How the civil rights movement changed black gun culture

[The Straight Story]

How the civil rights movement changed black gun culture


The subject of guns is a volatile one in the black community: a disproportionate number of black Americans are killed by firearms each year.

Gang violence has destabilised some communities, while high-profile killings of black youths like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis have led political leaders to call for reforms to how guns are made, sold, used and stored.

But Nicholas Johnson, a law professor at Fordham University in New York City, says black Americans have a long, positive history with guns. Firearms, he says, helped black Americans escape slavery, defend their homes and fight for their freedom. It was only after the civil rights movement that the public attitude towards guns started to change.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26582811

[gejohnston]

1. I saw his interview on Book TV

http://www.amazon.com/Negroes-Gun-Black-Tradition-Arms-ebook/dp/B00E2RWQHM

[PM Martin]

2. kick

[NYC_SKP]

3. “America’s gun culture is often thought to be lily white."

Editorial Reviews
Review
“America’s gun culture is often thought to be lily white. In this groundbreaking book, Nicholas Johnson shows how African Americans, from the abolitionists to the Deacons for Defense and Justice, have taken up arms time and again to fight for their rights and their lives. You’ll never look at guns and the Second Amendment in the same way again.”

—Adam Winkler, professor of law, UCLA School of Law, author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America

“Race has always been part of the unspoken motive for gun control in the United States. Johnson provides the best, most thorough history of the topic, telling the story mainly from the perspective and voices of blacks themselves. Shattering the myth of black passivity in the face of violent racism, the book is full of inspiring stories of genuine American heroes—some of them famous and many who were not—who used their Second Amendment rights to defend the civil rights of their people. Never shying away from the hardest questions, Johnson addresses the moral and practical complexities of armed self-defense, past and present. A major contribution to cultural studies and to the history of race in America.”

—David B. Kopel, research director, Independence Institute, Denver, Colorado
About the Author
Nicholas Johnson (New York, NY) is professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where he has taught since 1993. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is the lead author of Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights and Policy (Aspen 2012).

http://www.amazon.com/Negroes-Gun-Black-Tradition-Arms-ebook/dp/B00E2RWQHM

[spin]

4. If I had been a black man living in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s ...

I would have greatly valued a firearm and the training to use it to protect my family from the KKK.

You haven't heard about KKK members in white robes riding in their pickup trucks though black neighborhoods for many years. You still might if blacks were not allowed to own firearms.

[Straw Man]

5. One of my acquaintances ...

... is a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the US and eventually became a college professor. One of his first jobs was at a black college in the Deep South in the early '60s. After taking the measure of the surrounding community and its attitude toward his place of employment, he decided that it would be prudent to acquire a pistol and learn how to use it. Because he was white, this was relatively easy for him to do.

I'll leave it to y'all to sort out the ironies.