Black lives matter? Crime data runs contrary to NFL & the Left's attention

We've seen all the back and forth between what the League's Games Operations Manual includes versus what the Rulebook doesn't, the monetary relationship with Obama's DoD and the NFL, and any number of other social media memes, tweets, and general confusion. However, what's been missing is the empirical data that is being broadly ignored...you know, the matter that's deserving of a prayerful knee and attention! As Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story...

CR: Lost in the imbroglio over the NFL’s disrespect for our national anthem is the irony of the original impetus for Colin Kaepernick’s antics. Players are protesting supposed police brutality while new data shows there is a growing epidemic of violent crime in America, which is likely the result of dissuading police from proactive law enforcement work.

Sadly, the biggest victims of this rebounding epidemic are African Americans. Where is the protest or outrage over violent crime in inner cities rather than the police response to it (or lack thereof)?

It’s hard to overstate the importance of yesterday’s release of crime data from the FBI showing a second straight year with rising violent crime. After plummeting for 23 years, violent crime rose in 2015 and again in 2016, bending the only positive social trajectory we have witnessed over the past generation.

According to the FBI, violent crime rose by 4.1 percent and the murder rate spiked by 8.6 percent — the greatest single-year increase in 25 years. ...

...it is clear that the Black Lives Matter war on police has done more to fuel crime than any other factor this generation. Who does it hurt the most? The very lives for which they claim to care.

According to the WSJ, “in 2014, 698 more blacks were killed than whites, according to the FBI. In 2015, 1,185 more blacks were killed than whites, according to the data.” Well, based on the new tables in the FBI’s “Crime in the United States” report, 1,305 more blacks were killed than whites in 2016. That is simply an astounding statistic given that blacks comprise just 13 percent of the population. And the trajectory has gotten worse since the inception of the war on the police.

Folks, this is not the result of police brutality, this is the result of the war on the police and preventing them from addressing the real issue plaguing American cities – black-on-black crime. There were almost 1,100 more black murder offenders than whites, even though they comprise a fraction of the population.

We could shut down every police department in America and all it would do is lead to more bloodletting for everyone, but most devastatingly for black communities. Even if we were to accept the premise of the Black Lives Matter movement that all 16 unarmed blacks shot by police last year were not in self-defense, that accounts for just 0.002% of the 7,881 black homicide victims, the overwhelming majority of whom were killed by black criminals, not whites or police.

What we are seeing today in popular culture protesting the police is akin to protesting the firefighters instead of the arsonists. Do black lives really matter? If they do, the hard data show incontrovertibly that the Ferguson effect – dismantling the police and the criminal justice system in inner cities – is the most direct way to ensuring that their lives indeed don’t matter.

Perhaps we — alongside NFL players, SJWs nationwide, and perpetually outraged BLM groups — should take a knee for the missing 7,881 black victims of 2016 … just not during the national anthem.

It's one thing to take a stand for a just cause...it's quite another to drop before an amorphous movement that neglects the very focal point of its supposed concern, whether that be for mere defiance, one-upmanship, or a misdirected sense of justice. Beyond sports or politics, a desire to unite our civil society should be a shared prerogative, not more divisive displays. That is the social justice issue to embrace, not ignore.