As NFL players continue to disrespect the American flag and the National Anthem before their games around the league, it’s important to remember why these protests began in the first place — and it wouldn’t hurt the players to remember, either, considering they are built on a lie.

If you recall, protests — which have hurt the league badly — began with then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has since left the team and has not managed to sign with a new team since (most likely because owners don’t want the headache and distraction he would bring). When asked at the time why he was kneeling during the anthem in protest, he replied, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

It was clear at the time that Kaepernick was talking about police officers just randomly gunning down black men in ever-increasing numbers, but he made it even clearer when he was photographed at one practice wearing socks featuring pigs wearing police caps.

While there is no doubt that some police officers have been found guilty of murdering blacks (and whites), the vast majority of officers are good, responsible men and women who truly do put their lives on the line every minute of every day to protect us — a fact that too few protesting NFL players are willing to admit.

But there’s something else they won’t admit, either — namely, that black-on-black crimes and homicides are far more prevalent than police-on-black killings. And you can even argue that, in some cities like Chicago, the problem of black-on-black homicide has reached epidemic proportions.

As reported by the Washington Times, new statistics show the threat to black men is rising dramatically, but not because of ‘racist’ cops:

More than any other demographic group, black men are paying the price with their lives with a surging violent crime rate over the past two years, including a 20 percent jump in the overall homicide rate, even as the number of blacks killed by police declines.

Using statistics from the FBI’s 2016 Uniform Crime Report released Sept. 25, Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald found that black homicides have risen by nearly 900 per year since the Black Lives Matter movement began in 2014.

“The majority of victims of that homicide surge have been black,” she told the Times. “They were killed overwhelmingly by black criminals, not by the police and not by white.”

During the same period, the number of blacks killed by police fell from 259 in 2015 to 233 in 2016. So far in 2017, the figure of 175 deaths as of Oct. 12 is below the two previous years at the same time, according to the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, which the Times quoted.

That said, there are discrepancies even in the FBI’s crime reporting. That’s because the bureau depends on local police departments to report their crimes, which does not happen universally or regularly from department to department. (Related: Lamestream media promotes total lie about NFL player suicide ‘epidemic.’)

Also, the percentage of blacks who are killed by police has long been more than double African-Americans’ percentage of the population, which is about 13.3 percent according to the Census Bureau. The same is also true of blacks involved in violent crimes, however.

That said, the dramatic rise in black-on-black homicides raises legitimate questions about why more black NFL players, who comprise about 75 percent of the league, aren’t protesting that as well.

“If these wealthy football players cared about saving black lives, they would support proactive policing and denounce criminality,” said Mac Donald, author of “War on Cops” (Encounter Books, 2017). “When the police back off of proactive policing in high-crime areas, black lives are lost.”

She and others blame a new ‘hands-off’ approach to policing by officers worried about any actions that would cast them in a negative light with racial minorities. In the end, that is making everyone less safe, and that includes minorities.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

WashingtonTimes.com

NFL.com

TheNationalSentinel.com