Why Black People Own Guns

[ClarendonDem]

That's the title of the HuffPo story. Here's the intro:

As much as America loves her guns, she has never liked the idea of seeing them in black hands.

Before the Revolutionary War, colonial Virginia passed a law barring black people from owning firearms — an exercise in gun control as racial control. In 1857, in his notorious Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney summoned the specter of black people freely enjoying the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Surely, he argued, the founders were not “so forgetful or regardless of their own safety” to permit such a thing. When black people armed themselves against white supremacist attacks following the Civil War, Southern state governments passed “black codes” barring them from owning guns. After the Black Panthers open carried to signal to California police officers that they would defend themselves against racial attacks in the late ’60s, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a state ban on open carry into law.

In 2016, legal gun owner Philando Castile was shot after informing a Minnesota police officer that he was armed. Two years prior, Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police while holding a toy gun. John Crawford suffered the same fate in a Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart.

So what does black gun ownership mean in a country so determined to keep its black populace unarmed? Since the 2016 election, interest in firearms has supposedly ticked upward in the black community. Gun shops and clubs link the interest to a desire for self-protection against the white supremacists emboldened by President Donald Trump’s election.

HuffPost spoke to 11 black gun owners about their reasons for owning a firearm. Trump was a non-factor. Instead, they talked about wanting to protect themselves out of fear that no one else would. They talked about their anxieties during interactions with the police and their complex views on gun regulation. Where gun advocates often adduce the imaginary heroics of a hypothetical active-shooter scenario to their arguments, the black gun owners we talked to referred to specific incidents, specific provocations — as if redlined, too, out of the fantasyland of American gun culture. And most of them returned to a sentiment as old as the nation itself: that owning firearms is a rebellion against a system bent on keeping them out of the hands of black folks.

Well worth a read. The rest can be found here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-gun-ownership_us_5a33fc38e4b040881bea2f37?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

[heaven05]

1. white folk always

Last edited Wed Dec 27, 2017, 08:10 AM - Edit history (1)

have felt a deep fear of an AA with a gun. Castile, case in point. 11 year old Tamir Rice, case in point, John Crawford, two called upon because some racist white, fearful and hateful, of the black man with a gun, got two killed. An 11 year old with a toy gun, an adult picking out a toy present for a relative. Folks in this country are just racist pigs. The idiotboypotus proves ameriKKKans are stupid and racist people full of hate. Philando Castile told the cop he was a legal carry, cop shot the fuck out of him anyway.

Well it not all "yes mr. charlie" anymore...just can't be that way anymore. White people just have to deal with the fact that AA have a right to defend themselves in a racist culture that has always been full full of stupid hateful people. PERIOD.

[ClarendonDem]

2. I can't grasp

How the cop who shot Castile was acquitted.

[heaven05]

3. I can

he was black and the coward under authority of badge and gun...well having grown up in a time where the sheriff and his family, in that gentile white town in wherever USA, were picnic goes at the hanging of a black person, man, woman and child sometimes, Castile is just an historical extension, as the idiotboypotus is, of the inherent and now open racism of ameriKKKan culture/society.

[john657]

4. Can't argue with you on that.

[Marengo]

5. No comment from DUs dick extender metal penis contingent? Interesting.

[ClarendonDem]

7. There is a

Noticeable lack of "white winger" and "ammosexual" jibes.

[Straw Man]

6. I'm surprised that more black people don't.

Especially in the current climate, with a Klan apologist in the White House.

That's why I have to cringe at programs like the HUD "gun buybacks" of the early 2000s: condescending cant, through and through.

[oneshooter]

8. The same reason white folk do

Self defense, hunting, and target shooting.

[Puha Ekapi_2]

9. Worth a bump

I'd really like to hear a response from the pro-control people.

The sentiments of African-American folks wrt firearms somewhat mirrors the thoughts of my own people. Native Americans are likely the most armed demographic in the country. I personally don't know of any household in my community without at least one firearm, and we own them because our long sad experience with the dominant culture has shown us that we can't rely on anyone else to defend us. As a broad group on a national level, we are also the most reliable Democratic voting population in the country, at 98% or better, even though we understand that politicians of any stripe are generally liars and crooks

[Lokilooney]

10. you probably wont get a responce

It doesn't fit in with a certain narrative...same with female gun owners, without being able to make a certain anatomical reference they're at a loss.

[yagotme]

11. Gun control works.

Just ask a Native American.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

12. BTW you're replying to one.

Point of information

[yagotme]

13. Yes, I figured so.

Have seen that statement on bumper sticker. Paraphrased, of course.