John Oliver stands his ground against racist, needless stand your ground laws
Aux Features John Oliver
With its twice-impeached figurehead currently scribbling nonsensically treasonous press releases during his time as a golf club greeter in Florida, John Oliver has had time of late to tackle white supremacy’s trickle-down effects all over the nation. Sunday’s Last Week Tonight main story examined the so-called “stand your ground” gun laws that have taken hold in some 30 states across the country, and made his all-too-predictable airtight case that good old American racism is really what’s at the root of these literal “get out of jail free” cards—for certain people.
And that “literal” isn’t just whistling “Dixie,” as Oliver held up one of this week’s examples of representative villainy (where a complex issue is exemplified by one egregiously illustrative person or organization) by spotlighting one legal aid ambulance-chaser group, the USCCA. Standing for the United States Concealed Carry Association, the group’s spokesperson is seen touting the handy wallet card containing a script for you to read to the police verbatim should you, say, shoot someone who’s playing their music too loud, or who dared argue with you over how much dogs can weigh. Those are just two examples of cases where minor incidents led to one guy being dead and the other effortfully reading out just what to say in order to claim immunity from prosecution under various states’ so-called “stand your ground” gun laws.
Now, Oliver could hammer away at certain individuals who are hog-wild about this, again literal, license to kill, and he, yeah, he does do that. Like the folksy-seeming grandma with the harrowing story of facing down a carful of bad guys with a gun, only to be told by the police that, if she’d shot anyone, she’d have been the one to get arrested. That that lady turned out to be one Marion Hammer, first female president of the NRA, who also memorable lobbied hard against Florida schoolchildren’s attempt to name the scrub jay as the state bird because it’s friendly habit of eating out of your hand indicates the bird’s (deep, cleansing breath) “welfare mentality” is merely a coincidence, surely. Or the TV interviewee gushing over the prospect of Georgia’s since-passed stand your ground law who’s happily wearing a Confederate flag hat with a picture of Robert E. Lee and the slogan, “Pride Of The South.” (Oliver shows a Black man interviewed in the same Georgia parking lot who brings up the pesky fact that, should he have been afraid that a person was approaching him with a full camera crew, he could have just shot the interviewer under said law.)
Of course, as Oliver notes, that’s a great point, undermined completely by the fact that “stand your ground” cases are judged overwhelmingly differently depending on the skin tones of the people involved. That’s because, as Oliver explains, the whole premise of these laws is one of “perceived fear,” and that—for some inexplicable reason—white people’s fear is its own “get out of jail free” card. “They can exult a white person’s fear over a Black person’s life,” explained Oliver after playing a clip of Ohio lawmaker Stephanie Howse, a Black woman, pleading with her white colleague not to pass such a law in their state since, as she asked, “What do you do in places and spaces when your presence, literally your face—your face—causes someone to be fearful of you?” (Her colleagues went ahead and passed a stand your ground law anyway, presumably because that Black lady scared them.)
But back to the USCCA, whose script Oliver shows a white shooter (Nick Julian IV) actually reading off of their card on the phone with police after he’d just shot a man named Carlos Garcia. (Garcia was the man shot to death for allegedly playing his music too loud, as mentioned earlier.) Then there’s Texas’ Joe Horn, who’s heard getting righteously pissed at the 911 operator for telling him not to take the law into his hands (and defiantly citing Texas’ own just-passed stand your ground law while he does so) before getting his shotgun and killing tow people breaking into his neighbor’s house. Hill (who Oliver notes looks like “Bobby Hill grew up and sucked”) is shown on Fox News being applauded by a (white) Texas crowd for his extrajudicial, un-prosecuted double killing.
As Oliver notes, urging people to call their reps to repeal these “free-for-all to shoot someone who scares you” laws, one peek at the statistics shows that these “redundant solutions to a made-up problem” are patently and transparently biased toward those scared, scared white people. Just ask pregnant Michigan woman Siwatu-Salama Ra, who waved a (licensed, unloaded) gun at a woman she thought was threatening her and her other child. Her own “stand your ground” defense was thrown out, she was sentenced to two years in jail, and wound up giving birth in shackles. Oh, Ra is Black.
53 Comments
Oddly, I was thinking of the “he’s coming right for us” defense from one of South Park’s first episodes.Nice to see it now applies to hunting humans.
