Quoting a pro-Black gun ownership newsletter pdf I have:
Frederick Douglass, who in 1863 was encouraging Blacks to join the Union and fight in the Civil War said, In your hands that musket means liberty; and should your constitutional rights at the close of this war be denied, which in the nature of things, it cannot be, your brethren are safe while you have a Constitution which proclaims your right to keep and bear arms. This quote foreshadows everything we will examine.
There was a time that even the Church demanded that the Blacks be armed, in African Methodist Episcopal Church wrote in the 1886 Christian Recorder:
No military or civil officer has the right or authority to disarm any class of people, thereby placing them at the mercy of others. All men, without distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families or themselves. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner wrote an editorial in 1897, as a response to a local lynching, titled, Negroes Get Guns!
Ida Wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and who later became the most famous investigator of lynching, after having her life repeatedly threatened, said, I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked." "I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. She bought a pistol after her friend, Tom Moss, was lynched. She advised the Black community, The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home. It should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.
Hubert Harrison, the father of Harlem radicalism, said, I advise you to be ready to defend yourselves. I notice that the State Government has removed some of its restrictions upon owing firearms, and one form of live insurance for your wives and children might be the possession of some of these handy implements.
Zora Hurston, perhaps the most important Black female writer of the first half of the 20th century, and another leader of the Harlem Renaissance, packed a chrome plated 6-shooter pistol as she traveled throughout the south.
Rosa Parks, By the time I was six, I was old enough to realize that we were not actually free. The Ku Klux Klan was riding through the Black community, burning churches, beating up people, killing people. . . . My grandfather kept his guna doubled barreled shotgunclose by at all times. . . . I remember thinking that whatever happened, I wanted to see it. I wanted to see him shoot that gun. Rosa Parks organized community and neighborhood meetings that were so armed she recalled, With the table so covered with guns, I dont know where I would have put any refreshments.
A 13 year old Walter White, in Atlanta in 1906, once stood side by side with his father as a mob prepared to burn down their house, Son, dont shoot until the first man puts his foot on the lawn and then dont you miss! Mr. White would later lead the NAACP for 25 years.
W.E.B. Du Bois, I bought a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot. If a white mob had stepped on the campus where I lived I would without hesitation have sprayed their guts over the grass.
One should know about the family of Dr. Ossian Sweet, when he moved in to an all white neighborhood in Detroit in 1925, his family and 9 other people defended his home from a mob of attackers. All 12 in the house were arrested for killing one of the attackers, but were later acquitted by a white jury this famous court case established that a Black man could kill a White man in self-defense.
Dr. Robert Morton, President of the Tuskegee University, learned of a plan by the Klan to kill him and burn the Tuskegee school down. Dr. Mortons attitude was recalled by Walter White: I sat with him in his home at Tuskegee during the height of the trouble. He pointed to a rifle and a shotgun, well oiled and grimly businesslike, that stood in the corner of the room. Although his words in cold print may sound overheroic, they did not sound so to me as he said quietly, Ive got only one time to die. If I must die now to save Tuskegee Institute, Im ready. Ive been running long enough.
Condoleezza Rice, the first female National Security Advisor under President Bush witnessed her neighborhood come under attack from racists when a bomb was tossed through the window of a neighbors home. She grew up in Birmingham and witnessed the intense racism, her neighborhood formed an armed guard to keep out intruders.
T. Thomas Fortune puts self-defense in perspective: We do not counsel a breach of the law, but in the absence of law
we maintain that the individual has every right
to protect himself
We do not counsel violence,
we council manly retaliation.
Dr. TRM Howard, founder of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), kept a Thompson submachine gun in his home, and a rifle or shotgun in every corner of every room, and often wore a pistol on his waist. Every RCNL meeting was well armed, and it was expected that members would carry a concealed gun in public.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also practiced self-defense he applied for a concealed weapon permit after his house was bombed but the request was refused by local authorities. Members of Kings Baptist Church provided armed body guards for him, his home was described as a virtual garrison and in 1956 his home was described as the place is an arsenal.
Robert F. Williams, activist and writer of Negroes with Guns (1962) said, Racist consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity. He also wrote, "It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence. Robert was very active with the NAACP until he was kicked out for being too militant (following the events of the NAACP in Monroe, 1957, see below). Williams created a group called the Black Armed Guard which was a precursor to other armed Black Militia groups who followed a strategy labeled, God, Gandhi, and Guns.
Go tell those people I listed above how unsafe they were for daring to own a gun.
Now, if you don't store your guns properly, yes. With proper storage the odds of that decrease tremendously. What are the stats for proper vs improper storage for incidents of accidental/negligent discharges in the home? Or do the stats just lump both in or not even bother to differentiate?
