Should Blacks Join the Gun-Rights Movement?

[jaysunb]

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-27/should-blacks-join-the-gunrights-movement?cmpid=yhoo

An elegant Sunday New York Times op-ed article on black Americans and gun rights, by Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review, was a welcome departure from the low-grade hysteria typically promoted by the gun-rights movement. Cooke chose a compelling line, juxtaposing the history of black Americans' desperate need for firearms with their current alienation from the gun-rights movement. While smartly argued and blissfully free of demagoguery, the article nonetheless suffered from another movement affliction: terminal romanticism.

Gun movement romance usually inclines toward neo-American Revolution fantasies about taking to the hills, an arsenal and stacks of canned goods hitched behind. There, pot-bellied patriots outfox government forces equipped with drones, tactical nukes and other modest advantages, and restore America to the godly and gunly. (The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are impressed for sure.)


I've long contended that, like the Black Panthers, that started as a gun club, there'd be a whole other line of thinking about gun control if this were to happen again.

[Kalidurga]

1. yes

[Duckhunter935]

2. of course

[JEFF9K]

3. They should show up en masse ...

with automatic weapons at all conservative events.

[NOLALady]

5. They would be slaughtered,

probably by law enforcement.

[Heather MC]

4. good luck with that, who do you think SOME whites are imagining

They will shoot if they feel, the need arises. Well It's not their next door neighbor Bob, or little blonde Sally from down the street. That's all I'm saying.

[jaysunb]

6. I didn't write the article, but your point is well taken. n/t

[JustAnotherGen]

8. Plus 100

[JustAnotherGen]

7. I think this is the end game

Ultimately, Cooke's vision of welcoming blacks into the gun movement ends right where other visions of maximum gun rights end: before the trouble begins. The chief problem with the gun-rights movement is not that it makes distinctions based on race -- although it does. The biggest problem is that it doesn't make distinctions based on more meaningful criteria: mental soundness, personal responsibility, adequate training.

It's also well worth reading the NY Times Opinion Piece that this one references -
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/do-black-people-have-equal-gun-rights.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw&_r=0

SundayReview| Opinion
Do Black People Have Equal Gun Rights?
By CHARLES C. W. COOKE
OCT. 25, 2014

White Southerners would eventually be forced to accept blacks as their fellow citizens. But old habits died hard. After the Civil War, many Southern states enacted Black Codes to prohibit ownership of guns by blacks. The measures served their purpose. In her remarkable 1892 disquisition on the evils of lynching, the writer Ida B. Wells noted that “the only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” Wells offered some blunt advice: “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

At the height of the civil rights movement, black freedom fighters took Wells’s counsel seriously. Although he was denied a concealed-carry permit, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had what his adviser Glenn E. Smiley described as a veritable “arsenal” at home.

Far from being a digression from the principle of nonviolence, this willingness to defend oneself was heir to a long, proud tradition. Considering in 1850 what he believed to be the best response to the Fugitive Slave Act, Frederick Douglass proposed: “a good revolver.”


The first major ban on the open carrying of firearms — a Republican-led bill that was drafted after Black Panthers began hanging around the State Legislature in Sacramento with their guns on display — was signed in 1967 by none other than Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 was primarily a reaction to the scourge of “Saturday night specials” — cheap handguns owned by the poor and the black. The National Rifle Association opposed neither law.

I put Wells quote in bold because I think for her life and times -

She was absolutely correct.


And I'd like to think that for my life and times it is no longer correct - but I'm not so sure. I can't use a wooden spoon on George Zimmerman if he shows up in my neighborhood and points a gun at one of my nephews.

[heaven05]

12. I like IDA!!!!!!!!

[Jamaal510]

9. Good luck.

If this is successful, this country just might see some success on gun control (ironically-speaking) and join the rest of the 1st world. I could have my history wrong, but I think that was chiefly why Reagan backed gun control--to water-down the Black Panthers movement once the members fought back and gained weapons. He damn sure didn't support gun control because he was so tender-hearted. Though unlikely, I think it's possible that the old RWers and Republicans in Congress would do a 180 on guns once we Blah people start getting more armed.

[jaysunb]

10. +1

[heaven05]

11. Yeah the thinking

would be as it was with Mark Clark, Fred Hampton and George Jackson, "second shot into his back at close range". Sound familiar? Blacks should have their own gun clubs. Period. Any law abiding AA should exercise their rights, the same as the bundy crowd. Not saying your right will be respected but......try anyway.