Toy guns are a threat to Black children
24th September 2020 · 0 Comments
We should demand that toy manufacturers stop making and selling toy guns and take guns out of video games because Black children are being killed or put in the school to prison pipeline, as a result of possessing what for white kids are merely toys but in the hands of Black children, DEADLY WEAPONS.
Apparently, Tamir Rice’s death, at the hand of an unstable white cop, who thought his fake pellet gun was real, is the textbook case for why toymakers should stop making fake guns.
The recent case of Isaiah Elliott, 12, proves that Black children who play with fake guns are at risk of being killed by cops and that toy manufacturers should stop making toy guns.
It was the third day of virtual school for 12-year-old Isaiah Elliott, a student at Grand Mountain School in Colorado Springs, when cops were sent to his home, under the auspices of a health and wellness check, because Elliott was reported to be playing with what his art teacher assumed was a fake gun.
Right out the gate, one could justify the visit by saying the teacher couldn’t be sure if the gun was real or not and better safe than sorry.
However, an examination of the details suggests something else was at play. Isaiah’s mother, Dani Elliott, who was at work, got an email from the teacher about the gun and she assured the teacher that it really was a toy gun. The toy was painted Black and green with the words “Zombie Hunter” on the side of it. Nonetheless, the school decided to send the police to the home, anyway.
Remembering Tamir Rice, Dani called Isaiah and told him to lock the doors, stay away from the windows, and go to the basement; then called her husband, Curtis, an Air Force serviceman, who met the police at their home.
It could have been Isaiah’s last day on earth, if his father didn’t step in and handle the cops. To add insult to injury, Isaiah now has a record with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. He also received a five-day suspension from the school and a mark on his school disciplinary paperwork saying he brought a “facsimile of a firearm to school” even though he never left his house. The family took him out of that school.
Elliott believes that if anyone did anything wrong, it was the school. “There were several issues that I felt were very inappropriate and illegal [on its part],” Elliott said in an interview with Yahoo News. “It was just a gross overreach of their authority.”
Which begs the question, who made the decision to send the cops to the home of a 12-year-old who was home alone, especially after the parent assured you the child was playing with a toy. Did you think the parent was lying? Even so, wouldn’t it have been more prudent to ask the parent to go home and advise the child not to play with toy guns during virtual school hours?
This young boy now has a rap sheet and an excuse for someone who fears for their life, when he walks by them years from now, to be justified in killing him.
Tamir Rice is dead for playing with a fake pellet gun. Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy, was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, by Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old white police officer on November 22, 2014. Loehmann shot Rice within seconds of hopping out of the patrol car, which was still rolling. Loehmann claimed later that he thought the gun was real. One year later, an Ohio grand jury refused to indict Loehmann or fellow officer Frank Garmback.
If the currently demanded police reform practice of having a national database of criminal complaints against cops were in place back then, Rice might still be alive. At the time he killed Rice, Loehmann had been fired from his position as a police officer in the Cleveland suburb of Independence, for being an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.
We doubt that toy manufactures will stop making toy guns. But it’s clear that, whether fake or real, a Black person in possession of a gun is in danger of being killed by cops or any random non-Black person. And nine times out of ten, they will not do time for it.
Which begs the question, what happened to our Second Amendment right to bear arms?
If it’s still in the U.S. Constitution and applies to all Americans, why are Black people killed for exercising their constitutional rights?
White people relish and use their Second Amendment rights to the hilt. And when they do exercise that right and people are killed, excuses are made for them and they seldom are brought to justice.
Look at Kyle Rittenhouse marching with his long gun after he killed two peaceful protesters in front of hundreds of people in Kenosha, Wis., who were protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake by white cops. Rittenhouse held his hands in the air to surrender, but the cops drove right by him and allowed this murderer to walk away.
Witness Mark McCloskey, 63, and his 61-year-old wife, Patricia, brandishing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, outside their home in St. Louis, as protesters marched toward the mayor’s home to demand her resignation in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s murder by cops.
Philando Castile, a school cafeteria worker, frequently paid for lunches for students who owed money or could not afford to pay. When his car was stopped because of a busted tail-light on July 6, 2016, Castile made the mistake of informing the officer he had a weapon and a license to carry it. For his honesty and being a Black man licensed to carry, he was shot seven times and lost his life.
Speaking shortly after the shootings of Castile and Alton Sterling, President Barack Obama called on the U.S. to “do better” and said that controversial incidents arising from the police use of force were “not isolated incidents” but rather were “symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”
And therein lay the problem. Systemic racism permeates American society, from the hearts of killer cops, to the Karens and Kyles who take it upon themselves to call the cops on Black people who are just minding their own business.
The Elliott family’s experience is proof positive that Black children can’t just be children, that Black children, men, and women are at-risk for no other reason than exercising their constitutional rights.
Something must be done. The toy manufactures and video game developers can send a strong message that guns are not play toys and promoting gun violence is not okay.
This article originally published in the September 21, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
