by David Clarke
You can’t put it any more plainly: we are responsible for our own lives and for others. Proverbs 25:26 (NKJV) instructs that “a righteous man who falters before the wicked is like a murky spring and a polluted well.” If a bad guy tries to injure you or your family, that is not the time to be caught off guard, without training, without the proper weapons. First Timothy 5:8 (NKJV) states, “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
So, how do you provide for yourself and your family? Among other things, by protecting them. Jesus instructed his disciples to carry a weapon. Luke 22:35–36 records a conversation he and his friends were having before going to a prayer meeting: “He said to them, ‘When I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything?’ So they said, ‘Nothing.’ Then He said to them, ‘But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one’” (NKJV).
His disciples, however, pointed out they were already armed: “So they said, ‘Lord, look, here are two swords.’ And He said to them, ‘It is enough’” (Luke 22:38 NKJV). Imagine that conversation. If that were to happen today, his friends would’ve pulled back their jackets, pointed to their holsters, and said, “We’re already carrying. Are two Glocks enough, or do we need more?”
Isn’t it interesting that the friends of Jesus carried personal weapons? Not only did he know about their weapons, he advised them on how much protection was necessary, actually encouraging them to be armed. Carrying weapons for self-defense has always been a part of American history and a part of our Judeo-Christian heritage. So why did everyone become apoplectic over my radio ads?
I have to believe that some of the uproar had to do with the fact that I am black and I was speaking to an audience that was at least partially comprised of blacks. America has mixed-up messages when it comes to black people and guns. But I have news for you, Anti-Gun-Idiots: the Second Amendment isn’t just for white people anymore.
Guns and Black People
America has a long and complicated history regarding guns and black people. At first, the colonial settlers did everything they could to make sure black people and Native Americans didn’t get their hands on weapons. Massachusetts and Plymouth colonists couldn’t legally sell guns to Native Americans, while black Virginia and Tennessee residents couldn’t own guns even if they were free. In 1857, the chief justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney, explained why the Supreme Court couldn’t possibly grant Dred Scott’s petition in the famous court case.
Dred Scott was a slave “owned” by an army doctor who had lived in one free state and one free territory—Illinois and Wisconsin. The case dealt with one important question: Should slavery be allowed in the West? The court, stacked with pro-slavery justices, affirmed the right of owners to take their slaves west. Scott would not be free, they decided, because he was considered merely property.
“It would give to persons of the negro race,” Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote in the majority decision “… the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased … to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased … the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
Black people crossing state lines? Speaking their minds? With guns? Pass the smelling salts! But his opinion showed how much slavery equals government tyranny. The government knows all too well that the first step to enslave people is to disarm them, and the first step to liberate them is to arm them.
You know the rest of the story. Eventually blacks were given citizenship, but the Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves only on paper. Even after the Civil War, some southern states enacted Black Codes that prohibited blacks from owning guns. In 1866, Congress overrode most portions of these codes by passing the Civil Rights Act; the Fourteenth Amendment passed two years later. States, however, still used taxes and high costs to keep black people and poor whites from owning guns. Virginia’s official university law review suggested a “prohibitive tax … on the privilege” of the sale of weapons to prevent “the son of Ham” from getting them. After all, the statement said, black people’s “cowardly practice of ‘toting’ guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime … Let a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights.”8 Frequently, only certain types of guns would be available to purchase—the kinds that only whites already had or could easily afford.
But early civil rights activist Ida B. Wells, in her argument against southern lynching, wrote that guns were the best deterrent against assault. “The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” Black people embraced gun ownership as their God-given right to showcase—and, in some cases, guarantee—their freedom. In modern America, regrettably, that has not been the case, and it might have to do with a simplistic understanding of the civil rights movement.
The Civil Rights Movement
When you think about the civil rights movement, the first people who come to mind are nonviolent protestors who rightfully went down in history for their remarkable courage and fortitude. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, that nonviolent resistance is “a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.”9 He wrote that “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”
Rosa Parks famously refused to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Instead of violently protesting the injustice, she organized a boycott to end the segregation. The boycott forced the city to change the law requiring segregation, which earned Parks the NAACP’s highest award and the nickname “the first lady of civil rights.”
These stories of the brave men and women paved the way for a nation full of the liberty and opportunity I enjoy. However, I think the emphasis on the civil rights nonviolent protest strategy often overshadows the more complicated truth about how blacks and guns do (and should) interact; it has separated blacks from their history.
