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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




I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?

It's almost impossible not to have a problem with drugs in a world in which the government is spending over $50 billion a year to render drug use problematic.

Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.

Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.

This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs."

Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx

71% of the depressed have relapses after getting off their meds. Doctors blame this on depression, but increasing evidence suggests that these people are having withdrawal problems.

Imagine a world in which we were told about both the potential benefits AND the potential harms of drugs like cocaine and opium.

Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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