On Blacks, Guns and History

The Root ^ | 4 April, 2012 | Steven Gray

[marktwain]

We should remember that African Americans died for the right to bear arms. But it's time to move on.

One of the earliest scenes of the Autobiography of Malcolm X takes us to the Lansing, Mich., of 1929. Malcolm's father, Earl Little, a Baptist minister derided as "uppity" for aspiring to own a store and live outside the city's traditional black neighborhoods, shot a pistol one night at a pair of white men who'd apparently set the family's home ablaze. In the following weeks, the police regularly searched the new Little residence, "looking for a gun." The pistol, which officials refused to issue the minister a permit to legally carry, was eventually sewn into a pillow.

The scene is a powerful reminder of why for much of American history, it was necessary for blacks to fight for the right to bear arms, often to protect our very existence.

The tricky relationship between blacks and guns is on the brain in part because of the response to the tragic case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old high school junior fatally shot in late February by George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood-watch patrolman who legally carried a weapon.

A little more than a week ago I suggested that the Martin case should open a meaningful debate about the future of gun policy. The most striking responses to that column boiled down to this: History binds blacks to the gun-rights movement. "Remember your history," one reader wrote me. So I started reading the history.

It's easy to forget that the 17th-century French slave code, Le Code Noir, explicitly prohibited colonial slaves from bearing weapons -- except with their master's permission to hunt on plantation grounds. Later, in 1776, the Founding Fathers clearly did not view blacks as citizens to be given the Constitution's Second

[marktwain]

Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence, the author cannot overcome his Progressive programing and get off the liberal plantation. It is sad.

What is his reason that black people should give up their right to self defense? Simply that liberals think that we should.

The fact that we have more firearms than most other countries on earth, and are more prosperous and free, simply does not occur to him. He is programmed to link firearms and our freedom with Teheran or Nairobi, both of which have extremely tight gun controls, or Kabul, which has been in war, civil war, and tribal war for over 30 years, instead of Switzerland, which stayed out of WWII, in large part because it was armed to the teeth.

He wants to destroy the Constitution, simply because he thinks it is fashionable to do so.

I doubt that he can be reached.

[sthguard]

How do you reason with someone who thinks it’s okay to “move on” from what even he admits is a dearly-bought right? For that matter, why should such a person be allowed to benefit from any of the rights protected by the Constitution?

[Paladin2]

"Voting is a right; gun ownership is a privilege."

Uh, nope.

[Paladin2]

Not owning a gun is a right.

[Mister Da]

“Voting is a right; gun ownership is a privilege.”

As if the Second Amendment never existed.

This article is just pathetic. It is bizarrely nostalgic, citing stories that support gun possession, & totally irrational in our crime filled society. Just because the KKK & white lynch mobs no longer roam the roads at night, people should disarm, ignoring the greater threat from the Crips & Bloods & all the other thugs on the streets.

This fool would have blacks disarm in the face of massive crime in their neighborhoods. Duh?

This is just another Liberal who doesn't give a damn for anyone but himself & his fantasies. He doesn't care if people are robbed, raped, & murdered in their homes. He confuses a gun free world with a crime free world.

[marktwain]

He cannot escape his false "progressive" premises, no matter how much evidence he has.

In his defense, changing your basic premises about how the world works is one of the most difficult things for a person to do, usually accomplished only under great stress.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks marktwain. I recall hearing part of his recollections from a Professor Lundy at MSU.

One of the earliest scenes of the Autobiography of Malcolm X takes us to the Lansing, Mich., of 1929. Malcolm's father, Earl Little, a Baptist minister derided as "uppity" for aspiring to own a store and live outside the city's traditional black neighborhoods, shot a pistol one night at a pair of white men who'd apparently set the family's home ablaze. In the following weeks, the police regularly searched the new Little residence, "looking for a gun." The pistol, which officials refused to issue the minister a permit to legally carry, was eventually sewn into a pillow. The scene is a powerful reminder of why for much of American history, it was necessary for blacks to fight for the right to bear arms, often to protect our very existence.