For example, did you know that even people like these stalwarts of the nonviolent civil rights protests believed robustly in self-defense? Though he was denied a carry permit, King had what was described as a “veritable arsenal at home” to defend his family.
Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and became the great abolitionist orator still revered to this day. In 1850, he was asked what was the best response to the Fugitive Slave Act, which harshly penalized anyone for interfering in the capture and return of runaway slaves. Douglass responded simply, “A good revolver.”10
Wells, the activist who wrote so powerfully against southern lynching, offered good advice: “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
This desire to take charge of their own safety wasn’t unusual. “Far from being a digression from the principle of nonviolence,” Charles C. W. Cooke wrote in the New York Times, “this willingness to defend oneself was heir to a long, proud tradition.”
What people don’t get—and what liberals want us to forget—is that there’s a qualitative difference between violence and self-defense, even if the acts look the same. Imagine this scenario. A thief walks into a home, grabs a knife from a drawer, and slits the throat of an unsuspecting woman while she cooks. Now imagine another scenario. A woman is cooking when she sees a thief come into the kitchen. As he lunges toward her to attack her, she grabs a knife from the drawer and slits his throat.
These two scenarios look very similar—in one, a man slits a woman’s throat; in the
other a woman slits a man’s throat. The first is cold-blooded murder. The second is self-defense. Every civilization throughout history has made a distinction that one is perfectly unacceptable and the other is perfectly acceptable.
Even Gandhi, on whose principles King based his philosophies, believed in self-defense. “I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence,” he wrote in his book Doctrine of the Sword. He came to this realization the hard way. In 1908, he was assaulted and almost killed. He described the attack afterward by writing,
I took severe blows on my left ribs. Even now I find breathing difficult. My upper lip has a cut on one side. I have a bruise above the left eye and a wound on the forehead. In addition, there are minor injuries on my right hand and left knee. I do not remember the manner of the assault, but people say that I fell down unconscious with the first blow which was delivered with a stick. Then my assailants struck me with an iron pipe and a stick, and they also kicked me. Thinking me dead, they stopped. I only remember having been beaten up. I have an impression that, as the blows started, I uttered the words “He Rama!” [Oh God] … As I came to, I got up with a smile. In my mind there was not the slightest anger or hatred for the assailants.11
Interestingly, he reported that he had no feelings of ill will toward his attackers. But even though he didn’t blame them, he had interesting advice for his son: “When my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.”
I’d push it even further. Malcolm X rightly said, “I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self-defense; I call it intelligence.” As Cooke wrote, “Malcolm X may have a deservedly mixed reputation, but the famous photograph of him standing at the window, rifle in hand, insisting on black liberation ‘by any means necessary,’ is about as American as it gets. It should be celebrated just like the ‘Don’t tread on me’ Gadsden flag.”
He’s right. Though blacks should be strong defenders of the Second Amendment and gun rights, the antigun Left has hoodwinked us to be antigun. Although most gun owners are God-fearing, freedom-loving patriots who support the US Constitution, President Obama maligned them by calling them “bitter clingers.” He said that when things don’t go right, we cling to our guns and our religion. (Which is exactly right, federal government, so don’t forget it.) They have tried to make their cause less white to garner more sympathy from an unsuspecting general public.
It’s worked.
The Washington Post conducted a fascinating study on gun ownership that revealed an enormous racial disparity:
Black Americans and white Americans hold divergent attitudes about gun ownership. About 41 percent of white households own guns, compared to just 19 percent of black households, according to a 2014 Pew survey. And white Americans (62 percent) are more likely than black Americans (54 percent) to say that gun ownership does more to protect people than endanger personal safety. Those different experiences partly explain their divergent views: Whites (61 percent) are nearly twice as likely as blacks (34 percent) to say it’s more important to protect gun rights than to control gun ownership.12
In other words, this high homicide rate comes from a population with a very low rate of gun ownership. White Americans have more experience with guns and are subjected to less criminal gun violence. That’s why you should never buy the argument that more guns equals more violence. It’s just not true. White liberal Americans had a problem with my radio ads because they didn’t want black Americans defending themselves. The NRA should best be understood as a civil rights group.
“To disarm the people,” wrote George Mason, “was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” In 1775, our renegade Founding Fathers, the framers of the Constitution, understood the threat posed by a strong central government. They created self-rule around a document that places the power with the people. They understood government tyranny was a natural result of government, so they created safeguards. They knew that only an armed citizenry can keep government in check. “Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property,” Thomas Paine wrote. “Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”
Turns out “horrid mischief” was an understatement. It’s a historical truism that in the twentieth century, Nazi Germany’s use of firearm registration laws to confiscate weapons from Jews rendered them defenseless from attacks. Switzerland’s tradition of men armed with military weapons kept at home ready to organize into a militia of total resistance played a significant role in dissuading Nazi invasion during World War II.
