What does it say about Mike Barnicle that, in a discussion of the surge in inner-city homicide, Al Sharpton sounded a lot more reasonable than the former Boston Globe columnist?
On today's Morning Joe, Sharpton almost echoed the NRA's famous "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Said Sharpton: "people, because guns are there don't make you get up and shoot." But there was the blathering Barnicle--who during the Ferguson debate had bemoaned the militarization of police--seeming to condemn the absence of the National Guard in the inner cities.
Barnicle was arguing that if the murder rates now being seen in the inner cities happened in white neighborhoods, "the National Guard would be in the streets." So is that what Mike wants? If indeed the National Guard were sent into cities across America, can't you imagine that Mike would jump on the bandwagon of those condemning it?
AL SHARPTON: Chicago tomorrow, their burying a seven-year old kid. Seven years old. I talked to Reverend Acree last night about it; we work with them. When you have this kind of gun violence and, yet, there has been no real formula to deal with it and there's enough [blame?] for it to go around from community activists to clergy all the way to government, I think this is something that indicts all of us. It's getting worse, not better. And I think that just as much as we're outraged, as we are, with police misconduct, we must be as outraged about the misconduct in the streets, including the gun laws. But people, because guns are there, don't make you get up and shoot, and a seven-year-old kid is dead.
MIKE BARNICLE: It's an entire -- I mean the fulcrum [spectrum?] runs from one range to another. The case of a seven-year-old being buried in Chicago, the seven-year-old's father, who was the intended target of that shooting, has been arrested multiple times. The justice system has never really dealt with him. Never really put him away where he ought to be put away. And the other aspect of it is, if this ever occurred, if shootings, multiple shootings that occur every weekend in cities like Chicago, New York, Boston, if it ever occurred in a largely white neighborhood, the National Guard would be in the streets.
