There’s nothing unusual about this. Many civil rights activists—including those who publicly engaged in non-violent forms of resistance—kept guns for self-defense. T.R.M. Howard, the Mississippi doctor and mutual aid leader who founded the pioneering Regional Council of Negro Leadership, slept with a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed. During the murder trial that followed the horrific lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Howard escorted Till’s grieving mother and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan.
Similarly, John R. Salter, one of the organizers of the famous 1963 sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi, said he always “traveled armed” while working as a civil rights organizer in the South.
“I'm alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms,” Salter said.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/19/martin-luther-king-civil-rightSadly, things have not changed enough since MLK's days of needing an armed contingent.
And, even if they had, the reasons that the citizenry should have reasonable access to firearms is timeless, as the authors of the bill of rights plainly understood.
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