SWD 24

American gun-rights and genocide victim Renisha McBride, age 19

Art: 2016
Media: Ink on paper
Paper size: 27 1.4 H x 33.5 W

Renisha McBride, age 19, was shot to death in Detroit, Michigan on Nov. 2, 2013 by a homeowner after she knocked on the front door of his house; she had been in a car accident and was reportedly drunk, head injured and was seen wandering around and disoriented.

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The homeowner was later arrested, prosecuted, tried and convicted of second-degree murder, manslaughter and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
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That prosecution was very unusual. A number of American states have so-called Stand Your Ground laws, which makes for legalized murder. I think it was back in the late 1990’s when a Japanese exchange student in New Orleans was shot-to-death by a homeowner when the student knocked on the door of a homeowner. The student, who was with an American student standing a bit further away on the sidewalk or nearby, were looking for a party and they didn’t know if they were at the right address. Obscenely, immorally and unethically, the homeowner in New Orleans was not prosecuted for murder; he should have been. 

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I began this drawing of American gun rights and gun-terrorism victim Renisha McBride on March 25, 2016. On Mar 28th I began drawing a wing from a birds’ wing - a red-tailed hawk, at the ornithology lab, Burke Museum of Natural History, Univ. of Washington, Seattle.

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On April 4 I began drawing a second wing, from a red shouldered hawk, from N. Carolina, at the Burke.

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An op-ed I penned published in The Columbia Missourian, Sept. 13, 2017: “Drowning out the silence of America's gun war.”

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More than 90 Americans are shot-to-death every day.  Thirty-three to thirty-four thousand Americans and visitors to the U.S. are shot-to-death  every year. There are so many gun violence victims that it can be said that ISIS, ISIL and Al Queda’s terrorists cannot  even dream of doing what America's politicians and the gun lobby have legislatively enabled: A mass slaughter of Americans. Thousands more are wounded every year, many catastrophically.

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The steady sale of guns, especially the semi-automatic weapons preferred by mass shooter-terrorists in schools, work-sites, theaters, colleges and universities and other sites ensures that Americans will suffer the loss of many more gun-fueled terror attacks in the days, weeks, months and years ahead.
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In late July 2018  news reports state that the proliferation of guns in the U.S. has just got a huge boost, thanks to President Trump and Vice President Pence: People, including children, teens, and convicted felons who can access a 3-D printer, will be able to legally construct guns, including AR-15 semi-automatic weapons. These weapons will be untraceable by law enforcement.

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Over 1,300,000 have been slain by guns since 1968, the year when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and leading presidential candidate U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy were each shot-to-death.

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The url of a 2 min., 18 sec. overview of the 2 Sight-seeing with Dignity art series drawing portraying American gun genocide victims.

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A 23 min., 45 sec. of those 2 drawings, showing the creation of each drawing from start-to-finish in 2015.