Survival is the first law of nature because human beings have an inherent desire to survive. Sometimes that means fighting off criminal predators.
The people who believe guns should be restricted are stuck on stupid about what causes mass shootings, violence, and suicides. Benjamin Franklin said, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
When he said that, he had to have this gun-grabbing group in mind. A gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen is a threat only to the criminal. It is also a threat to an ever-expanding federal government hell-bent on trying to destroy your right to bear arms.
Folks, my ancestors shed blood for the right to bear arms for self-defense. I will not cede that right back to the government.
Neither should you.
10
Changing the Culture Is a Matter of Faith, Not Politics
A PRIEST WALKED UP TO ME, a smile on his face. “I am Canon Benoît Jayr,” he said while warmly shaking my hand. Behind him, I noticed congregants of all ages buzzing around the pews cleaning, polishing, and mending the old church.
I was doing my rounds on the south side of Milwaukee, an area where Polish immigrants made their home during the mid-1800s. They fled their native country in such numbers that they created home-away-from-home on Lincoln Avenue and Mitchell Street, which became dotted with Polish bakeries, grocery stores, taverns, and butcher shops. Polish flats popped up, one story at a time, to save money and to allow room for their ever-growing families. But the center of life for Milwaukee’s Polish community was the church. In 1866, the first large Polish church in all of the major American cities was built.
Of course, neighborhoods—especially in Milwaukee—are vibrant and dynamic, changing according to what’s going on in the world. In the early 1900s, Mexican immigrants began coming to Milwaukee for the same reason the Poles did: America had more opportunity than their home country. Mexican men worked in Milwaukee’s tanneries, hot and dirty places that turned hides into leather, but were still better than the job opportunities in Mexico. Before long, Mexican grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses started popping up around the area. Now, if you drive down Mitchell Street—once the Polish shopping hub—you can find all kinds of Hispanic businesses. Today, Saint Stanislaus Church, which used to offer masses in the Polish language, offers a Sunday mass in Spanish. (It also offers a mass in Latin, which I love—old school.)
On the day of my visit, to add even more ethnic diversity to the south side equation, a smiling French priest greeted this black sheriff.
“Thank you for protecting this community,” Rev. Jayr said, his English perfect but his accent heavy. “In France, we do not have sheriffs. The only way I had heard of ‘sheriff’ was on American western films. And here you are with your boots and cowboy hat. You look exactly how I imagined a sheriff would look.”
I get that a lot. People thank me for “saving the community.” However, the truth is that the priest, and others like Rev. Jayr are doing the real work that transforms communities. Faith transforms: sheriffs, policies, entitlement programs, and politicians do not. Some politicians hold faith in
such disregard that they do more harm than good.
I’ll give you one of the more dramatic examples.
No God in the Platform
In 2012, the Democratic Convention was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, where delegates from all over the nation went to nominate Barack Obama as their incumbent candidate for president of the United States. That year, however, when Democratic leaders drafted their platform, they’d removed all references to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, even though support for Israel has been a vital part of the Democratic platform for about six decades. Oh, and they eliminated all references to God.
To be clear, they hadn’t forgotten to include these references. They had consciously scrubbed these references from previous platforms. Their actions didn’t play well with people outside the Beltway. All over America, commonsense, God-fearing Democrats expressed their anger. Even Harvard Law School’s Alan Dershowitz described the Democratic Party as the first major American political party to abandon Israel. The party leaders realized they’d better fix this. They didn’t want their nominee (whose religion had already caused much speculation around American watercoolers) to be shackled with also being anti-God. They placed an amendment to the platform on the convention’s agenda.
Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, was apparently instructed to pass the platform change regardless of the actual vote. When the amendment went up on the floor, a sizeable number of delegates started yelling, “No!” They didn’t want God or Jerusalem in their platform. TV cameras showed close-ups of delegates holding “Palestinians for Obama” signs high above their heads as they screamed against the vote. The votes seemed like a pretty even split, but a platform change requires a two-thirds majority. Mayor Villaraigosa, unable to ignore the dissenting voices, looked confused and shocked. So he asked for a revote. Then another. After the third revote, they still had no consensus. Knowing the Democrats needed God in their platform, Villaraigosa ignored the dissenters and declared the amendment had passed.
