Ah, we have an inconvenient truth for you. No, we’re not talking about Al Gore and his take on man-made climate change. This is a site about guns, after all.
No, the inconvenient truth that we’re talking about today is about gun ownership and real equality in a society. Yes, we’re talking about racial and gender equality. No, government can’t bring any kind of meaningful equality in those areas, but you know what will? Gun ownership by members of those groups. Nicholas Johnson writes,
The views of the drafters and advocates of the Fourteenth Amendment are plain. Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan introduced the proposal by explaining that “the great object” of the amendment is to “restrain the power of the states and compel them in all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees … secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as the right to keep and bear arms.”
The same congress that advanced the Fourteenth Amendment also abolished southern state militias, demonstrating a vision of the right to arms as an individual right, and not merely some federal protection of state prerogatives.
Johnson continues,
After the [Civil] war, the utility of the repeating rifle was abundantly clear to Black people who plainly needed more than the parchment barriers of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect them against both private terrorism and the overtly hostile state and local governments.
The Black Codes of this era (local and state laws that aimed to reinstitute slavery in a different form) reflected the age-old wisdom that subjugation requires disarmament. The Freedmen appreciated instinctively that arms were vital to their survival. They defied local and state disarmament efforts and defended their neighbors, friends and selves. We know from newspapers of the day, petitions to Congress, and reporting of Freedman’s Bureau agents that the right to arms was a paramount concern for those newly freed in the territory where they were recently enslaved.
By the end of the 19th century, the importance of repeating rifles to Black people was so well-established that storied anti-lynching advocate, Ida B. Wells, would declare, “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home.”
Wells’ praise of the Winchester was not empty rhetoric, and her perspective was not just historical. She was referencing two recent episodes, one in Jacksonville, Fla., and one in Paducah, Ky., where well-armed Black people thwarted lynch mobs.
Even early African-American luminary W.E.B. Du Bois spoke of buying a rifle and ammunition for protection.
Yet, anti-gunners in our current day and age are the ones who talk about the need for racial and gender equality. The fact that these “activists” support gun control at the same time makes it clear that these people either don’t really want equality for gender and/or ethnic minorities or these activists are clueless about history and, therefore, have no idea what really works besides some silly hypothesis espoused by an anti-gun activist.
The truth of the matter is that the root of real equality always has been and always will be the ability to defend oneself and one’s family, and the best way to provide that protection is and always has been the personal ownership of the weapons of the day. In our era, that weapon is a firearm.
To put it simply: if people want real racial and gender equality, then all people need to have access to acquiring firearms and ammunition. Anything else will simply lead to oppression and enslavement of one group under another.
Great article! And it is the unvarnished truth;anti-gun laws enable such things as lynch mobs and actual repeat of slavery. In fact, anti-gun activists are bent on enslaving the people and this time it will not be motivated by racist leanings; with all of today’s technology available the Thought Police of “1984” would become a reality.
As far as racial equality, the tables have turned because of the anti-White democRATIC party. The White population is being vilified and the criminals of BLM/ANTIFA are encouraged to continue rioting, looting, burning everything down and destroying precious monuments and statues. The actions of BLM/ANTIFA have done nothing to heal racial tensions but increased them. This is not a safe country for White men, women, and children and in order to return to the once safe country founded as a White Christian nation to provide a new and/or second home for Europeans, the criminal race of people who are ungrateful and disrespectful tot his country, should be returned to their homeland or Liberia as President Lincoln intended. Nowhere in the world is there a country who has allowed their minority population to hijack and take over the country. Traitors and treason everywhere you look. At the very least in order for the White population to remain safe in the country founded for them, we must demand the return of segreation.
Excellent article, our Country, our Constitution and Bill of Rights were founded on God’s principles. They were founded on facts that are just as relevant as they were nearly 150 years ago. Criminals do not abide by the law and will use whatever weapon is available to them, being nothing more than a caveman with a stick or a rock, so it is not the gun that kills it is the man. These so called gun safety laws will only make criminals of otherwise honest decent people, and the crimes and killings will get worse.
All one needs to do is to look at the most crime ridden cities or areas of the US, and the world, and you will find the strongest gun control laws, including total bans on guns. So the definition of insanity is If to keep on doing what you have always done and expect different results. Guns aren’t the problem it is the lawlessness that follows gun control laws protecting the criminals and eliminating the public from defending themselves. Of all of the mass shootings every single one of them were committed inside of a gun free zone. Therefore none of the victims were able to defend themselves due to these laws.
Those that forget the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes! The Texas Lubys restaurant mass shooting in 1991 proves that very thing.In 1991 you weren’t allowed to bring a gun into a restaurant or a church in Texas. A madman in a gun free zone slaughtered I believe 19 people. It unfortunately held the mass shooting record for some time. 2 people in the restaurant had to leave there guns outside in their cars. One of whom had two relatives killed that day. Thirty years later and history has repeated itself over and over again in other states that didn’t learn the lesson of that day. Texas did! They changed the law !
What? Seriously, how do you all NOT see the stupidity of this line of reasoning? Yes, a firearm is a great source of protection of yourself, your home and your family; I own one myself. However, it is NOT a source of protection from discriminatory hiring, lower pay for doing the same job, racial slurs, and being pulled over in your car because you’re black. Reaching racial and gender equality will not occur with everyone owning a gun as we are not a society today with wilding gangs roaming the countryside hunting for women and minorities, thereby requiring those individuals to own one. It happens when people stop seeing an individual with a darker skin tone than them and stop judging them before they know them. It happens when racists are removed from public office or positions of power and influence. It happens when we – white people – admit we have lived a privileged life and strive to be self-reflective and learn about others. It has nothing to do with gun rights.
The comments above worry me about many of my countrymen and women. “Anti-gun laws enable lynching.” What century do you live in? “As far as racial equality, the tables have turned.” Since when? Caucasians are still 76% of our country and there are no signs of us ever becoming the minority, so no fear there. We are a “country founded as a White Christian nation to provide a new and/or second home for Europeans, the criminal race of people who are ungrateful and disrespectful to this country.” No true Christian would ever be so exclusive and hate-filled. “We must demand the return of segregation.” Wow…..how can anyone make or justify a statement like that and NOT be racist?
And from these comments, it’s no wonder we gun owners are portrayed as ignorant, racist rednecks.
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