Like many of us, the journalist and commentator Linda Ellerbee has strong opinions about what has happened in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, Dallas and wrote this for Voices4Hillary on July 8. We hope you read and share.

All day I've been told — online, on the air, and on the street — how shocked I should be, how outraged, what an atrocity this is. What happened last night in Dallas was horrible — and is never justified, but grief is the right response. Shock is not.

What the hell did we expect was going to happen?

Dallas was a violent reaction to violence, a blacklash, if you will, against the unarguable fact that for too many years, too many cops have been able to kill too many black citizens and not be held responsible for it, culminating earlier this week in two more young black men killed by police officers. Dallas was no more an atrocity than Louisiana or Minnesota.

Dallas was also the unsurprising result of too many damn guns. We cannot have it both ways. We can't point to the 2nd Amendment and say we need an armed citizenry to protect us from a rogue government, then act surprised when an armed citizen attacks what he believes is a nation of rogue cops.

There is more than enough grief to go around. Be nice if we could share that today instead of more outrage. More hate. Hate and guns. Guns and hate. We've cooked up a mighty toxic stew, and our pot boileth over.

I'm white. I've never had to instruct my son and grandsons how to behave so as not to get themselves killed for having a non-working taillight on a car, or sassing a cop, or simply insisting on their dignity. But I stand with those mothers. I mourn for their dead children. And I mourn for those dead police officers in Dallas. However, blue is not better than black. Cop lives do not matter more than black lives. Life matters.

Just my opinion.

Here's another. I am for arming everyone in this country.

With cell-phone video cameras.

It's forcing us to see ourselves in ways journalism never did.

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July 8, 2016

Linda Ellerbee is a well-known award winning American journalist who has been explaining tough stuff to adults and children for decades