As we prepare to observe the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, it seems timely to remember that the first “gun control” in this country was focused on oppressing African-Americans in the wake of the Civil War. See  “The Racist Roots of Gun Control”

If you’re not familiar with the work of my friend Kenn Blanchard, one of our most articulate spokesmen for gun owners’ civil rights, go to his website here, read what he has to say, and order his books.

I recently read “Sworn and Examined: Witnesses to Suwannee Valley Reconstruction Violence in Florida’s Third Judicial Circuit,” by Wilburn Bell (Instantpublisher.com, 2012). In one transcript, a black witness describes how a murder by night-riders came to an abrupt end before it could turn into mass murder… because a black victim shot back:

Witness: …The party rushed up to the door, and shot this man down dead; he did not speak but once or twice.

Question: Did the others return the fire?

Witness: There was one colored man who returned the fire, and it was believed he wounded one of them.

Question: Did that disperse them?

Witness: Yes, sir.

One of the loudest voices for gun ownership restriction is Obama crony Rahm Emmanuel, mayor of Chicago, where there were more than 500 homicides last year.  Do some digging, and you’ll find out that the victims were overwhelmingly African-American. In 2011, Chicago murder victims were 75.3% black, 18.9% Hispanic, and only 4.6% white (stats from Chicago Police Department Research and Development Division).  It was African-Americans’ vulnerability to such things that led Otis McDonald and Colleen Lawson to join in the lawsuit that, in the US Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in McDonald, et. al. v. City of Chicago, struck down that city’s unconstitutional decades-long ban on the mere ownership of handguns by its law-abiding private citizens. You can hear them tell their own stories on the ProArms Podcast: Colleen,  Otis, downloadable free to your computer or iPod.

In the living memory of many of us, the Civil Rights efforts of the 1960s were largely a history of blacks using guns to defend themselves against murderous Klansmen and their cohorts. Groups like Deacons for Defense and Justice armed themselves and banded together to protect black communities from the night-riders. Order the made for TV docudrama about it, “Deacons for Defense,” from Netflix, or get a quick history fix here: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/deacons-defense-and-justice.  The Deacons were allied with CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.  I never did get to meet the late Ralph Connor, head of CORE, but you can hear him state his thoughts here:


 

I did have the pleasure of meeting Roy Innes, another leader of CORE, who was always a strong voice for the right to keep and bear arms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More recently, we have read the balanced logic of Professor Walter Williams. Read his recent column, “Are Guns the Problem,”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Younger folk, “Shooter Gen 2.0” are well represented by a law student who calls himself Mr. Colion Noir, on his Website and YouTube channel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it’s clear from his record that our highest ranking African-American jurist, Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court, understands what the Second Amendment is about, too.

Dr. King kept guns in his home to protect himself and his family. After firebombing and numerous death threats by racists, his application for a permit to carry a gun was denied by the “may issue” white power structure in that time and place.  Let the holiday that celebrates this man’s life include some reflection on the importance of the Second Amendment.

1 COMMENT

  1. Dont forget Robert Williams author of Negroes With Guns. He early on clashed with those of his own race over armed defense.

  4. Why not, the current bunch of “Elected Public Officials”, obviously think they are the American Version of the Old European “Lords and Gentry”.

    They have already degraded the “minority races” to extreme poverty, with not hopes or ambitions, living off the “Government Freebies”, dependent on the continuation of that handout, and now trained to “Vote Democratic”, in order to preserve it.

    Now, since the rest of us, have replaced the former “Black Slavery” as the sole source of supporting our now bloated, over spending, and all powerful, all greedy, Government Masters, it is time to “Disarm us, the new Slaves”, and to “Put us in our Places”, in order to insure the continued luxurious “Safety and Lifestyle” of our Elected Masters.

    Below is an excerpt from the story of Nancy Pelosi’s usage of a US Air Force aircraft, and crew, as her personal weekend transportation between Washington D.C., and her California Senatorial District, as well as other exotic destinations around the world.

    USAF TOOK NANCY ‘S JET AWAY
    (verified by Snopes)

    Total trips: 85 over a 68 week period,
    or 1.25 average trips per week.
    Total mileage: 206,264 miles,
    or 2,427 average miles per trip.
    Total flying time: 428.6 hours,
    or an average of 5 hours per trip.
    Cost to the taxpayers: $2,100,744,
    or $27,715 per trip, or $1,285,162 per
    year!

    Cost of in flight food and alcohol:
    $101,429; $1,193 per trip; $62,051 per year.

    On one junket to Baghdad, according
    to the Air Force report, she had the
    aircraft bar stocked with Johnny Walker
    Red Scotch, Grey Goose Vodka,
    E&J Brandy, Bailey’s Irish Cream,
    Maker’s Mark Whiskey, Courvoisier Cognac,
    Bacardi Rum, Jim Beam Whiskey,
    Beefeater Gin, Dewar’s Scotch,
    Bombay Sapphire,Gin,
    Jack Daniels Whiskey, Corona Beer
    and several varieties of wine.
    This was obviously a very important
    “gument bidness” trip.

