Americans killed by lightning vs. unarmed blacks killed by police. Which is greater?

    Awhile ago, I heard a shocking statistic, pun intended. As you can tell from this blog post's title, it was how many Americans are killed by lightning on average each year compared to how many unarmed black people are killed by police each year. The importance of this comparison is obvious because when anybody wants to drill home how exceedingly rare something is, comparing to being killed by lightning is usually the analogy given, right? Sometimes "being *struck* by lightning" is the key metric but 90% of people struck by lightning actually survive, making those who are killed a much, much smaller figure. Therefore, if specifying killed vs. struck in any comparison, the intention must be to highlight some kind of extreme rarity to make a solid point in comparative data such as this. Using the killed vs. struck metric in this post is required since the shooting deaths of unarmed black people by police is what is most often the loudest complaint by BLM and its supporters. As you will see in a video below, I am doubtful any BLM supporters believe there are at least several dozens, if not hundreds, even thousands of unarmed blacks killed by police each year. That is the reason for this post ultimately: to show how wildly incorrect that belief truly is and why the BLM movement is fundamentally, if not fatally, flawed.

    I will first show the data found on the National Weather Service site listing lightning fatalities between 2006 and 2020. My source for unarmed blacks killed by police only covers 2015-2020 and comes from the oft-referenced Washington Post Police Shootings Database. That database allows searching for specific criteria such as state, gender, race, age, mental illness, weapon possessed (if any), body camera, fleeing the seen and/or year. I figured it is far easier, and fully acceptable, to only filter on race (black) and weapon possessed (unarmed) to get the data needed as those are the only factors necessary in this comparison. That data is displayed below as a screenshot showing the results of the filter. I wanted to include the extra decade of lightning deaths simply because the data is available. These numbers are being compiled on this page on 10/13/21, by the way.

    Lightning deaths (15 year total = 432) (15 year average = 28.8) (2015-2020 average = 23.7)

            2006 - 48
            2007 - 45
            2008 - 29
            2009 - 35
            2010 - 29
            2011 - 26
            2012 - 29
            2013 - 23
            2014 - 26
            2015 - 28
            2016 - 40
            2017 - 16
            2018 - 21
            2019 - 20
            2020 - 17

    The screenshot below is the result of filtering specifically for unarmed blacks between the first year available to the same year of available lightning strike data. The six year total is 133 with an average of 22.1 from 2015-2020. The "137 people shot..." reference below includes 2021 data, which is not part of this comparison yet.

    As you can see, there actually ARE fewer unarmed blacks killed by police on average during the timeframe given. A key factor not seen here is despite the person being killed by police was determined to be unarmed, being ***dangerous*** to police, or bystanders, in other ways was almost certainly a factor.

 

    A prime example is the shooting of an unarmed Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO on 8/9/14. Brown had just robbed a local business of goods when Wilson approached Brown and his friend walking in the middle of the street in his police vehicle. Soon, Brown reached into the vehicle and wrestled for Wilson's handgun, firing at least one round in the scuffle. Once Wilson was outside his vehicle, Brown charged Wilson, posing a deadly threat again considering how brazen Brown was seconds before. Wilson fired several shots at Brown as he charged, killing him before he reached Wilson.

    Initially, word spread Brown was in the act of surrendering to Wilson, saying the now-famous "Hands up! Don't shoot!" statement but still being killed by Wilson, essentially in cold blood. An investigation, with eyewitness testimony, determined Brown was not surrendering and never did say "Hands up! Don't shoot!" but rather was intent on attacking Wilson, perhaps killing him.

   

    This false event is what BLM used to flourish into the movement it has become, with George Floyd's 2020 death being the most recent event of note.

    Here is a great video about BLM being a major problem for the black community followed by another containing a woman who believed the number of unarmed blacks being killed by police was into the thousands each year.

    

Funny Boston accent story

      I spent three years in the early 90s in the US Army, with my Basic Training in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. People from all over the country converged on the post, bringing their accents with them, of course.

     Being raised in the heart of the Midwest and only traveling occasionally to Chicago for family purposes, my exposure to accents and dialects was rather limited, as you might imagine. Watching movies and TV was really my only experience with the diversity of American English language outside my 500 mile corridor I occasionally traveled as a child.

     One of the very first things any new soldier did was learn where everybody else came from. Since nearly everybody was fresh out of high school, we also discussed class sizes to see who came from the smallest or the largest. I was certainly on the smaller end of the scale, BTW. Oddly, being from the Midwest, some people thought it funny to ask if I drove a combine to school.