Yeah, but this episode was specifically about ‘Stand Your Ground’ (which they somehow connected to ‘World War Z’ for some random reason)
Why would a self-defense law be racist unless the crime rate…
Guns are for paranoid pathetic scared idiots. It’s their insecurities worn on their hip for all to see. Having grown up in the woods and now the city not once have I ever thought a gun would help me out. Those morons make this country more unsafe.
I’ve lived smack in the middle of New York City for 31 years, and have never, ever thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, I really need a gun right now!” But I grew up in a town of 6,500 people in north Alabama where 70% of the population has an arsenal under their bed or on the wall in their living room or in the back window of their fucking pickup truck. That, and the fact that what they’re really “protecting” themselves against is the imagined threat of all Black people is why I left. And I’m not going back. They sure like to stick their chests and bellies out down there, but they’re actually a bunch of terrified little pussies. I’m a committed agnostic, but I often hope the afterlife unfolds the way these idiots believe it will, because I’ll be waving to them while they trundle off to an eternal damnation where the Crimson Tide repeatedly fumbles the ball on the one yard line with no time left on the clock. And a Black guy is on the couch, making out with their daughter.
In the late 90’s early 00’s I lived in a terrible neighborhood in Brooklyn, even then never thought a gun would help. I don’t fucking get it. I don’t know maybe if bears regularly try to break in? Although you could probably just use the spray in a safe way.
I’ve lived smack in the middle of New York City for 31 years, and have never, ever thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, I really need a gun right now!” But I grew up in a town of 6,500 people in north Alabama where 70% of the population has an arsenal under their bed or on the wall in their living room or in the back window of their fucking pickup truck.Which one has the higher crime rate?
eternal damnation where the Crimson Tide repeatedly fumbles the ball on the one yard line with no time left on the clock.*Satan furiously scribbles notes*
Better: the black guy is making out with their son!
According to Lindsey Graham, “I own an AR-15. If there’s a natural disaster in South Carolina where the cops can’t protect my neighborhood, my house will be the last one that the gang will come to because I can defend myself.”However thanks to the gun laws that Graham defends, that entire gang will also be packing assault rifles so I’m really not clear what he’s trying to achieve. Other than perhaps to get his less well-armed neighbours killed.
I feel like a majority of this country could take out an armed Lindsay Graham barehanded.
Really? What if he’s naked and covered in crisco? Asking for a friend.** Comment submitted by Lindsay Graham.
well he did serve in the military and I believe he’s now in the National Guard…I’m just kidding, he’s absolutely one of those Rambo cosplayers every gun-packing conservative sees when he looks in a mirror, in reality if the military showed up he’d drop his guns, spread his cheeks and hand them the Crisco, just like all the “I love the military but I’ll take em out if I have to” idiots out there.
It remains amazing that Lindsey thinks anyone needs even a single thing from him.
I guess the only way we’re getting those dusty 50-year-old MRE’s and his ham radio set out of his basement is over his dead body.
This makes sense. Alabama has been a natural disaster for well over a hundred years now.
Funny, because that gun just increased his risk of dying by gun violence 5 times more thank his unarmed neighbors. And he’s more than 10 times more likely to be shot by his own gun than to defend his home from gangs.
I believe that even US police officers die more often from a shot from their own weapon than another (if you include suicides).
Everytime I read that chickenshit statement, it think. “Great, now everyone knows where to go to steal an AR-15.”
It doesn’t even offer protection beyond maybe deterrent. If somebody shoots at you, having a gun on your person will not protect you from incoming bullets. If you are carrying concealed, you don’t even get deterrence till after you draw it and by then things have already escalated to a life threatening level.If you really want protection, wear a bullet proof vest and carry an inch thick polycarbonate shield.
Everyone sees themselves as a quick draw master when they’d be shot down running to get the gun in the first place if anyone was really coming after them…that is, if they don’t freeze in terror. Beyond that, how often do you read a news story where someone successfully protects their family with a gun?? Maybe one for every 150 where a guy accidentally shoots himself or so someone else? Or a kid finds it and shoots his sister? But we’re valiantly protecting our families with them. The whole thing is fucking delusional, but it might as well say that on our flag at this point.
Every so often someone who’s been in a firefight explains that when you’re in a firefight, you have almost no idea what’s going on, who’s shooting at whom, or where anyone is. Yet people assume that real firefights are like in the movies, where it’s obvious where the bad guys are because the camera takes a moment to zoom in on them every so often.