    Evidence generally speaks for itself,
    and in Ms. Pelosi’s case it speaks
    the language of abuse and (evidently)
    a serious familial drinking problem,
    for in a single year she and her spawn
    drank an amount in excess of the net
    income of the average employed
    American! When she said, “… If the
    stimulus doesn’t pass, five hundred
    million people might lose their jobs…”,
    I thought she was unintentionally
    revealing her ignorance. I’m now more
    inclined to think she was pickled.

  5. It is minorities in particular that require firearms that the history of civilization shows us. Women, homosexuals racial/cultural/religious minorities, the politically disenfranchised. If you can’t protect your life how are you going to protect your liberty?

  6. Mr. Noir is pretty cool !!! I have been enjoying his videos for a while now. Mas, you always come up with the coolest ! Keep up the good work !

  7. Your last paragraph bears repeating to anyone and everyone tomorrow, Mas. I am going to make sure I mention it to a coworker who has been very vocal lately about the gun issue (anti-gun, and not very clear on what’s at stake).

    Another fine column, thanks.

  9. Mas thanks for a great story. Thank God things have change for the better. But it took a fight to do it. Now its our time.

  10. Thanks again Mas for every little push for Pro 2nd Amendment.

    One encouraging thing I did see a large groups of about 100 people on the side of the road Saturday in Central Florida holding support our 2nd Amendment signs. I saw on the news that a similar group had formed the next county over of about 200 people. One fella was actually interviewed and able to express why we should be allowed to have guns with more than 10 round magazines and did and excellent job articulating the senario if your house was having a home invasion from several armed people 10 rounds was not enough to protect yourself and resticting it to that .

  11. Stumbled into Mr. Noir’s videos last week on facebook after a link from Kathy Jackson (The Cornered Cat). Spent quite a bit of time going through his great videos. Thanks for the mentioning “Deacons for Defense” as my Netflix queue has been getting low recently. Have been a long time fan of Walter Williams and his columns at WND. Many thanks for great suggestions for educating people.

  12. Way to go Mas! This is one time that playing the “race card” is a good idea. The anti-gun crowd would have you believe that it’s only redneck white folk that cling to their guns and religion. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, but when did the truth ever stop the nut-jobs?

    Thanks for pointing out Colion Noir as well. I discovered him a few months ago and recommend him at every opportunity.

  13. President Obama’s Inaugural Address And Gun Control

    President Obama didn’t mention civilian disarmament directly in his inaugural address. But he did mention it. “Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.” By that standard, American gun owners are screwed . . .

    As you know, there is no way to create a society where all children are safe from harm. To aspire to that goal is to justify anything, anything in its pursuit. Put another way, the President’s push for gun control will never end. “If it saves one child,” Vice President Biden and disarmament advocates opine, “it’s worth it.”

    Not true. Our rights are more important than our safety. A government that believes that safety trumps liberty is a tyranny-in-the-making. Or in progress. Speaking of which, earlier in his speech, the President touched on that topic too.

    Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.

    But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

    Preserving individual freedom requires collective action? Sure, when we’re under attack by a foreign enemy. Unfortunately the enemy to our liberty lives within our own borders.

    For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.

    What the hell is he trying to say—other than militias and personal firearms are an outdated concept? Wrong. We met the forces of fascism and communism with modern (for the time) rifles and bands of brothers. Individuals who joined together to defend liberty and freedom around the world.

    It should also be said that our soldiers fought to protect the American way. You know; the Constitution. A document that includes a Second Amendment that protects our individual right to keep and bear arms.

    Truly, I’m frightened. The President is a Constitutional scholar who singularly fails to understand the Constitution and, thus, his oath of office. A Chief Executive who’s bound and determined to disarm us.

    Thank God for checks and balances. On the eve of President Obama’s second term in office, let’s hope they stop this jingoistic juggernaut from destroying the right upon which all our liberties rest.

  14. Is that the same Walter Williams that used to sub in for Rush Limbaugh? I like that guy. I have his “Amnesty and Pardon Granted to All Persons of European Descent” saved on my computer. 🙂

    MrColionNoir has been on a roll lately, too.

  15. Civil rights addresses the issues of the individual and minority groups versus the majority collective. Elsewhere, someone shared this very clear, simple argument about how the “collectivist mindset” thinking re: gun control is morally and diametrically opposed to the constitutional mandate that government must protect the rights of individuals. Sharing…

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/01/01/with-gun-control-cost-benefit-analysis-is-amoral/

  16. I have observed that the liberal left statists seem to use the tactic of racism accusations every time we disagree with their utopian demands.
    Perhaps we should use their tactics and accuse them of racism every time they try to attack our 2nd. ammendment rights.
    We would probably be more correct than they are.
    Paul in Texas

  18. Mas,

    Taxation, welfare, along with “gun control” is the government’s method of continuing to enslave a segment of the population.
    At one time enslavement was based on race. Today it’s done by socio-economic status and government programs. Not suprising that a good percentage of our current slaves are of the formerly enslaved race.

    Vince