     Anyway, one of the soldiers near me was from the Boston area and had the accent to prove it. We all got a kick of how he spoke and he seemed to take it in stride, I guess. One day, he and others were talking about something during our downtime but I was not paying attention. By then, we all knew where we everybody was from and apparently the discussion was about horses, at least briefly. The Boston soldier called out to me and asked, me being from a Midwest state, if we had any "hosses" there. 

     Like I said, I was not paying attention to the conversion among the handful of soldiers in the room so I thought for a few seconds and replied with: Yeah, we have hosses, but I only know of one but his real name is ____ ____" (name omitted since not important). Keep in mind it was the Boston guy who asked me this and I did not know the context of the question. In my small town, there was one guy known to others as "Hoss". I don't know if I learned his real name until several years into my childhood, even though he lived about six houses from me but everybody just called him "Hoss". 

     Everybody in the group looked at me with a confused stare until one other person said (in a decidedly non-Boston accent) "Uh... I think he meant "horses". 

Funny NIN story

     As you know, I am a big fan of Nine Inch Nails and have been since 1990 when I first heard Head Like a Hole on the radio. When I left the Army in 1993, I lived for a year or so in my hometown with my parents and started working at my current employer just after New Years, 1994. I spent a couple years in one position then got accepted to another position in another building nearby. 

     While living at home, I would go to the nearby city for whatever reasons and while walking in the primary mall one day, I saw a man about 50 yards ahead of me with a black leather jacket adorned with a large, white NIN logo on the lower half of the jacket's back. He was obviously at least as big a fan, probably more so since I was not one to wear any NIN gear at the time. I thought it was cool but did not think much of it at the time. A few weeks later, maybe months, I apparently saw him again but at a Blockbuster Video. Again, I said nothing.

     When I started my first day at my new position, I was wearing a NIN t-shirt from the Self Destruct Tour in 1995. I think it looked like this. During one of the breaks, a guy came up to me and asked if I was a NIN fan. I said yes, of course, and he said he was, as well. I think we chatted very briefly then parted ways since he worked in a different part of the building than me at the time.

     When the shift ended at midnight, he called me over to his car and I recognized the woman in the passenger seat was a woman I saw working there that night but had no idea they were together. We talked more NIN stuff and I told him of seeing a person in town twice who had a black leather jacket with a large NIN logo on the back and thought it was very cool to see such a fan. His reply was, as he reached to pick something up from his back seat.... "You mean THIS jacket?"

     I WAS FLOORED!!! He was the guy wearing the jacket! We became friends, of course, but we lost track of each other when I moved away for a couple of years in 1999. No need to elaborate beyond that but how fun was that story, huh?

Huh? WHICH party is racist?

    The two major American political parties - Democratic and Republican - are two of the three oldest continuously operating political parties in the world today. Britain's Conservative Party (aka: the Tories), rounds out the top three. 

    The Democratic Party has its roots in the late 1820s and its first elected Democratic president was Andrew Jackson, in 1828, followed by his re-election in 1832. Over the following decades, the party tolerated, then supported before eventually championing slavery as more states and territories were added to the country until the practice ended with the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865. 

    Eleven years prior to the end of the Civil War (1854), the Republican Party was created from the remnants of the former Whig Party specifically to prevent the expansion, and continuing use, of slavery championed by the Democratic Party. The party's first presidential nominee was John C. Fremont, who lost to Democrat James Buchanan in 1856. The first successful Republican presidential nominee was Illinois' Abraham Lincoln in 1860, although he did not win based on obtaining a majority of electoral votes, but that is not something I need to expand on in this post.

    The two dominant parties at the time continue to be the two dominant parties today. One party championed the abhorrent, yet historically common, act of slavery. The other was created specifically to end the act of slavery and the supporters of both parties fought a nearly country-ending civil war over slavery, with the Republican cause eventually proving successful in 1865.

    Considering the decades-long support for slavery and their willingness to end the United States as the world knew it, it is understandable Democrats would still harbor racist views and a desire to control newly emancipated blacks just short of physical shackles or threats of a whipping, or worse, for many years after the war. These feelings manifested in opposition to Reconstruction and especially to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments but also into the Jim Crow and KKK era and finally into opposition to the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 60s.

