The shooting in Dallas of five white police officers by a black Army veteran cannot be justified even in a society in which the police shot down around 100 unarmed blacks in 2015, a particularly bad year for “persistent racial disparities in the criminal justice system”, according to US President Barack Obama’s own admission. The rate of death of young black men at the hands of law enforcement personnel was five times higher than white men of the same age, according to a media survey, which just goes to show the depth of the racial problem. It is against this background that the rise of the civil rights movement named Black Lives Matter has to be seen. The two-year-old movement espousing non-violence is going to struggle to channel public anger in constructive ways.
The legal aspects of a robotic bomb being used to kill the sniper is something for the US to work out. The problem of a disproportionate number of deaths of African Americans and Native Americans at the hands of policemen points to the urgent need to find justice for people of all races. A lot of people need convincing that the men in blue can be fair in dealing with people regardless of race. This can’t be easy in the US, a nation of guns. The logic is irrefutable that the more guns there are in circulation, the more gun violence there will be. But that is a fundamental issue concerning their right under the Second Amendment. Finding the balance is bound to be tricky for an armed society.
