There’s a great deal of irony in a group best known for songs like “Fight the Power” teaming up with one of the most powerful billionaires in the country to push gun control, not to mention a gun control group welcoming the help of a guy who’s been convicted of assault and attempted murder. But politics makes for strange bedfellows, and that most definitely describes the new partnership between Public Enemy and Everytown, which is benefitting from the group’s new single “March Madness”.
In an op-ed at Newsweek, Mr. Flav claims that “we are caught in an epidemic of gun violence with no sign we can stop or change course.” The truth of the matter is that homicides and violent crimes are plummeting across the country, and we’re on pace to have the lowest violent crime rate in almost 60 years. The number of mass shootings is falling as well, with criminologist James Alan Fox reporting no public mass shootings at all so far this year.
This decline is happening even though 29 states have adopted Constitutional Carry and the Supreme Court has thrown out “may issue” carry laws that made it virtually impossible to legally carry a gun in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and Baltimore, Maryland. Rather than recognize reality, though, the rapper has bought into the lies from the gun control crowd as well as heaping helping of false history.
I fear for my kids when I drop them off at school. Our schools aren’t safe and our kids aren’t safe. This is because gun protection laws are weak. Guns are falling into the hands of the wrong people. I would know. I went to jail because of guns. I ended up on Rikers Island. So I am speaking from first-hand experience.
Back in the day, guns and drugs were brought into Black communities. It was a time when we were taught that guns and drugs equaled power. We all had guns. There was peer pressure; a gun felt like a necessity to protect yourself from gang wars. This helped create a system of criminals who were forced into legalized slavery.
If one part of society has guns, then more people feel the need for guns to protect themselves. And then more people. But no civilian needs to possess semi-automatic weapons.
Yeah, he went to jail after he was charged with the attempted murder of his neighbor (he was convicted of the lesser charge of fourth-degree weapon possession). Oddly, though, he left out his guilty plea to attempted battery and battery constituting domestic violence after he pulled a knife on the teenage son of his then-girlfriend. In that case he was originally charged with felony assault and child endangerment, but managed to avoid a felony thanks to the deal with Clark County prosecutors.
Guns and drugs weren’t “brought into Black communities back in the day” either. As Nicholas Johnson has documented in his must-read book Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms, Black Americans have a long history of exercising their Second Amendment rights in both individual and community defense. It wasn’t until the late 1960s when Black attitudes towards gun control started changing, with both the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the staggering rise in violent crime driving support for restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
Leaving history aside, what exactly does Flav think will happen if, as he wants, “all guns were banned”? Who exactly would enforce that prohibition? Whether he realizes it or not, it would be the same Power that Public Enemy told its audience to fight back in 1989. And how would it be enforced? Well, just look at what’s been used before. As former New York mayor and Everytown founder Michael Bloomberg advocated a few years ago:
“Ninety-five percent of your murders… fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city,” Bloomberg told the [Aspen] Institute crowd.
He also said in the speech that to “get the guns out of the kids’ hands,” police must “throw ‘em against the wall and frisk ’em.”
Maybe “Up Against the Wall and Frisk ‘Em” will be the name of Public Enemy’s next single in support of Everytown.
Flavor Flav writes in his op-ed that, thanks to his sobriety he can now “see the world with more clarity.” I sincerely congratulate him on being sober, but he’s not seeing things too clearly when it comes to guns and gun control. There are somewhere around 400 million firearms in the United States, and somewhere between 80 and 100 million lawful gun owners. There’s also the Second Amendment that protects the right to keep and bear arms. Like it or not, guns aren’t going anywhere. Ban them, and that just means more people being sent to Rikers Island for possessing one. Gun control laws have to be enforced, and the more gun control laws on the books the more opportunities there are to put people in prison for non-violent possessory offenses.
In 1989, when “Fight the Power” was released, the national homicide rate was 8.7 per 100,000. In 2023, which is the latest year for which data is available, the national homicide rate was 5.7% per 100,000. Last year’s numbers will be even lower, and we’re on track for another double-digit reduction in homicides this year as well.
I’m all on board with reducing violent crime and making our communities safer for our kids and grandkids. But banning guns isn’t the way to do it. As I wrote about earlier today, we can dramatically improve the safety of our communities without making guns taboo or criminalizing the exercise of a constitutional right.
If Flavor Flav wants a safer society, that’s what he should be pushing for. But if he truly believes all guns should be banned, even if that means being cool with putting people in prison for keeping and bearing arms, then he’ll fit right in with his new friends at Everytown.
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