Op-Ed: Ann Coulter: Guns don't kill people, non-white people kill people

I normally wouldn't validate Ann Coulter's existence by reporting on the ludicrous things she says, but bald racism tolerated by one of Fox News' most popular personalities is too important to ignore.

Bald racism is exactly what happened on "Hannity" on Monday when Coulter blamed America's epidemic of gun violence not on guns but rather on racial minorities. "I just got back from England," Coulter told host Sean Hannity as their conversation segued from the lack of diversity in President Barack Obama's recent cabinet nominees to gun violence. "They have not bought into this whole diversity enthusiasm, which raises the important point on gun crimes. We keep hearing how low they are in Europe, and 'oh, they're so low and they have no guns.'" Then, this: "If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium. So perhaps it's not a gun problem, it is a demographic problem." Hannity did not utter a word of protest against this blatantly racist remark. So I will. First of all, it seems like the vast majority of mass-shooting perpetrators are white males. Second, while I acknowledge that the black murder rate is disproportionate to the African American population, to blame that violence on the race of the perpetrator demonstrates a shocking ignorance to which we've unfortunately become all too accustomed coming from reactionary hotheads like Coulter. It is much easier to blame skin color than to take an honest look in the mirror and acknowledge that the systematic confinement of black people in ghettos, corporate-driven globalization resulting in the decline of American manufacturing and the racialized mass incarceration of millions of black and brown Americans, most for non-violent drug offenses, are the root causes of crime, not skin color. Of course, the Ann Coulters of the world seem incapable of such nuanced thought. I say "seem" because as a Cornell graduate who went on to earn a law degree Coulter, like many of her far-right brethren, are highly educated and relatively worldly people. I strongly suspect that Coulter knows better. Her polemic pyrotechnics are just for show. Like most of what comes out of her mouth, Ann Coulter is a fraud. And here I am further validating her existence by talking about her...