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The Invisible Mass Shootings

open letter to Criminologist James Alan Fox

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 6, 2022



James Alan Fox is a professor at Northwestern University who has been tracking mass shooting deaths in America since 2006. The following comment is in response to gun violence 1 in America: A long list of forgotten victims" published July 6, 2022 on WTOP.com.

Hi, Professor Fox.

I find the Gannett Corporation's coverage of inner-city shootings to be very un-enlightening, since they report on deaths without ever mentioning the Drug War. For as Ann Heather Thompson wrote in the Atlantic in 2014, "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 2 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."

Mayors around the country profess bafflement at the increase in such violence, and yet they ignore the obvious cause: the fact that inner cities are armed to the teeth thanks to the way that drug prohibition has incentivized drug dealing in poor and poorly educated communities.

Lisa Ling even produced a whole documentary about Chicago violence (over 800 killed in 2021) and did not even MENTION the Drug War.

This is why the Drug War survives to this day, because no one holds it to account for the evil that it's facilitating.

I hope you will do your part to get USA Today (and the other media outlets that you advise) to acknowledge this connection and to stop pretending that the yearly rise in inner-city gun deaths is some kind of inexplicable fluke.

As to mass shootings, I'm not sure they are as rare as you suggest, at least in inner cities. I think the reality is that the press does not characterize multi-victim shooting incidents as "mass shootings" if they occur in inner cities that are rife with daily gunfire. On July fourth, at least 5 people were shot outside a Richmond hot spot but I didn't see that story running nationwide, or even on news station WTOP.com, for that matter, located in Washington D.C., just 150 miles north of Richmond.












Notes for essay entitled The Invisible Mass Shootings: open letter to Criminologist James Alan Fox:

1: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
2: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.

No drug causes addiction after one use. From this fact alone, it follows that even drugs like meth and crack and Fentanyl can be used wisely -- on an intermittent basis.

The so-called "herbs" that witches used were drugs, in the same way that "meds" are drugs. If academics made that connection, the study of witchcraft would shed a lot of light on the fearmongering of modern prohibitionists.

Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.

Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.

In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."

Smart people in America are like Don Quixote. They are sane on every subject on earth, but mention the subject of "drugs," and they start talking politically correct blather.

"The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds." -- Arthur Crowley after using cocaine

The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."

My cousin says we should punish drug dealers. I say we should punish those politicians who created those drug dealers out of whole cloth by passing unprecedented laws against the use of Mother Nature's bounty.


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