Big hat tip to MichaelHolmans for getting me started on this. I’ll get to him in a bit.
Before digging into the racism bit, let me first dismiss the notion that the 2nd Amendment is in any way still relevant in the way it was intended. The 2nd amendment was to make sure the citizens had equal rights to weapons as the government, to prevent tyranny. War is no longer rows of people with single-shot muskets lined up on opposite sides. War is the Air Force,the Marines, the Navy. Citizens don’t have that. So if it’s not about protecting ourselves from our government…what is it?
It’s about protecting ourselves from...ourselves. Or, our different-colored selves, anyway.
Here’s the quote I read this morning that put all this into motion for me.
The insight that the gun is racist. Gunmen were always a privilege of the Whites. The Ku Klux Klan also arose to confiscate the weapons of blacks. The US weapons lobby NRA is to a large extent still white - and whites are often the only ones who can claim the second constitutional amendment, the general right to arms. However, armed blacks and religious minorities are often considered "thugs" and "terrorists".
Look at it this way.
Sandy Hook- white shooter, white targets. Dylan Roof- white shooter, black targets. Gabby Giffords- white shooter, Democratic targets. Steve Scalise- white shooter, Republican targets. Las Vegas- white shooter, mostly white targets. All very sad, lots of prayers, but no need to change anything. It’s a criminal justice thing, not a prevention thing. No need to control those guns.
Another great example to prove this point and my earlier point- the Bundy ranch standoff in 2014 and the subsequent occupation of the Oregon Wildlife Refuge in 2015. Bunch of armed white guys making a stand against the government. A defining moment for the 2nd amendment, proof that we need it, that it works. But that’s absurd. If the government had really wanted to intervene, to assert their authority, one B-52 would have ended the standoff in seconds. Our weapons do nothing to protect us against our government. Furthermore, a large group of white people with guns is not a crisis.
Antioch church shooting- black shooter.
This reportedly is the incident that prompted White Lives Matter rally in Shelbyville, TN. A black man with a gun, this can’t be allowed to continue. Guns are for whites.
...
Then I saw something on Facebook that I can’t find now, I think Shaun King said it. Imagine if, instead of raising their fists during the national anthem, we had a team of football players all raise legally owned and obtained AR-15s. We’d get gun control passed by halftime.
Just imagine that for a minute. Close your eyes and think- a field full of big black guys with assault rifles. All the white folks in the stands who love watching young black men smashing into each other for sport…now all those black men have guns? There would be panic. Because black people still aren’t supposed to have guns.
Next time you see people talking about “getting the guns off the streets,” you know what that is code for. White people don’t keep their guns on the streets, they keep them in their trucks, or under their beds, or anchored to the walls or something. The “guns on the streets” are in the hands of black people. That’s all that means. When people talk about needing guns to protect themselves from “criminals,” saying that criminals don’t follow laws anyway so gun control laws would only affect law-abiding citizens, and taking away “our” guns would only make it easier for “them”...what color do you think those criminals are?
We will never make any progress towards reasonable, responsible gun control until we say, out loud, that it is OKAY for black people to have the same guns that white people do. It’s okay. An assault rifle in your truck isn’t going to protect you against a black guy with a handgun, anyway. It just makes you feel like you are in control, something that many white people in the south have been missing.