    When I say "finally" above, you would think it was after alllllll those many, many decades of solidly Democrat-championed anti-black policies and actions, they would have suddenly, practically overnight, become enlightened to the errors of their ways and ended virtually all vestiges of racism towards black Americans, correct? If I did not know better, I certainly would have inferred such a thing, yet, as I will demonstrate below, racism against black Americans is still very much alive within the Democratic Party today, despite their insistence it is Republicans who are the true racists today. After all, Democrats like to claim there was a "big switch" during the height of the civil rights era where all the racist Southern Democrats suddenly switched allegiances to the GOP, effectively shedding racism from the Democratic Party onto the GOP ever since. Uh.... riiiiiiiight.

THE LIST

    I mentioned in my most recent post how the most popular term Democrats use to denigrate non-conforming black Americans today is "Uncle Tom". I clearly demonstrated Uncle Tom is used in exactly the same way the N-word was used for decades to express disgust with ANY black person who does not say/think/write/believe as they are expected to exclusively by Democrats. This fact alone is the clearest possible example why racism is still solidly ingrained within the Democratic party, but there are plenty of other examples, as listed below.

1. A 2016 Gallup poll asked respondents how they felt about the requirement of photo ID to vote. Seventy-seven percent of non-whites favored photo ID requirements and 63% of Democrats overall favored the obviously sensible ballot-protection act of presenting a govt-issued photo ID. For some reason, Democrats consistently claim black voters are uniquely incapable of obtaining ID due to not being able to afford it, not knowing where to get it, not having data on their phone or internet at home, etc. They also claim photo-ID requirements unfairly depresses black voter turnout but this has proven untrue. See my favorite video on this subject.
2. For Michigan, three Dem-appointed 6th-Circut judges unanimously voted to uphold the existing straight-ticket voting (STV) option citing black communities primarily would be unfairly burdened with the requirement to choose a candidate in each race instead of choosing one option to cover all same-party candidates. Personally, I like that option quite a bit but only six states permitted STV in 2020. The fact black voters were determined to be uniquely burdened only adds to the belief black people lack certain abilities, intelligence, etc. compared to other races, whites, in particular.
3. Alabama recently enacted a photo-ID requirement and made obtaining one extremely easy, and at no cost, if necessary. They will even drive to your home at no cost to provide a photo ID yet the typical lawsuits were filed, nonetheless. Luckily, a federal judge dismissed their case for obvious reasons. Seriously, how much easier do Democrats want photo ID to be obtained? To go to the trouble to file a lawsuit against Alabama's Secretary of State knowing there is no reasonable burden to the state's black community is crazy and only hurts the plaintiff's cause.
4. OK, this one is not directly related to racism but since I am on the subject of photo ID for voting and racism charges are ubiquitous on the matter....  this article mentions an interesting study finding Republicans are not only much more concerned about photo ID for voting but even when presented with the possibility lack of photo ID would benefit GOP candidates or policies, they hardly budged on their core belief in the need for photo ID. Conversely, Dems were very transactional when it came to who benefited or suffered due to photo ID. They strongly supported photo ID if it benefited Dem candidates or policies but were much less supportive when it benefited the GOP. "When it comes to voter ID laws, Republicans care intensely about fraud while Democrats worry more about whether their own party will come out ahead" is the leading line of the article. With that, Dems have absolutely NO credibility when it comes to election integrity concerns.
5. Now, on to education: Dems (white Dems, especially) say black students don't deserve the same school choice options they enjoy (expect/demand is more accurate, really). Blacks parents, perhaps more than anybody, desire to have school choice options and it is Democrats, controlled by the teacher unions, who are the most ardent opponents to school choice.
6. Another on education: coming soon
7. Competence Downshift: This one is really damaging and is similar to the study mentioned in #4. This post on one of my favorite sites highlights a study demonstrating liberals uniquely tend to lower their word complexity and overall appearance of competence when speaking to a black crowd. My take on this study is it reinforces the left no longer believe (if they ever did) in MLK Jr's famous quote: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." To the right, character is color-blind but skin color is paramount to the left in nearly all facets of our society, character be damned.
8. Reparations: black conservative radio host, Larry Elder, perhaps said it best recently with this quote: "Reparations is the extraction of money from people who were never slave owners to be given to people who were never slaves." To best describe how relatively lucky American blacks are today, despite the slave trade (and slavery, in general) being abhorrent, this Q & A between a reporter and Muhammad Ali after Ali returned victorious from his fight against George Foreman in Zaire: “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat" is spot-on in explaining why American blacks are obviously exponentially better off today than they would otherwise be if comparing to their African homelands today. With that, reparations are fully unjustified, if not for the impossible means of determining equitability but certainly by comparing outcomes for any slave's true descendants in America today. To continue advocating for reparations demonstrates perhaps the ultimate example of virtue-signaling, especially if they are a white liberal.