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Posted on 10/26/2014 2:34:21 PM PDT by Theoria
Conventional wisdom holds that firearms are the preserve of conservative white men. You would never know this at my local shooting range, which happens to be in a majority African-American area, and has a clientele that reflects that fact. There, as a white man, I’m often in the minority; just one more guy who likes to fire weapons — another person to chat to and share stories with. It is, I’d venture, how things should be.
By rights, the Second Amendment should serve as a totem of African-Americans’ full citizenship and enfranchisement. For centuries, firearms have been indispensable to black liberation: as crucial a defense against tyranny for Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. as for Sam Adams and George Washington. Today, however, many black Americans have a decidedly mixed relationship with the right to bear arms.
In August, as the outrage over the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., dominated the news, an African-American group calling itself the Huey P. Newton Gun Club took to the streets of Dallas, rifles in hand, to protest. Local businesses were supportive, and the city’s police chief confirmed in a statement that his department “supports the constitutional rights of all.” On Twitter, the hashtag #blackopencarry prompted a warm response from conservatives.
And yet, that same month, a 22-year-old black man named John Crawford III was shot dead by the police in an Ohio Walmart after a white customer claimed excitedly that a man was pointing a gun at his fellow patrons. Later, the store’s security footage revealed that Mr. Crawford had been holding a BB gun that he had picked up in the sporting goods department, and that the caller’s testimony had been wrong. Ohio is an open carry state. That didn’t make much difference for Mr. Crawford.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I read this via a link @ Ace of Spades, they are right the comments at the Times are almost completely idiotic.
I also hate the way they have their comments on the side now, it’s just very hard to navigate and annoying.
Just the comments are idiotic?
“Conventional wisdom holds that firearms are the preserve of conservative white men”
Huh?
Eh, I thought the piece was a little jumbled to tell the truth.
Laws that require showing an ID to buy a gun are discriminatory?
Sure. There should be no requirement for such. While we are at it, throw out permits.
just ask south side chicago...
I think they mean following gun laws/procedures is the preserve of conservative....
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.
judging by the number of black thugs killing other black thugs in Chicago, blacks have good gun rights
Ditto all American cities
They are excused from all law
No they don’t.
IDs are required to buy guns and thats unfair to blacks, the elderly and the poor.
Harriet Tubman iconography used to picture her with a rifle and a lantern. You don’t see the rifle nearly as much anymore.
Let's take a stroll through the hood and ask?
I think “conventional wisdom” is the wrong phrase. I think what the author meant was “because of the utter and complete liberal, academic and media bias against the 2nd Amendment, they have done everything they can to portray gun owners as white, racist, knuckle-dragging lynch mobs.”
Given the number of people killed by black men with guns compared to the number killed by white people with guns I’d say that the whites are the ones without equal gun rights.
“Conventional wisdom holds that firearms are the preserve of conservative white men.”
That’s racist! And wrong too.
In the mid eighties I saw an article in The Amsterdam News (don’t ask) arguing against the Saturday Night Special laws saying that cheap firearms are essential to a free citizenry. I wished I had saved it.
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