Maj Toure is a 29-year-old black activist in Philadelphia who wants black people in urban centers to exercise their Second Amendment rights. “Toure is a young African American man who grew up in North Philadelphia watching the destruction caused by gun violence, but who nonetheless was attracted to firearms,” philly.com reports, “and became an official, dues-paying NRA member and legal gun owner.” . . .
“The stigma, especially in an urban environment like Philly, is if you have a gun, you’re either law enforcement or the bad guy,” Toure said when we talked recently. “What we’re trying to do is say that just because you have a gun doesn’t make you the bad guy. But while you have your firearm, which you have the right to have, you have to be a responsible, card-carrying good guy.”
It’s nice to see an idea that has been pushed by many Second Amendment activists taking root in Philadelphia, a city governed by officials adamantly opposed to citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights.
John Lott has found that urban minorities benefit the most from being legally armed. This seems obvious on reflection. Areas whey they live tend to have some of the nation’s highest crime rates. From uchicago.edu:
Lott: I won’t speculate about motives, but the results tell a different story. High crime urban areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed to carry concealed handguns.
A strong reason to encourage blacks to be armed: to reinforce the idea that the Constitution applies to them just as it does everyone else. When a black person sees they can be legally armed, it shows that the rights enshrined in the Constitution are being enforced. Belief in the criminal justice system is essential for lower crime rates.
Black people were the first to be disarmed as the “shall not be infringed” clause of the Second Amendment was eroded over time. Considerable history has to be overcome to change black attitudes about weapons permits. The permit systems were used to disarm black people. It’s common to see opinions on the Internet that black people will not be able to get permits or legally defend themselves.
Attitudes are changing rapidly. It seems that society has hit a tipping point. From the article:
Toure is hitting on something that is playing out nationally, which is the rise of gun ownership, and gun clubs, among African Americans, and the rise in urban areas of law-abiding citizens brazenly open-carrying. According to a December 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of blacks said they believed guns were more likely to protect people than to put their safety at risk. That figure was up from 29 percent two years earlier.
Changing attitudes toward the Second Amendment may build support for Republicans in the coming election. Donald Trump has expressed strong Second Amendment positions in his campaign. Hillary Clinton has made gun control and attacks on gun manufacturers major planks in hers. It’s one of the strongests contrasts on the issue in the last 20 years.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
Dude! I have been licensed for over 15 years. I carry every day, including home carry. And I have so little reason to that it’s ridiculous. I see no downside, so I carry anyway. But I have always wondered what must have been done to the black culture, that the only people carrying are gang-bangers, punks, thugs, and drug dealers. Why do the good people allow their families and friends to be murdered in front of their eyes without presenting any opposition? You go, Mister Toure, I wish you the best.
1: in Black culture, the only people who carry are criminals, drug dealers and other bad actors. This is a sort of self-sustaining prophecy. Those known to legally carry are actively ostracized and shunned, because the culture makes no distinction between legal and illegal carry. This creates a chilling effect for legal carry, yet does not do much to discourage criminal carry.
2: It’s much easier to blame an inanimate object, and Whitey, for your own culture’s problems instead of taking responsibility.
Exactly. My black friends whose parents still live in North STL (even though they don’t have to) are almost to a person anti-gun – and they’re nice, polite folks with decent jobs.
They really believe that somehow if you could get rid of the guns, the thug element would just somehow stop being violent. It’s mind-boggling, but it is definitely a solid part of “black culture”. Fortunately, some have family members who served in the military with a different perspective. But it’s really a tough sell when the churches are filled with whack-a-doo ministers constantly preaching about the “evil guns”, not the “evil men” doing “evil things” with them.
Tyrants have always exploited and attempted to use religion to expand their control over people. An armed people cannot be controlled, which is why gun control is important to aspiring tyrants. Over hundreds of years, religions have embedded the concept of helplessness into their teachings because of this. If the faithful want a lesson in what will probably happen to them if they remain passive, they only need to look back to Germany in the 1930’s and early 1940’s.
This is awesome.
