Black lives matter?

So I just wrote this thing to my dad. Those familiar with me will recognise it as the most of my thoughts/ feelings I have expressed to my dad in a decade or so. I have an accelerated heart rate as a result. I dunno.

Hey Dad,

So while we were out to dinner you brought up black lives matter and said that every case of a black person shot by police officers had been armed. 

And I didn't respond to that at the time, I was kind of shocked for a start, I've never heard any one say anything close to that and also I don't have a quick encyclopedic kind of memory. But I've been thinking about it a lot recently, maybe because I'm listening to the new season of serial or maybe because I'm thinking about you cause I'm thinking about grandfather more recently. 

But it's just not true is the thing

Like

Stephon Clark St Louis had a cell phone not a gun

Alton Sterling Louisiana CDs no gun

Terence crutcher Tulsa hands up no gun 

Walter Scott shot five times in the back unarmed ran from a broken taillight stop SC

Rumain Brisbon hand in pocket unarmed shot to death over a drug thing

Micheal brown the guy from Ferguson was unarmed and sitting in his car

Eric Gardiner the I can't breathe guy was unarmed and selling single cigarettes

Charles Kinsey who wasn't actually killed but was one of the cases that most affected me want unarmed of course he was caring for an autistic adult and was begging the police not to shoot his charge at the time. They were both sitting down on the road. 

Micheal brown the hands up don't shoot guy, there's different reports as to if his hands were up and if he really said that Ferguson mi but he was unarmed and was shot and I'm pretty sure that was the same town where they charged a guy for bleeding on the officers shoes after a beating, you know destroying police property which affected me almost more than the killing.  

Tamir Rice 12 years old had a toy gun do you count that?  I played cops and robbers as a kid and had a BB gun 

This is not exhaustive by any means, I just lifted a few. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/29/police-killings-black-men-us-and-what-happened-officers/469467002/

http://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article144190724.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_up,_don't_shoot

And of course some people were armed but then there's the other thing that it's not actually illegal to be armed in the US and it sure as hell doesn't carry the death penalty.

Look I know you like to stir people up a bit so I don't know if you even mean this stuff you say or if you're just trying to get a rise out of me, which I get, I like to poke a controversy stick sometimes and see what falls out sometimes. 

And I know you're super right wing and I'm super left wing so we're never really going to see eye to eye on a lot of what's going on in the world kind of stuff. We just have really different value systems and opinions on how things should be. And that's ok too I guess. But like surely we can agree that facts exist? That would make it easier to talk anyway. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. That's what I've been thinking.

Hugs,

Maile

Aaaanyway Jes said that it wasn't necessarily doing my dad any favors to be pleasant to him at the cost of not telling him literally anything about myself and she accepts some degree of conflict to be her authentic self in her family relationships and that is fraught but leads to the relationships like really existing and having meaning and stuff. So maybe I'm trying that?