I’ve seen cops who have been on the force for years say their minds went blank the first time they finally had to draw their gun with the intent to use it.
Less than 5% of gun deaths are due to self-defense, most are homicides, suicides and accidents.
Yep. Pretty simple. If I’m in a situation in which a gun is my surest way out, I already done fucked up somewhere along the line.
Aside from hunting, etc., it’s mostly one part irrational fear and one part power fantasy. It’s not even particularly practical in an urban environment in >99% of situations that aren’t action movies.For example: I live in an apartment right now. If you come through the door with a gun drawn, it doesn’t matter if I have one. And if you come through the door without your gun drawn, it doesn’t really matter that *you* have one.I’ve lived in small towns and in big cities like Chicago — worked downtown & lived in Rogers Park. I’m big on situational awareness, but I never once wished I was armed.I live in Texas now. Same deal.
The two reasonable-seeming use cases for guns are:I live in a rural area, and there are bears/mountain lions/other large predators who might actually harm a human (or livestock)I live very far from the nearest police presence, to the point where in the admittedly very unlikely scenario that I need to exercise deadly force, I can do soBut in either case, a single non-repeating rifle is more than sufficient. Handguns and automatic weapons are unnecessary for private ownership.
Kansas City saw an absurd number of homicides last year, and I remember reading in the paper that the most common root cause was arguments. Like it wasn’t gang violence or drugs, it was two people fighting in a parking lot, one or both of them has a gun, now it’s a murder. It’s some wild west shit.
If the only had even more guns then they’d be even safer! Like Trinity in The Matrix level amounts of guns strapped all over themselves.
Truly we will not be safe until the average American is 95% guns by weight.
Mindless fear and paranoia is what divides us further, which is up the alley of any type of government.
“Guns are for paranoid pathetic scared idiots”. You know that there are people in society that might actually need one? I’m sure as hell not going to call someone who’s LGBTQ or a racial/ethnic minority a “paranoid pathetic scared idiot” when they get a gun to ensure their own safety.Also gun control legislation is fundamentally racist in a racist society- there’s a reason the Mulford act was passed in California, and that was because the Black Panthers practiced the open carry of long guns for self-defense and as a tool of political empowerment.
Go fuck yourself you pathetic paranoid scared idiot.Sincerely,A gay dude.
Lol being gay doesn’t automatically make your opinion authoritative or even good. Asian people are facing increased attacks due to increasing Sinophobia and trans people risk getting attacked every day, so should they just go ahead and get beaten/killed because you don’t like guns?
holy SHIT I had no idea the KKK and NRA were both founded in the same year. A TON of stuff just suddenly made sense.
LOL maybe we should just abandon Critical Race Theory since it seems to freak out so many touchy racists and instead just show the kids this; I guarantee it would get the message across that America is at its core a bunch of ultraviolent cavemen bullies.
Teacher’s use to show this in class back in the day, not sure anymore.
Do you have a right to self defense?That is literally the only question at issue here. If not, then you have no right to be alive. If yes, then how you defend your life is of no concern to anyone else.
“Law and order every time, that’s us”
So…she don’t want no Scrub Jays? A scrub jay is a bird that don’t get no love from Marion Hammer?
Eating from people’s palm, from dusk till dawn: welfare mentality!
Tow Peoples’ Lives Matter!
seriously John Oliver should just change the name of his show to “America is full of easily startled cavemen who allow themselves to be manipulated by Fox News and the NRA to think they’re morally superior to everyone else but still justified in arbitrarily killing anyone they don’t feel comfortable around”.
Anyone accidentally set off a string of firecrakers at a gun show? What happened?
I often thought that open carry and stand your ground laws contradicted themselves. Can you shoot people who are open carrying because they make you fear for your safety?
Actually, stand your ground is sufficient by itself.I’d rather shoot the other guy before he threateningly feels threatened by me and shoots me.
As John Oliver noted: only if you’re white and the other person is black. if it’s the other way around, no fucking way.
The open carry seems crazy. 1. Tells people who to shoot first. 2. it takes only a second for the “good guy with a gun” to become the “crazy shooter”.
It’s weird to think that it’s 2021 and there are a significant number of Americans who take…joy is really the only word for it…in the thought of being judge, jury, and executioner. Funny all the 2nd Amendment nuts think they need guns to fight the tyrannical government, but all they are really doing is finding excuses to hunt fellow Americans.