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Cottrol

“The NRA should stand for the Negro Rifle Association. You would think the way many black politicians are supportive of gun control that African Americans were the most protected people in American history.” – George Washington University professor Robert J. Cottrol in Does race shape Americans’ passion for guns? [at cnn.com]

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38 COMMENTS

  1. Beware all ye who enter here

    That article melted my mind. Who knew the KKK were the originators of American gun control? I mean, besides everyone reading this.

    lol.. Someone tell Bloomberg and his merry band.

    • when friends ask me how I, as a Black man, can be both a Republican and a Lifetime NRA member, I point out Lincoln was a Republican (a party founded approx 15 yrs earlier on an anti-slavery platform), the NRA was created to arm freed slaves, and the Klan originated within the Democratic party. That really gets them pissed off.

      🙂

      • Or their brains completely lock up with cognitive dissonance, leaving them with a stroke-like appearance on their face.

        Later they furiously type away, looking it up on the internet so they can refute you, only to find it to be true, again causing brain lock.

        Now they avoid speaking with you because you made their brain hurt.

        And the best part is, when they are around their little buddies having a rousing round of gun bashing, they cannot fully join in with enthusiasm, as doubt and fact has riddled their addled brains.

      • To be fair, things do change after 150 years. I present the evangelist takeover of the GOP in the last 30-40 years as an example.

  2. What is truly a bit of irony for gun grabbers is that it was in fact the NRA that was actively arming and training people in the use of arm to defend themselves against the KKK, The Citizens Council, and other white supremacist groups.

    This was spelled out clearly enough in Timothy B. Tyson’s “Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power”, and Charles E. Cobb Jr.’s “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, How Guns Made The Civil Rights Movement Possible”.

    But, don’t expect a self-anointed Regressive liberal to actually read into anything beyond the headlines, much less understand for themselves what is actually being said, or even the context in which it is being aid.

  3. I had to read it a few times to get it. To be clear, what he’s saying is “Considering history, there should be so many black people in the NRA and advocating vociferously for the RKBA that they’d call it the Negro Rifle Association.”

    He’s right. Just like with many Jewish folks, it’s amazing how many seem anti-gun in spite of history.

    • Didn’t you get the memo? Human nature has fundamentally changed in the last century, so no one needs guns anymore.

      /sarc

      • Ha!

        The “humans have evolved” and “we live in civilized society” folks are ridiculous.

        Technology has advanced and evolved, have remain unchanged.

        Everyone is only the power going out and about 9 meals away from getting real f*cking uncivilized, real f*cking quick.

        Watch the show “Naked and Afraid” and see how quickly even experience survivalist break down and begin acting erratic without the modern comforts of life.

        • I find lack of power for a couple of hours relaxing. Something about being with your family with candles for light is really comforting and “cosy”. That and we use wood for heating.

          People will probably be uncivilized real quick, but you can adapt. You can always adapt… that’s the strength of humans. We can’t swim for sh** compared to sharks, or maul and claw compared to bears and lions… but we can adapt. We are the jack of all trades in the animal kingdom. That, and we got firearms.

        • We’re the same Homo Sapiens that would beat each other with bones 100,000 years ago. Nothing has changed. We just like to pretend we’re different from our ancestors who smeared mud on cave walls.

    • You know how before the Holocaust we never thought that those things could happen? Well we were wrong, but this time for sure.

  4. I tried so very hard to read this and grasp what was being said. At times it felt almost pro gun, while at others it was incomprehensible. Maybe I’m dumber than I thought. One thing that stuck out was the part about how people would react to blacks open carrying. I personally couldn’t think of anything better than an armed group of minorities taking back their cities from the thugs their politicians handed it over to. I’m not advocating vigilantism, but it’s hard to take what isn’t yours from an armed populace.

    • As with most people who are intrinsically against OC or haven’t thought about it much, the Black Panthers comparison is brought up. What people don’t seem to recognize, is that the BP were carrying those rifles for the specific, stated purpose of intimidating police and white counterprotesters. Quite a bit different from someone seeking to carry in the course of daily business, or to raise awareness in a friendly way for gun rights causes. The same could be said in how the OC protests of empty guns in the 80’s was carried out; way too intentionally confrontational.

      These folks don’t seem to understand that no one would take kindly to the KKK protestors showing up armed and marching around in masks/hoods, mugging the camera and screaming “White Power!” either. But it’s been a long, long while since that kind of behavior would be tolerated from white, or any other color, of people.. The fact is, there are a good number of black OC persons and protestors now, which we’ve seen in the last several years (the guy at the DNC convention, and I believe several folks with Open Carry Texas that have appeared in photos) and the ‘shocked’ onlookers don’t gun them down or faint from the vapors.

      As long as you aren’t going around with a gun trying to be a scary, militant black man, or a scary, militant white man, or woman, or any other intimidating character, OC is largely a non-issue, subject to occasional assault-via-cop-call from anti’s who strive to intimidate. There is a difference between perceiving intimidation, and giving intimidation, and that’s where the line is drawn with acceptable OC. The whole purpose of the protests is to get the community to recognize that fact; that they are not themselves intimidating anyone, so there is no cause to feel intimidated by them. Same reason why modern whites don’t bolt for the door when a big, strong, black man enters the restaurant to have a meal.

    • +1, I kept thinking, “Am I really that bad at critical reading, or does this guy just suck at stating his thesis?”

    • The whole article is a hodge podge. Poor writing when looked at from a specified intent standpoint but it gets extra points for giving fuel to anti-gunners in the form of suggestively biased quotes.

      • Oh the summary of this article is simple
        Did you buy a firearm because;
        -Obama was elected?
        -There were riots someplace?
        -Thugs/gangs are in your neighborhood?
        -You think you might have to protect yourself?

