More on bigotry
Joe notes the origin of the gun control and bigotry meme. And, of course, Clayton Cramer’s Racist Roots of Gun Control is a good read.
Also timely is David Kopel’s post on How the right to arms saved the non-violent civil rights protesters:
I was beaten and arrested many times and hospitalized twice. This happened to many, many people in the movement. No one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms within it.
And, also related, Gun Control as a Cultural Issue.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:12 am
Dan Rather, in his autobiography (don’t ask why, but yes I read it), relates that while covering a civil rights story in the deep South, he was confronted by a white bigot who threatened him with a gun. His cameraman, who had ignored corporate orders to go unarmed, pulled his revolver and pointed it at the man’s head to convince him that someone else, someplace else, should be targeted for bigotry. Dan Rather lived that day because his more intelligent cameraman had a gun and was willing to use it.
This is yet another example of how the civil rights movement, or at least the reporting of it, was protected by use of firearms.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
No man requires the disarming of another unless he intends that other harm.