So true about every life mattering, and black-on-black gun violence. However, that misses the author’s point, I think. It’s not that these people were killed, senselessly, needlessly, horribly. It’s that they were killed by instrumentalities of The State.

The State is an organization designed supposedly for the purpose of benefiting everybody and making them safe from each other. The State is the only organization having a franchise to commit what would otherwise be called crimes: e.g. lying (political campaigns), counterfeiting (Federal Reserve’s “quantitaive easing”), stealing (taxes), kidnapping (incarceration) and murder (to facilitate kidnapping, when necessary), to name a few. And it’s all justified on the basis of the larger benefits of what The State supposedly provides everyone.

Because we give people working for The State a franchise to commit these crimes, we hold them to higher standards; their behavior must follow certain rules. They can’t just steal your property willy-nilly; it can only be after a long, convoluted process involving politicians who argue and decide whose property will be stolen and when and how. And they have to make up good reasons, or the people whose property is going to be stolen might vote against them and take away their jobs. This is one example of the feedback loops that are supposed to keep the licensed criminal behaviors in check.

It’s not just that a person murdered another person, it’s that the murderer had a license to do it and that no feedback loops appear to be effective in reining this behavior in. Cops apparently prefer to kill people who have dark skin vis-a-vis those with light skin, and we should all be concerned, not just because of the killings and the skin color thing but because it’s clear the controls aren’t working, and we have less reason than ever to believe that The State is going to carry out its mission.