Dallas deaths: Murder by firing squad

HARDLY a summer goes by without riots erupting on the streets of American cities over the killing of black people by white policemen. 

But the horrific toll of the rioting in Dallas, Texas, during which five policemen were shot dead by rooftop snipers, and seven others injured including two civilians, far exceeds anything that a stunned world has seen before.

Carefully planned and thought out, this onslaught was tantamount to murder by firing squad. As for motive, a suspect who was killed when a bomb exploded, according to the city’s police chief, told negotiators he was upset about the shooting of black people in Minnesota and Louisiana and wanted to kill white officers.

This represents a new brand of home-grown terrorism, a mindless form of tit for tat reaction to the often unwarranted shooting of black people. President Barack Obama, who is attending a Nato summit in Poland, has rightly called it called it a “vicious, calculated, and despicable attack on law enforcement”.

Meanwhile, despite this further damning evidence of the insanity of America’s so called laws on guns, the National Rifle Association gun lobby, backed by the Republican party, continues to stick its head deep in the sand. Its blind mantra, “Guns don’t kill people. People do” explains why five policemen were killed in Dallas, the city where President John F Kennedy was shot dead, and why more children will be murdered in American schools.