unless of course, you will be in a snowball fight in a majority Black city. Then, you might need one.

Sadly, a snowball fight in Philadelphia did become lethal over this Christmas season in Philadelphia. RIP Teven Rutledge.

And this wasn't the first time a Black person has found errant snowballs to be worthy of reciprocity in the form of a gun, as Joseph Best of Philadelphia pulled a gun on Ebony Smith in 2003, for - you guessed it - an errant snowball:

A 10-year-old girl is fighting for her life after a man whose daughter was hit with a snowball returned and sprayed bullets into a group of children.

Joseph Best, 32, was arrested in Philadelphia and remanded on charges including attempted murder.

Ebony Smith, who police say was not involved in the snowball fight, is said to be in a critical condition with a head wound.

Best's daughter was hit with a snowball as she and her friends walked past a group of girls having a "friendly snowball fight", said Captain Charles Bloom of Philadelphia police.

A scuffle then broke out among the dozen or so girls, aged from 10 to 15. The groups soon parted ways, but Best returned with an older daughter and another brawl erupted, this time between adult relatives of both groups.

Police broke up that fight, but said Best came back again hours later, leaned out the passenger side of a moving car and fired at least five shots into the group of children still playing on the street. Authorities are trying to determine who was driving.

Police said the girl who was shot had been inside a house during the scuffles.

"This little girl had nothing to do with anything. She wasn't involved in the fight," Capt Bloom said. "He just seemed to be randomly shooting into the crowd."

It's just never a good idea to throw a snowball in the direction of Black people, regardless of what race you might belong too.

Raymond Martinez - the Ultimate SBPDL

For nearly six months we at SBPDL have been chronicling Stuff Black People Don't Like, and in the process left some people incapable of discerning what the true endgame of the site is and more importantly, why have embarked and such a seemingly Quixotic quest.

One of those reasons is simple: We have been searching for the ultimate manifestation of SBPDL and we have finally found an individual who encompasses the characteristics required for inclusion in the SBPDL Hall of Fame.

His name? Raymond Martinez:

"Guns, drugs, prostitutes and an endless stream of expletives filled the rap lyrics — and the life — of Raymond Martinez, the Times Square gunman who shot off two rounds from his MAC 10 before an NYPD officer took him down late Thursday morning.

When he wasn’t running CD scams on tourists in Times Square, the 25-year-old Bronx native — rap name “Ready” — was likely hanging with his buddies, drinking, smoking pot and laying down tracks, according to his friends.

“I’ll break your legs, have your brains looking like eggs,” Martinez raps in one song."

“Square Free” has a MySpace page with several images of their front man, Martinez. In a chilling harbinger of things to come, one image was digitally altered to make it look like Martinez was standing in the blood-spattered entryway of his apartment building with a machine gun lying at his feet.

Another picture shows him smoking what appears to be marijuana and a third is a cartoonish depiction of a man carrying a huge gun with a caption reading “THEM SUCKERS AINT TAKIN ME NO WHERE…”

It will be a difficult feat to duplicate the stupendous success that this Black gentlemen managed in his short-life, for he is one of the finest representations of SBPDL to ever grace the United States, as his esteemed presence is testament to the importance of this website.

How about some more background on this strange story out of New York City:

"Raymond Martinez was running a common scam on the throngs of holiday tourists in Times Square, pushing shoppers to buy his CDs, police said. But Martinez was no ordinary peddler, they said: He was carrying a loaded pistol and had a handful of business cards from gun dealers in his pockets.

The 25-year-old was shot to death by a plainclothes police sergeant Thursday after trading gunfire in the taxi area of the landmark Marriott Marquis hotel.

Sgt. Christopher Newsom operates a task force that monitors aggressive panhandling and was patrolling with an anti-crime unit when he recognized Martinez and his brother from past run-ins. He asked the two for their tax stamps, which allow peddlers to sell on the streets. But Martinez took off running, through to the hotel's passenger drop-off area.

Newsom pursued, and Martinez turned and fired with a machine pistol that held 30 rounds, getting off two shots before it jammed, police said. The officer fired four times, striking Martinez in the chest and arms and killing him, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

"We're lucky the weapon jammed," Kelly said."

Lucky his weapon jammed? Don't these people know that SBPDL includes gun safety! And worse, this whole incident could have been avoided had Mr. Martinez just cooperated with the police!

Apparently, Mr. Martinez didn't find the rap song "F*** tha Police" a merely fictitious diddy, for he prepared to engage the police in a scene worthy of the OK Corral:

"NYPD Sergeant Christopher Newsom, a 17-year veteran of the force, shot and killed Martinez in front of the Marriot Marquis after the street vendor ran from him and fired two rounds before his gun jammed, the New York Times reported.

Martinez, who rapped under the alias "Ready," held the gun sideways and parallel to the ground, a style popular in rap videos, and that caused it to "stovepipe," or jam, according to the New York Post.

There were 27 rounds left in the gun."

Interestingly, Mr. Martinez was a devout fan of Myspace (page here), and found Facebook less desirable.

Better than that though, is Mr. Martinez disgust at rap music going soft, for he was an aspiring spinner of words into rhythmically enhanced verbiage:

"An up-and-coming rapper by the name of Ready had a brush with fame before his life was taken last Thursday in NYC's Times Square. In 2008, Ready (born Raymond Martinez) squared off with Grammy Award-winning rapper/producer Kanye West during an episode of MTV’s “Hood Fab.”

Ready pulled out a last-minute victory during his “Hood Fab” challenge with Ye and received a package of tube socks and a Footlocker gift certificate."

Mr. Martinez (or Mr. Ready) found the wonderfully gifted Kanye West, to be a chump in the annals of real-life gangsta rap star, for he lived a full life and died a true to his roots (a video of Kanye and Mr. Ready can be found here).

Will this incident become yet another Sean Bell ordeal? Or will the melancholy ending of Mr. Ready's life become yet another wasted soul in the endless parade of Stuff Black People Don't Like?

Only time will tell... and only SBPDL will report.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Ready. You lived a life true to SBPDL principles and for that, you will never be forgotten.

#198. Gun Safety

Black people are not fans of gun safety, as the high rate of shooting deaths in their community will a test. Black youth routinely accidentally misfire their weapons, discharging them in the direction of people and sometimes themselves.


The need for tighter gun control is routinely discussed in conjunction with the high fatality rate among Black people with weapons, who seem incapable of using them for defense, but primarily offensive means.

Gun safety starts at home and should start in the schools, but as one former DEA agent can relate, it doesn't always work out that way.

Lee Paige was giving a lesson on gun safety to Florida students, all Black people, and decided to allow students a glimpse of Stuff Black People Don't Like: Gun Safety.

In the video, listen for Lee to tell the audience, while waving a gun:

"I'm the only one professional enough to handle this gun."

After which, he promptly places it back in its holster and shoots himself in the foot.