Salon:
Black men are routinely shot down by police in the country, that’s the bottom line. And while it’s certainly admirable for open carry advocates to stick to their principles and defend John Crawford’s right to carry a toy gun around Wal-Mart, it’s failing to see the forest for the trees. John Crawford, Michael Brown, Kajieme Powell, Levar Jones were all unarmed black men killed shot by police in the last few months. It wouldn’t have helped them to actually be carrying guns, real or otherwise.
Surely these open carry people, however well intentioned, should realize that nice white men and women openly carrying firearms on the street aren’t being gunned down on sight by police officers. The worst thing that happens to them is they are forced to show their ID. It’s unarmed black men (and unarmed mentally ill people of all races) who are being gunned down on sight by police officers. Are they agitating for their right to shoot cops? I doubt it. Nor should they be.
The problem isn’t that people don’t have enough guns. The problem is that police are too often using the guns they have. That won’t be solved by a bunch of average suburban white people wandering around public spaces with their rifles slung over their backs. Those aren’t the people most likely to be shot by police –whether they’re armed or not. They’re missing the point entirely.
In addition to confusing the Ohio stop and identify statute, which is oriented towards a legitimate “Terry Stop” rather than just any happenstance desire for the police to know someone’s identity (meaning that the Ohio police didn’t really have a right to stop the open carriers), the author is the one that misses the point.
Read her logic again. Because – in her estimation – blacks are “gunned down” by police more than whites, the silly practice of open carry by whites is a meaningless contribution to liberty. It misses the problem of over-zealous cops. And while we can agree with the author about the over-zealous cops, we simply cannot agree on the notion that carrying weapons is a meaningless exercise of liberty and self protection.
The author would deny it, but her conclusion and end result is as racist as the Jim Crow laws in so many counties where the Sheriff reserves the right to deny gun ownership regardless of liberties and rights recognized by State Constitutions. They are all racist and need to go the way of the dinosaur.
Another example of racism came up today in Disqus comments that drove a little bit of traffic to this site.
Zoo critters are praying for the man in this article on this wingnut blog. They’re so gullible and so lazy that they don’t even realise they’re praying for a black man.
The commenter is talking about the article on Marvin Louis Guy who defended his life in a no-knock raid and now faces the death penalty in Texas. I didn’t realize he is black, so says the commenter. Then there is this soon after.
Oh dear. That puts them in a bind, doesn’t it? Tut, tut.
I can’t decide whether these comments were left by a feminist Sophomore international studies student at Dartmouth or scrawny boy in his mommy’s basement who has no job. I’ll assume for former for the sake of argument.
First of all, the only reason that someone would invoke the issue of race is because she is thinking about it. The only reason someone would think that gun owners and gun rights advocates would care about race is that they assume we are as racist and bigoted as they are.
For the record, I know his skin color. The man has as much right to defend his life as anyone else, and in Texas he has a right to defend life and property. Moreover, I don’t even care if the man was guilty of the crime of which he was charged (drugs). If he thinks that someone is breaking into his home in the middle of the night, he has a God-given right to defend his life and the lives of his loved ones. In fact, he has the duty to do so. What you will find if you peruse this and similar sites is a consistent objection to thuggish and overbearing police tactics. You will also find consistent support for the right to self defense regardless of race. Consider David Codrea.
I addressed that question in principle many years ago, on the pioneering (and long-discontinued) GunTuths.com website in an essay titled “What the Panther Taught the Eagle: A Modern Folk Tale.” It involved about 50 armed members of the New Black Panthers who were counter-demonstrating against the Ku Klux Klan in Jasper, Texas, after James Byrd, a black man, had been kidnapped by three racist whites, chained to the back of a truck, dragged for miles down a country road and decapitated upon hitting a culvert.
“The Panther’s historic affinity for Marxist dogma notwithstanding, their stand demonstrates the true meaning and power behind the Second Amendment’s guarantee that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” I wrote at the time. “The truth is, the Panthers applied the right to bear arms in exactly the way it was intended to be – in defense of their lives and their rights. Their presence deterred violence against them. They did not engage in unwarranted violence. Their stand should be applauded as an example by all who believe that this is a right of all free people.”
Consider also Kurt Hofmann:
What Sugarmann did not point out then, and is certainly not pointing out now, is that the vast majority of the murderers of African-Americans are also black (91.1% then, 89.4% now). In other words, Sugarmann makes an issue of the fact that almost 57% of black homicides are committed with handguns, while pretending to ignore the vastly stronger correlation of race. If the focus for reducing black homicide, then, “must” be on “reducing access to firearms,” then whose access must be reduced?
“No guns for negroes,” all over again, right in line with the shameful history of American “gun control.”
And shameful it is. All Jim Crow laws should fall. I am told that the opposition to open carry in South Carolina by powerful state senator Larry Martin was because those horrible Negros down around Charleston might open carry and thus affect the tourism industry in South Carolina. Larry Martin is an enemy of liberty.
Now on a personal note. As to being a “wingnut” blog and my readers being “zoo critters,” let me tell you something deary. I chew through people like you like I chew through a tenderloin. I enjoy it. You feel free to step into my back yard and run with the big dogs any time you feel froggy. Be warned, though. We play rough.
And drop the racism. It betrays an evil heart. Oh, and by the way, thanks for the traffic today.
