For Some African-Americans, Gun Ownership Underscores Segregated Past

NPR ^ | 11 Jan 2016 | NPR

[Theoria]

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Black people are disproportionately victimized by gun violence, and prominent African-American leaders are among those calling for tighter gun control. Yet as Karen Grigsby Bates of NPR's Code Switch team found out, many other African-Americans believe that owning guns is crucial to protecting themselves and their rights.

KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Know how some people can't do without something? April Howard has three possessions that are non-negotiable.

APRIL HOWARD: I have a .22, a .38 and a rifle.

BATES: And she's keeping them all. Howard's had guns for several years now, the result of a close call at her D.C. metro area home that still makes her shudder.

A. HOWARD: Someone was breaking into my home while I was home alone at 7 a.m. in the morning. That prompted me to immediately get some form of protection for me and my home.

BATES: That doesn't make Howard unusual, says Charles Cobb. Cobb's book, "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made The Civil Rights Movement," looks at black Americans' historic relationship to guns. For decades, Cobb says, most blacks lived in the rural South and had guns.

CHARLES COBB: And this is a tradition that goes all the way back to the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Black people have traditionally used guns for self-defense.

BATES: Cobb says guns were kept on farms for hunting, for pest-control and to repel white vigilantes. Even non-violent participants in the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King for a time, kept guns at home to protect their families. In the mid-'60s, Malcolm X responded to a rumor that the Nation of Islam was urging blacks to buy guns by reminding the press they were legally entitled to do that.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I briefly worked for a gun dealer. Some of our best customers were older black men who lived in parts of town where civilization had collapsed.

[Retain Mike]

Here is a YouTube that goes with the post.

Blacks and Gun Control
http://www.youtube.com/embed/9RABZq5IoaQ?feature=player_embedded

[MNJohnnie]

ON NPR? Wow will wonders never cease.

[Mears]

Is anyone here as sick of reading,hearing,talking about black people as I am?

It never end.

.

[Joe Brower]

"Black people are disproportionately victimized by gun violence other black people."

There, fixed it.

[TexasCajun]

NPR complaining Black’s are into gun control so much.

[SunkenCiv]

Surprising, coming from NPR. We need to defund them anyway. Thanks Theoria.

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This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made The Civil Rights Movement by Charles E. Cobb Jr. Audible (audiobook version) author page B & N

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[stocksthatgoup]

for pest-control which come in plenty of colors

[Pajamajan]

Bookmark

[Da Coyote]

TFB.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Dred Scott vs Sanford.
What the SCOTUS thought about gun control in the pre Civil War era.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0060_0393_ZO.html

“It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished;

and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs,

and to KEEP AND CARRY ARMS wherever they went.”

[MileHi]

...and to KEEP AND CARRY ARMS wherever they went.”

And so the Supreme Court weighs in on the meaning of the second amendment.

But lets don't talk about it since the overall decision was flawed.

[BookmanTheJanitor]

Some of our best customers were older black men who lived in parts of town where civilization had collapsed.

I grew up south of the LA Coliseum. The only hope for protection of your home was a gun.

[BobL]

“Some of our best customers were older black men who lived in parts of town where civilization had collapsed.”

Skin color quickly fades away when you describe these men. I work with a black dude from the South that is, how do say, well-armed. There is NO DOUBT he’d have my back and those of everyone else on our team, if it came to that.

[Redcitizen]

When I was in the army, my room mate was a good christian man. I never failed to see him pray. He was a good worker in the motor pool. I met his family. Good people. He was black. Sure some are bad but there are bad people of any race. So I’m not tired of hearing of black people.

[Mears]

I also have know personally some wonderful black people who never preach about being black.

I’ve entertained them in my home.

I’m talking about the constant,incessant bleating about the black culture and the black experience and racism etc.

It seems to be endless these days.