        If the answer is YES to any of these, you must be a racist and therefore you should be disarmed for the good of society”

        You know, because there couldn’t possibly be any reason OTHER than race for you to feel like you need to exercise your rights.

  5. That article was somewhat refreshing. The author seemed intent on presenting a number views on race and firearms. He’ll surely be fired tomorrow.

  6. Well, well, well; if I was living in Ferguson and I went out to buy extra ammo and a large capacity semi-auto shotgun because a mob of whites were rampaging, looting, burning down buildings and beating up innocent people I’m simply being a realist; but since they are black; I would be a racist.

    Something is really, really wrong with the so called thought process of liberal/progressives; they live in the land of the double think craziness of the book “1984” where freedom is slavery, weakness is strength, and ignorance is wisdom (as I paraphrase.)

  7. I must be a racist because when the SHTF the only thing I’ll be looking for is the white of their eyes.

  8. It is what it is. The vast majority of black folks I KNOW are pro-gun. Black people and Jewish folks SHOULD BE at the forefront for the RTKBA. They are not. They need a “come to Jesus moment”-like tv’s Superman the other day…whatever.

    • I guess when a people are broken down and beaten badly enough, or for a long enough time, they can lose the will to do for themselves, and seek salvation from a greater (earthly) authority. At first, just to survive, but over time they become dependent upon it and lose the ability to run their affairs themselves. It seems like somewhere along the way, many of the aggrieved minority groups (black, jew, and especially American Indian) had/were forced to put their trust in government for protection when the world was against them. But as we all know, the government is a different animal from humans, and has its own motivations, which don’t always align with ours.

      • Interesting with the exception of the word government. Government doesn’t do anything, people in government are stealing your information, people are denying your speech, people are infringing your rights, people…..

      • This black man calls that “slave mentality,” barnbwt. And we would both be vilified for speaking the truth, because victimhood is a booming business for certain people in this country.

  9. ” When some gun control advocates look at the nation’s passion for guns, they see the same racial fears that drove previous generations to enact black codes. These fears, they say, are passed down, like genes, from one generation to another.”

    So true, I’ve long considered their blind hatred of conservative white christians to be disturbingly similar.

    • But ironically enough, the gun control laws they crave are, and always have been themselves Black Codes, only very recently enforced increasingly against white people as racist distinction has finally abated nearly everywhere. And are still, by both bias and statistical fact, specifically designed to have the greatest impact upon black/minority areas and persons before all others. Every gun control scheme is more or less a plot to finally get those guns out of those crime-infested black neighborhoods (without drawing the ire of those pesky constitutional lawyers) by making them expensive and subject to enormous penalties & confusing rules.

      The original sin the ‘gun culture’ carried was their tolerance of the Black Code gun laws for as long as they did. But, as with most of our gun laws since the Sullivan Act, it was supported/tolerated primarily because it did not affect the majority of voters due to focused language and selective enforcement. OC of pistols was banned in Texas, but only enforced against blacks for decades; hard to complain if you are of the white majority, even if the law’s enforcement is morally repugnant. Now that these laws are more equitably enforced, they ‘became a problem’ for the Gun Culture 1.0 crowd that had tolerated them, and have always been a problem for as long as GC2.0 folks like myself have been alive. Wanting to finally repeal these laws, originally passed by the same type of people as today’s anti’s, and promote shooting/gun ownership is hardly rooted in racial fears, but rather in rejecting them and seeking to at last right the wrongs committed by our ancestors –for all our sakes.

  10. Yes it seems to me that I’m more worried about being caught with one then being caught without one.

  11. What was it Harriet Tubman said,” I saved a 1000 slaves, I would have saved a 1000 more had they only known they were slaves.”

    Knowledge is power.

  12. Geez, how does a black writer blurt so many words about BLACK HISTORY IN AMERICA, without once mentioning which party ran the South after the Civil War? It’s staggering how so many black Americans have been deliberately bamboozled by the racist white liberals who are still politically manipulating them as a race. Even more appalling than that, is the shameless number of American “black leaders” who are willing to promote the liberal white-washing of the democrat party’s, sordid racist past. The disinformation campaign continues.

  13. Too bad more people do not know the first “gun control” law was actually for edged weapons of iron used by the Hittites around 2000 BC. Their law was to prevent teaching Hebrews and others how to make or sharpen edged iron weapons.

    The first gun control laws in the New World were to prevent the French traders from swapping muskets and rifles to the Native Americans. (Makes sense if you are trying to grab somebody’s hunting ground).

    No guns for Indians was quickly followed by no guns for slaves. I wonder why? LOL

  14. Good job by CNN. Not perfect but if all articles tried to achieve some semblance of balance our country would be better off. Just give me a blast of info, I’ll sort it out. Think the situation in Ferguson would moderate if some of the law abiding protesters were OC? You betcha.

  15. It’s actually not a terrible article. They try to balance their clear bias with pro-gun opinions, but somewhat snidely discredit them at the same time. I do like that they put a dissenting opinion link at the end of the page. At least they’re trying to create the illusion of fairness.

  16. “You can’t talk about anything in America without some nitwit with a victim complex and a room temperature IQ talking about race.”

    FIFY

  17. I didn’t really get exactly what this guy is saying but wasn’t it a big thing about the NRA to allow minorities to own guns to protect theirselves against the RACIST DEMOCRATS THAT WERE AGAINST THEIR FREEDOM IN THE 1960’s? Remember how the Dumacraps voted against the civil rights act again and again in the 1960’s and it was the republicans that fought for the minorities rights so much? How soon and how much some of us forget. Pass out a few checks and grub-stubs and all is forgotten and the tables turn.

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