We had bought some guns too, in stores, and later a church in the North raised money and got us better rifles. The Klan discovered we were arming and guarding In the summer of 1957 they made one big attempt to stop us. An armed motorcade attacked Dr. Perry’s house, which is situated on the outskirts of the colored community. We shot it out with the Klan and repelled their attack and the Klan didn’t have any more stomach for this type of fight. They stopped raiding our community. -
Williams, Robert F.. Negroes with Guns (Kindle Locations 657-659). Martino Fine Books. Kindle Edition.
In the days following the Sandy Hook massacre I, like many people on the left, started calling for a ban on assault rifles. Most of my readers have known me for a long time, and you know that I got very good at making the case that the Second Amendment wasn't intended for people to own firearms for personal use. I spent a lot of time debating the subject online, and got quite good at it.
One of the days that I was debating gun control and the Second Amendment I was shown a link to a piece written by Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense titled, "In Defense of Self Defense". In it, he wrote:
"The racist dog oppressor fears the armed people; they fear most of all Black people armed with weapons and the ideology of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. An unarmed people are slaves or subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people, it will arm the people from foreign aggression. Black people are held captive in the midst of their oppressors. There is a world of difference between thirty million unarmed, submissive Black people and thirty million Black people armed with freedom and defense guns and the strategic methods of liberation.It was the first pro-gun piece of literature that I had read where I thought, "He makes a good point." During the height of the Freedom Movement, it would make sense for minorities to own weapons to defend themselves with against the Klan and other white supremacist forces that want to kill them. But I told myself that it's 2013, and that that world is different from 1964.
What a difference a few years makes, huh? The world doesn't seem so different now. We're smack dab in the middle of a new civil rights movement with a president that got elected by appealing to the racist fears of white people, an attorney general that has one gigantic hard on for the Klan, and the highest amount of hate crimes being committed in what is probably my lifetime.
After Charlottesville, doubts that I had about the ownership of rifles had dissipated. I had decided that the left needs to be armed. Heavily armed. With AR-15s, AK-47s, pistols, shotguns, and just about every damn thing we can get our hands on. And, we need to start organizing. Nazis are out there, they want to kill us, and they have a whole lot of guns. While we were arguing on the internet about whether or not assault rifles should be legal, they've spent the past decade buying them. We're outgunned. That's the reality.
And yes, I know that many of us on the left do have some guns. Before I get lit up by friends in the comments, yes, I know you have some guns. Some of my left-wing friends have hunting rifles, pistols or shotguns. It still pales in comparison to the weaponry that the right-wing has spent the last decade stockpiling.
I have very little faith in law enforcement to protect us from the neofascists. Not when reports have come out saying that a whole lot of Nazis have become cops. Not when they've actively worked with white supremacists to bring down anti-racists. It's more than reasonable to acknowledge that we have an expectation that the police will NOT protect us when we're on the streets protesting.
I know for some of my liberal friends, that won't be enough to change their minds. You still don't want assault rifles to be legal. You're disgusted by the latest school shooting, and you'd have to be a sociopath to not be. But we've been down this road already. The past five years has shown that not a damn thing is going to come of this. There's going to be protests. There's going to be walkouts. And it won't do a damn thing. Hell, the kids that are protesting are already being smeared by the right as being "crisis actors". Trump is calling for arming teachers. Nothing is going to change.
I'll probably make a post on the ineffectiveness of protests someday, but it won't be today. I'll just tell you that nothing is going to come of it. We're not getting any new gun control laws anytime soon. That's the reality.
So you're saying that you don't care about schools getting shot up? You're saying we should do nothing?
No, that's not what I'm saying. My oldest kid is in elementary school now. My wife is a teacher. I worry very much about both of them. What I am saying is that like it or not, things aren't going to change anytime soon. Yet we have a paradox at work here. Regardless of your stance on gun control, the only way we're going to get it is if the left is heavily armed.
The right won't give up their guns now because they're the only ones that have them. That tips the balance of power to them, and they don't want to give that up. What will make them support gun control will be when we're armed and organized, because then they'll want to take that power away from us.
History has borne that out, and not just with guns. The Mulford Act was created explicitly to disarm The Black Panthers. Voter ID laws were created with the intent in mind of disenfranchising poor communities, especially those that aren't white, just to help right-wing politicians get into office that wouldn't otherwise. Wherever the left has found a way to gain power, the right has tried to take it away.
So here's our reality:
1. Fascists have spent the past few years stockpiling weapons
2. Fascists want to kill us
3. We're not going to have new gun control laws anytime soon
4. If we are armed, organized, and able to defend ourselves, maybe we'll end up getting gun control, anyway. At the very least, the right won't be fucking with us.
Lorenzo Raymond wrote a great article called, "Why the Left Needs a Gun Culture". In it, he says:
If leftists believe they are accomplishing anything by personally boycotting guns, it’s not working either politically or culturally. Whether pacifists like it or not, bearing arms is a US citizenship right—and has been a citizenship right for most of our history. If conservatives have successfully claimed this privilege, then it makes no sense for the Left to disarm itself and unilaterally renounce the Second Amendment. The Right won’t follow their example, but will instead briskly proceed to consolidate their monopoly on non-state force. There are ample signs that progressives are coming to understand this. The Liberal Gun Club, a national organization with nine chapters, reports a surge in membership since the election; a more radical local group, the Phoenix John Brown Gun Club, has a long track record of promoting armed defense against white supremacists in Arizona.
While left-wing self-defense won’t make the country any more dangerous, it is likely the only hope of making it safer. The genie of violent neofascism is out of the bottle. It’s an outgrowth of the shrinking of old economic horizons, which in turn is partly a result of now-irreversible climate change. The years of living dangerously are here to stay. The only question is will those of us who value an egalitarian internationalist community survive them. This doesn’t mean that leftists ought to shoot at common racists, much less at authorities, merely because of political differences. The majority of activity should continue to be nonviolent direct action. But as social movement analyst Francis Fox Piven has noted, guns can “be used strategically, and often defensively to permit the disruptive action, the withdrawal of cooperation, to continue” in the face of right-wing vigilantism...
The Left is correct to denounce the right-wing’s fetishization of brute force, but we are getting nowhere mirroring it with an equally crude fetishization of vulnerability. We can no longer dream that the Electoral College, or a CIA coup, or a safety pin, is going to save us in the age of brutal white power reaction. We must recognize that dissidents and oppressed people are on their own for the next four years—and possibly longer—and must take defense and security into their own hands. When racists and fascists declare “open season,” we will not allow innocent people to be the prey. We must vow to protect each other by any means necessary.We've got Neo-Nazis coming to Michigan in a few weeks. I'll be among those protesting them. I'll also be armed.
