Rule No. 1: Arm Yourselves
/“A man’s rights rests in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” (Frederick Douglass)
After Charles Cotton, a Houston attorney and National Rifle Association board member, blamed the slain pastor of Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for the massacre that occurred at the church on June 17, 2015, a tornado of outrage engulfed his comments before he had time to delete them.
“Eight of the church members, who might be alive if [the pastor of the church and South Carolina state Senator, Clementa Pinckney] had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church, are dead. Innocent people died because of his political position on the issue,” posted Cotton on June 18, 2015, in a Texas gun advocates forum.
(Pinckney was also killed by the murderer, white supremacist Dylan Roof, during the massacre, bringing the total of blacks martyred to nine.)
The NRA rebuked Cotton. Liberals damned him. And many blacks shook their heads in disbelief that a knucklehead possibly deranged by diphtheria would blame the victim of mass murder for committing mass murder.
Pinckney had voted “no” on a 2011 bill that would have allowed gun owners to bring their weapons into restaurants, day-care centers and churches. And though it is illegal to carry firearms into houses of worship, South Carolina law does allow weapons in individual cases where a church permits them.
The Beginnings of a Black Gun Lobby?
Normally, objections to Cotton’s complaint are not only justified, but also a drawbridge of reason that should never be lowered. However, with the election of Donald Trump as fuhrer of the United States, and if you listen to the gun-policy positions of an increasing number of blacks, Cotton’s gripe may contain some ounce of sound judgment.
On March 31, 2015, the Rev. Samuel Mosteller, longtime president of the Georgia chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, at a rally in front of the Georgia state capitol, told black families to “exercise their Second Amendment rights” and arm themselves.
Mosteller made the call in response to the killing of two unarmed black men, Nicholas Thomas and Anthony Hill, by Georgia police officers, even though Martin Luther King, Jr., co-founded the SCLC as an organization to promote nonviolent social change.
On April 16, 2015, the head of the Crittenden County, Arkansas, NAACP, Shabaka Afrika, held a news conference in West Memphis, also advising black families to exercise their Second Amendment rights and arm themselves. Along with Hubert Bass, founder of the Crittenden County Justice Commission, Afrika urged black people in the county to get educated and join a gun club.
On May 10, 2015, Dr. Mauricelm-Lei Millere, a Columbus, Ohio, psychotherapist and founder of the Black Nationalist Network, who formerly counseled the New Black Panther Party in Ferguson, Missouri, tweeted regarding the Freddie Gray death that sparked the Baltimore uprising in April and May of 2015:
If Freddie Gray's killers walk you will see cops being killed in broad daylight. Many are being killed now. In self defense blacks must kill
— Dr. Mauricelm-Lei (@drmauricelmlei)
And
If you can find the snake that bit you in the garden, any old snake in blue will do! Kill in self defense the one in blue who's killing you!
— Dr. Mauricelm-Lei (@drmauricelmlei)
Then, on June 19, 2015, the Charleston massacre provoked a number of pointed comments on guns from angry blacks at hashtag #WeWillShootBack.
God is a Black Woman@NelsonEmpowered
Black people, join a gun club and find yourself a nearby firing range #WeWillShootBack
And from the hashtag #Iwillnotbeavictim comes a bold assertion:
Tweetypiela
@tweetypiela
When I attend church on Sunday, I will carry my gun with my bible. GOD HELP THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES.
#Iwillnotbeavictim #WeWillShootBack
Blunting Opposition to Black Gun Ownership
The backlash against these calls for self-defense has been dense and poisonous, like smog. For example, on April 1, 2015, just one day after Mosteller called on Georgia blacks to arm themselves, SCLC National President and CEO Dr. Charles Steel, Jr., suspended Mosteller. And one West Memphis black resident, Lorenzo Boyce, criticizing Afrika and Bass, said “Us as black people should know more about our rights, but you got a lot of people with guns who shouldn't have guns.”
Such criticism has placed black America in a dilemma as nauseating as the smell of dry rot. If blacks carry guns, they may kill white racists. If they don’t carry guns, white racists will continue to kill them. Why does the black community have to choose between the two?
If Steel saw a neo-Nazi kick down the front door of his house to molest his children, wouldn’t he pick up a revolver the man dropped and shoot him? If Boyce witnessed a KKK hostage-taker grab his mother or aunt, put a gun to her head and smile as he was about to pull the trigger, would he take the gun a friend loaned him and kill the man?
So if Steel and Boyce would kill to protect their own families, why would they deny the right of other blacks to own guns and protect their families from savage white racists?
An Appeal to Common Sense
Sometimes, the mule of nonviolence is not worth riding. In fact, in most circumstances, it is better to own a gun and live, if not owning one means you die. What would have happened, we wonder, if one or more of the Charleston nine had also carried a 45-caliber Glock handgun to Bible study that tragic night?
Therefore, to black people everywhere, we beg you, in the name of wisdom—in the name of common sense, prudence and self-preservation—under the dome of the omnipotent, deeply passionate and ever-loving God, who sometimes pleads with tears:
In the era of Donald Trump and the rains of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, reject the nonviolence-only approach as a drought of reason. Join black gun ownership groups like the National African American Gun Association. Turn your backs on those, such as the establishment negro, who offer you the swamp water of “Let’s not rock the boat” to quench your thirst for justice.
Instead, consider the wise advice a poor, black Alabama dirt farmer gave his 9-year-old daughter after a white buyer of his produce demanded he accept payment for his corn, okra and butter beans at 70 percent less than what he paid white farmers.
After gulping his seventh glass of corn liquor, he said to his little girl with slurred, drunken words, “Sweetie pie, if ya walks home by yas-self one night and a white mans comes near ya, when he’s a hundred feets away, scream. When he’s fifty feets away, blows snot from your nose, pees in ya pants and farts. And when he’s twenty-five feets away, takes this here small two-barrel gun I’s gi ya and shoot that cracka’s thing off.”