Ralph Yarl and the Cost of America's Deadly Obsession with Guns

Bonnie Greer on the horrific shooting of a 16-year-old boy

On a recent Thursday evening, in Kansas City, Missouri, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl knocked on the door of a house. He had come there to pick up his younger twin brothers. 

His knock was answered by gunfire from the homeowner, Andrew D. Lester, (84). Ralph Yarl is Black. Andrew Lester is white.

When it was over, Ralph was left with a gunshot wound in the head and one in the arm. He had gone to a house on Northeast 115th Street instead of to Northeast 115^th Terrace. That was where he was meant to be. One street away.

After the gunfire, Ralph made his way, seeking help. He finally found it but was told first to lie on the ground. With his hands above his head.

The shooter was taken into custody for twenty-four hours, then released.

The prosecutor protested at this, saying that Ralph had not crossed the threshold of the house, and that the shots that hit him were fired through a glass door. There was nothing to indicate that, when Andrew Lester aimed his .32 caliber handgun at the teen, there had even been any words between them. No words at all.

Pressure mounted on the police to do something. They finally submitted the case file to the county prosecutor. The prosecutor announced that: “There was a racial component to the case.”

Andrew Lester was charged with assault in the first degree, a class A felony and could face life in prison if convicted. He was also charged with the offence of criminal action, which carries a maximum of 15 years in prison.  

Young Ralph walked out of the hospital a day or so after admission and is now at home where he is expected to make a full recovery. A “GoFundMe” page has been set up to help him and his mother and brothers. But what no one can calculate at present is the effect of what happened to him on his mental health.

Most people who have not lived or worked in the States and know no Americans, can’t understand the US obsession with the gun. Many Americans can’t understand it, either. So let me try: First, it comes down to who settled America at the beginning, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which the “right to bear arms” was a central cry.

That right eventually became part of the American Constitution itself, under the Second Amendment. Southern slave states used the Amendment to justify civilian creation and propagation of slave patrols. Any white person could become a self-appointed hunter of people of African descent. 

And they took full advantage.

There was always a debate about the “militia” that the Constitution refers to in relation to the right to a gun. The question was, just exactly what constituted a militia? What exactly that meant. This question was settled in the landmark Supreme Court case known by its short name: “Heller” for the plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller, a police officer for the District of Columbia, who wanted to have a gun in his home in DC. Under DC law, only disassembled guns were allowed in the home. With the help of gun lobbies, who had been looking for the perfect test case, he took it to the Supreme Court.  

By a razor thin 5-4, SCOTUS ruled that the right to bear arms was an individual right. And that “self defense” as defined by the individual, was the cornerstone.  Some people went so far as to state out loud that the right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution. It is affirmed by the Constitution. The right to bear arms: it comes from God.

After the ruling, the floodgates opened.

The State of Missouri has what is called a “stand your ground” law which grants to Missourians the right to take out anyone, if the individual feels under threat.

Add to this the various tropes that collided that fateful evening when Ralph Yarl knocked on the wrong door: race, age, gender. These are among the ones that stand out.

President Biden spoke to the young victim. The Mayor of Kansas City, who is also a Black man, said that he was angry and heartbroken, and wondered aloud if knocking on doors will join “driving while Black” as another reason for a man of African descent to be killed in the USA.

The number of mass shootings, for example – defined in the United States as the shooting and killing of more than three people in one incident – has exceeded the number of weeks in the year so far. And they, and what happened to a sixteen-year-old boy of the wrong colour, will continue.

What is important to understand, to keep in mind, is that guns are the foundational element of the United States. The nation was settled at the barrel of a gun. Americans brought the machine gun home from the First World War and used it on the civilian streets of my hometown, Chicago.

My late father slept with a gun under his pillow, may have died with it under his pillow, too. When I was a kid, he would go out into the back garden and, on cue, he and the other dads on the street would shoot their guns in the evening air after every Fourth of July barbecue.

I grew up playing “Cowboys and Indians", our play featuring toy guns, and our TV heroes were those who could “shoot straight”.

There are more guns than people in the US and, if this all sounds quite insane, that is because it is. Unless he has an unusual upbringing and luck, Ralph Yarl, too, will be a gun owner.

Maybe he will justify it by citing what happened to him; how he had to lie on the ground like a beast before anyone helped him; how the elderly white man who shot him just because he was afraid of Black men got off at first, only to be charged after the hue and cry of the citizenry.  Maybe Andrew Lester, the shooter, at his late stage of life, will contemplate on what he has done; how he must have been living in order to get to that place; and what country he has been a part of for the eighty-four years of his existence. 

Maybe Missouri will look at a law that gives any resident of that state the right to be jury, judge and executioner if someone stirs up their fears, fears that may not even have been conscious until the moment that brought them to the surface. What, so-to-speak, triggered them.

The greatest triumph that Barack Obama achieved was not having been elected twice. But that he is still alive. That in his youth he did not go knocking on the wrong door.

Like Ralph Yarl did.