Good for him. WHEN good black folks decide to take control of their lives and get off the plantation things may get better in the ghetto. Instead of selling their only defense for a 100visa card. The disconnect is shocking. Honestly I hold out little hope for the democrat controlled cities(and I’m intimately familiar with Chicago)…stay tuned.
Racist drivel.
Because wanting poor people to be able to defend themselves is “racist”?
I think he’s referring to the patronizing tone.
Please explain the racist drivel?
Nothing racist here. Or patronizing… Black wife,brown kids,late mother-in-law a minister on the westside of Chicago. She had a shiny 38 too. Guns ARE the answer-the plantation mentality is the problem. You get it Red Sox. Yeah-stop punching “D”.
To FormerWaterWalker
My question of “Please explain the racist drivel” was directed at AD who replied to your comment. I am fully on board with your original post. I grew up in the 60’s as a child of a single mother of 8 children in the projects full of black, brown and white people where we were able to leave our houses and cars unlocked and i called their parents Mr & Mrs and likewise. So dial it down a bit I’m with you.
BTW, I am as far from D as it gets.
NOTHING to dial down. I was commending you. Replying to the azzwhole who originally posted the drivel comment. Since it looks like your 1st trip here comments don’t always end up under the intended target. Come back-or not…
Please explain the racist drivel?
Seems like this is dripping with sarcasm.
If not….
Of course we all know that Water Walker is just soooo racist on this forum….
WHEN good black folks decide to take control of their lives and get off the plantation things may get better in the ghetto.
I would like to see that too.
Seems like they are mostly in the Hitlery Konzentrationslager at the moment.
Thanks for the vote of confidence Tom. I’m not holding my breath about Chicago. As I posted the disconnect is massive. So-called “church folks” may be the worst. How you can vote for gun grabbing,baby murdering,corrupt democrat azzwholes is beyond my understanding. No Father,no Son and no Holy Spirit. Just a social feel-good gospel. I try to stay away from Chiraq these days…
“Stay tuned” for what? Are you going to reveal even more drivel?! I’m on the edge of my easy chair on the porch of my trailer right across from yours.
Lott was interviewed on Jim Bohannon yesterday . Lott stated that over 50% (I don’t recall the exact #) of adult black males are prohibited persons due to criminal record. Astounding. And it’s the white mans fault (for arresting some of the thugs).
And unlike the demtard astroturf “Black Lives Matter” BS that is real.
I was stopped by police a few times in my younger days, doing things that *could* have gotten me arrested. Had I been, my life may have been radically changed from what I have today. I believe that it’s likely a black kid would be more likely to be arrested for those things. But that’s as far as I’ll go along that line. The vast majority of people in prison belong there, regardless of melanin concentration.
Anyway – I joined his organization. It’s free. Didn’t donate b/c I saw no reason to trust the security of his server. And I lied on the application, cause some stuff’s nunya.
The vast majority of people in prison belong there, regardless of melanin concentration.
With the War On Drugs….maybe not.
This is awesome news! I hope this idea spreads like wildfire. Everyone regardless of color should exercise their second amendment rights.
+1
“soultionary”?
I weep for the English language.
What? It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Don’t misunderestimate it. Irregardless, sounds like a good word.
Gentleman please. Eschew surplusage.
We don’t need more court cases to get back our RKBA. That hasn’t worked. We need more gun owners who vote.
The NSSF should be doing a much better job of promoting gun ownership in places like the Northeast and urban areas where market penetration is low, upside market potential is greatest and it would have the greatest effect on perceptions and laws.
The NRA also has a bad habit of pursuing the course of least resistance in places where there is low hanging fruit. I read stories like this and it all sounds like we’re talking about the Sullivan Laws in NY. But they’re still there and have been there more than a century.
We don’t need more court cases to get back our RKBA. That hasn’t worked. We need more gun owners who vote.
It would really help.
TEAM AMERICA….F##K YEA!
Good. The Second Amendment is for all.
It’s almost like if you give someone some accountability and responsibility, they rise to the challenge. Unlike the usual flip side we see, where society treats someone like a child with no responsibility, then they they act like children.
Amen…
This country will be a better place when African Americans stop pushing the ‘D’ button in the voting booth and take full responsibility for the safety and well-being of their own communities. Logic dictates, if anyone in this country is tooled up it would be the residents of blighted urban ‘hoods.
