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Racism and Gun Control
The history of being black and armed in America
I recently read this article and it got me thinking about why gun rights are particularly important for historically oppressed groups such as blacks in America.
You see, I’m a pacifist who supports the Second Amendment for a variety of reasons. Partly because I am a student of history.
I know that when only the nobility were armed — whether samurai in medieval Japan or knights in medieval Europe — peasants were oppressed. This holds true in more modern times as well. Before Kristalnacht, the Nazis disarmed the Jews. The Khmer Rouge disarmed civilians before their massacres.
The right to bear arms gives a line of defense against government condoned oppression.
During the American Revolution, armed colonists, though often outmatched by the British, were able to fight back.
The first man to die in this conflict was Crispus Attucks, a black stevedore who was shot in the Boston Massacre. Was he armed? He could have been.
Free blacks, just like their white neighbors, owned guns during colonial times. On the frontier, it was essential, both to provide game for the table and to provide protection against both human and non-human predators.
