The Spoils of War

A Knoxville man’s business offers people products to help them stay safe from violent crime and he says women, especially, need to be prepared. A year ago, Tommy Adyelott opened Safety Smart at 10412 Kingston Pike in West Knoxville. The idea for the business came after his daughters were having a hard time finding personal safety defense items. It was the murders of a young Knoxville couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, in 2007 that prompted Adyelott to start his business. The pair was carjacked, raped and then killed.  http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=10637388  story ,video

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Adyelott is right on one level-we shouldn’t be attacked, killed by violent savages. We knew that a long time ago. He means well- and  is right to be concerned about his daughters’ safety.  Fine… but – We should not  have to live like that, We shouldn’t have to be around that, around them. There exists an uncomfortable customary silence that follows a statement like this in public that at once acknowledges its truth -before the name-calling fear sets in. So afraid are they that they will be seen as you- they must name-call first, whether it comes in the form of the mewling whisper “don’t you think that’s Racist!?” 

   “racist!racist!racist!”  once one hears it often enough, it begins to sound  like ‘Go Bears! Go Bears!’ or “9ers! 9ers!”  People know instinctively your words are true: why else would they do everything in their power to move away from it? Yet when one plainly states it, an almost palpable panic ensues, not unlike the gasp heard  when a  kid says “Mommy, why is that person so (whatever)?”  but in this case the kid is saying “Mommy, why do those people steal stuff,  rape, torture and kill so much ?”  Are we supposed to say, “Oh, haha, that is just one of those things that ‘just happen’ when people are poor and live in a Bad Place..but don’t you worry, Johnny- it won’t happen to you, because ahh.. we live in a ……umm.. ‘safe place’, and besides, mommy has a taser!  Now eat up your organic yogurt and when you’re done, put the container in the recycle bin, because we have to worry about the earth! ”

 It is  maddening  that the onus is put on the woman -‘self-defense’ -as it is accepted that the greater society is not going to protect her by keeping these creatures away from her- that the system/media has made people are too afraid of being called a name,  because one might be perceived as being Racist! Indeed the media has tried to promote going willingly with the rapist torturer crack-dealer gangsta-thug.  Are we so afraid of being called names we have accepted  laws that greatly endanger us, even if it is obvious the whole integration experiment for the most part, has failed?

 In other supposedly less-civilized cultures, women are not allowed to go out unescorted.  Channon Christian was not unescorted- she was with Chris Newsom, who suffered the same fate as she- even being young and athletic, he was no match for this roving band of gun-toting, violent savages hell-bent on murder and mayhem. That being the case, do tasers, sound alarms and pepper spray make a difference, especially for a woman alone -confronted with a gang of criminal minded ghetto thugs with guns? Cops have tasers, cops have back-up cops, and still get killed. While I wish Adyelott  the best of luck in today’s economy with his business, and as well-meaning as he may be, it is water-wings on the sinking Titanic, it’s a wetsuit in the Antarctic, it’s bactine for leprosy. It doesn’t take care of the problem.

Do these products make this woman a match for letalvis and crew?

Let’s take The Old Days. You know, the supposedly bad  ol’ days before forced integration. In those days, they would not have dared come near those kids. If they had done anything even close to this, letalvis, his brother and crew would already be dead because Men would have killed them-  we would not be paying for their trials, incarceration and inevitable executions. If the old brand of justice had  been dispensed, would those families  be tormented by the thought the criminals did not get a fair trial? I bet they would be sleeping better than they are these days- having had  to sit in the same room all day with the scum that raped, tortured and killed their children. I trust there will be a solution in the case of these rapists/torturers/murderers, but unfortunately it is ex post facto.

Another thing that irritates me to no end about this case, aside from the ‘race-had-nothing-to-do-with-it’  nonsense is the oft-repeated premise that this was  ‘random, it just happened’ :   “Safe Haven also says to keep in mind that the majority of attacks on people aren’t random.”  This kind of statement suggests that while the Christian/Newsom murders were random, statistics say you are likely to know your attacker, blah blah.. and it is not correct. People hear this and believe it  without questioning /investigating the methodology or the statement itself. If one is using stats for the purposes of crime/safety prediction or conclusions ,be accurate and don’t use average people like oneself as a comparison variable-  use  the Criminal Young Black Male- and then let’s look at who is likely to attack, shall we? Ahh, but that would be racist!, because it would be true. Let’s see kids, is someone with a long record* of crime and violence > or < likely to hurt you? Very good! It is not random, as in ‘Practice random acts of kindness’ (of people who have this sticker,99.9%  are White)- Whites  are constantly admonishing each other to be ever-nicer, good and kind. The bumpster-sticker forgets the ‘no matter what’ part, because that part is already internalized.

 Back to the ghetto-thugs- they have  a history of  various nefarious violent activities . There is nothing random about that- it is quite predictable- who cares what the cause(s) are?  No amount of money thrown at it seems to make a lick of difference. Res ipsa loquitur= the thing speaks for itself.  Statistics using  the young criminal black male  would reveal this group to be especially dangerous, and the likelihood and frequency of being hurt by such much greater . You don’t actually believe that junk about  1 out of three is in prison  because cops are racist!, court appointed attorneys suck, ‘profiling’ , ‘bad schools’, broken homes,blah blah, do you? Come on. Let us use the correct words.  It is not ‘random’ to have an earthquake in California. It may be spontaneous, and we don’t know when it will happen, but the chances are good it will  at some point happen, as the landscape is prone to them. Random, no. Spontaneous, yes. Got it?

Being that this is true,  for this particular criminal underclass- the  ‘woman, protect thyself’ methods are fairly useless-  not going out alone after dark, parking near lights, checking the backseat of the car, dressing modestly, karate classes, keeping windows closed when you leave, carrying one’s keys with the points out,alarms, tasers-  those things all assume the attacker has a certain measure of stealth, of lying in wait, a predator-and that there will be space and time to act to defend oneself- that one can sense  the probable danger and thus quickly prepare to meet the danger. Those kinds of things would not have protected Channon and Chris.

The fact that the criminals in this case may not have premeditated these crimes does NOT make them LESS dangerous – it makes them MORE dangerous- for the very fact one cannot take reasonable protective measures  against them. Those who act so impulsively -as they did in the car-jacking, as they did in deciding to kidnap, rape, torture and kill  and holding up a pizza place in the process-those who have a sizeable criminal record, who are just about driven to steal, hunt and kill  people- they act in groups,  they take the risk that onlookers will be too afraid to help-they will act at any time of the day or night, anywhere-  The only way to avoid this type of impulsive crime is not having them be around, period.

 So while it is great that this man wants to protect his daughters,  and that he is unafraid to state the idea was brought about by the Christian/Newsom torture murders- I don’t know that tasers and sound alarms are enough, or the real answer. I don’t know if locking one’s doors, or even carrying a gun can solve this if one is outnumbered AND outgunned. We should not have to accept this as our new reality. There’s always White Flight- a solution for White Plight, until there aren’t any more places to run. When that happens, it’s not going to be  all rainbow quilts and reparation picnics.

 *Davidson and Cobbins have extensive criminal records in several states http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=5925539

 

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