Inside Trump’s plan to combat gun violence: the decades-old Project Exile.
WASHINGTON — Nailing down specifics about Donald Trump’s policies is exhausting. He makes things up, changes his mind and neglects details. One of the six issues he’s actually fleshed out on his campaign website concerns gun rights, where he says he will combat gun violence by bringing back measures like Project Exile, a 1990s-era state-federal partnership.
Trump doesn’t seem to realize that Project Exile never really ended — it still exists, and parts of it have expanded nationwide. His proposal doesn’t really make sense, but it does serve his purposes: It focuses on cities, where his overwhelmingly white base doesn’t live. It locks up “drug dealers and gang members,” not “law-abiding gun-owners.” It doesn’t address other routine forms of gun violence, like shootings bytoddlers, family members, domestic abusers, countless legal gun owners, or mass shooters such as Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger. And for people like Trump, it also makes a great racist dog-whistle. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
“Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control,” Trump warns in his online pitch for resurrecting the still-extant program, citing two of the American cities with the highest number of black residents. “Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street.“
Trump’s strategy is pretty transparent, said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “By framing America’s gun violence problem as a black problem concentrated entirely in urban areas,” he said, Trump and groups like the NRA “can get policymakers to ignore a huge percentage of the gun deaths happening in their communities.”
Project Exile, part of a national wave of tough-on-crime measures, was launched by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Richmond, Virginia and other agencies to reduce violent crime by cracking down on illegal gun possession. Shootings and homicides had spiked in Richmond throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The city was heavily armed, and many of those guns were being used in crimes.
The program created a partnership between state and federal law enforcement that pushed for certain firearms cases to be prosecuted in federal court, where defendants faced harsher prison sentences. The possibility of getting locked up without bail or the possibility of parole and being shipped to a federal prison far from home — or “exiled” — was supposed to convince people to put down their weapons. The initiative included a public information campaign warning Richmonders that “an illegal gun will get you five years in federal prison.”
Framing America’s gun violence problem as a black problem ... can get policymakers to ignore a huge percentage of the gun deaths happening in their communities. Ladd Everitt, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
More: Trump Wants To Remind White People That Gun Violence Is A Black Problem
Gun violence is also a white problem. Why do whites like to blame minorities for everything wrong in America?
WASHINGTON — Nailing down specifics about Donald Trump’s policies is exhausting. He makes things up, changes his mind and neglects details. One of the six issues he’s actually fleshed out on his campaign website concerns gun rights, where he says he will combat gun violence by bringing back measures like Project Exile, a 1990s-era state-federal partnership.
Trump doesn’t seem to realize that Project Exile never really ended — it still exists, and parts of it have expanded nationwide. His proposal doesn’t really make sense, but it does serve his purposes: It focuses on cities, where his overwhelmingly white base doesn’t live. It locks up “drug dealers and gang members,” not “law-abiding gun-owners.” It doesn’t address other routine forms of gun violence, like shootings bytoddlers, family members, domestic abusers, countless legal gun owners, or mass shooters such as Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger. And for people like Trump, it also makes a great racist dog-whistle. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
“Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control,” Trump warns in his online pitch for resurrecting the still-extant program, citing two of the American cities with the highest number of black residents. “Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street.“
Trump’s strategy is pretty transparent, said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “By framing America’s gun violence problem as a black problem concentrated entirely in urban areas,” he said, Trump and groups like the NRA “can get policymakers to ignore a huge percentage of the gun deaths happening in their communities.”
Project Exile, part of a national wave of tough-on-crime measures, was launched by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Richmond, Virginia and other agencies to reduce violent crime by cracking down on illegal gun possession. Shootings and homicides had spiked in Richmond throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The city was heavily armed, and many of those guns were being used in crimes.
The program created a partnership between state and federal law enforcement that pushed for certain firearms cases to be prosecuted in federal court, where defendants faced harsher prison sentences. The possibility of getting locked up without bail or the possibility of parole and being shipped to a federal prison far from home — or “exiled” — was supposed to convince people to put down their weapons. The initiative included a public information campaign warning Richmonders that “an illegal gun will get you five years in federal prison.”
Framing America’s gun violence problem as a black problem ... can get policymakers to ignore a huge percentage of the gun deaths happening in their communities. Ladd Everitt, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
More: Trump Wants To Remind White People That Gun Violence Is A Black Problem
Gun violence is also a white problem. Why do whites like to blame minorities for everything wrong in America?