One day African Americans will realize that the welfare state was created and is promoted by the democrats they love so much; and that it is doing something that not even Jim Crow could do. It has destroyed the African America Family structure. It is increasing the level of despair and hardship on low income communities If anything the condition of a neighborhood which is largely inhabited by people on welfare is exponentially dangerous, and certainly a place where you need some type of firearm. There is a stigmata in the African American Community. “I don’t want to kill nobody so I don’t need a gun.” Is a quote I have heard many times when talking to an AF about gun ownership. They want to trust the government to keep them safe. Which I find painfully ironic considering many AF claim the government is responsible for the pain and squalor many of them live with every single day.
More or less.
Blanket statements about family structure and anecdotes from your frequent inquiries with “AF” (…not sure what you mean here since AF means something definite online) about what they say about gun ownership aside, do you have any basis at all for these statements or are you just tugging them wholesale and unedited from between your buttcheeks?
Poor Maj, he thought the NRA actually supported gun rights. Should have joined the GOA and not the organization that gave us the Gun Control Act and LEOPA.
I have had some luck by explaining to black people that gun control laws are really people control laws. More specifically in the USA gun control laws specifically things like Pistol Purchase Permits were created to forbid black folks from owning guns. Here in Johnston County NC the Pistol Purchase Permit has a sentence that includes the phrase “good moral character.” When you explain to them that their goals in the civil rights movement was partially succesful because they were armed; it gets their attention. Being disarmed makes you a subject instead of a citizen. Some of them start to realize that hey should bring honor to those that earned them their rights by partaking in them.
Is no one going to mention the perfidious influence of hip hop music on black culture?
My kids listen to that when they are in the car
I hear nothing but calls to criminality and glorifying drugs and hoes and money
I listen to what might be called “white mans music” which is country music
It glorifies raising your children with lines like ” son, where’d you learn to pray like that?”
And being a good person “don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie”
I think that a culture that stigmatizes informing on criminals and puts no value on raising your own children leads to the problems we see in minority neighborhoods
I would also add that the war on drugs has locked up so many black fathers that there are no positive role models for young black men
This has been an unintended consequence of the war on our own citizens that is the war on drugs
Not to mention the Important life lessons of having a pickup truck that runs right, heartrending stories about the sadness of your favorite dog dying, and cautionary tales about the rampant cuckoldry that happens when you’re down on your luck and your wife is running around two-stepping with other men at every honkytonk bar in town. And let’s not forget how country music promotes healthy lifestyles by encouraging consumption of the whiskey gin and beer a man needs to be a real man. I agree with you about hip hop, but C&W music isn’t the same thing as Psalms, Friendo.
To the liberals, black lives only matter when they don’t own black guns, or any guns for that matter.
To conservatives, black lives never matter unless they are Uncle Toms.
Typically poor people dont vote. Of any color. Has to do with politicians catering to middle class and rich class folks and leaving the poor class to sink. Poor people pay taxes and see little returns on what they put in. If anything at all.
As it stands, many people (particularly young males) in areas of frequent gun violence are already armed. Strangely, if we follow the “logic” of this blog and believe it, that doesn’t prevent gun violence and death. In fact it frequently leads to situations where any move by someone in a confrontation situation is taken as a move to draw, which causes a person who feels threatened to whip out their gun first and shoot to kill. How it would improve the situation if everyone truly were armed is a figment of the blog author’s fevered imagination and/or the author is cynical, knows the right wing nut jobs will drool all over themselves in delight at “their black guy” (as Trump would say), and is capitalizing on the 2nd Amendment clones for low grade “fame”.
A modern day Moses has chosen to lead the way.
every black person should have a NRA sticker on their car, so no cop will be surprised by a wallet or a 3 musketeer’s candy bar
Being a legal and historical researcher, and former firearms safety instructor, have written an article, which could be produced as a pamphlet, on the entire situation of gun rights versus anti-gun ‘laws’. If you would be interested in reading the article, send me an email that accepts attachments. I will be glad to send you the article. Don Smith.
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