Project 21 and the Frederick
Douglass Society teamed up for an event at the National Press Club back in
February to decry gun control proposals and declare the racist origins of gun
control. Freedom
Outpost covered it. Yeah, I know its March. I just saw it, I
got a life, what can I tell you. I'm here now and here's my reaction to this event.
Columnist Star Parker said,
“We know that gun control laws have racist origins.”
Parker then introduced Stacy Swimp,
President and CFO of the Frederick Douglass Society,
who elaborated on those origins.
“The first gun laws were put into place to
register black folks to make sure they would know who we were, that we could
not defend ourselves,” Swimp said. “If you look at the Emancipation
Proclamation, what was going on down in the Southern States, it’s very clear
that the ‘Dixiecrats’ wanted to disarm black people to keep us from defending
ourselves against the Klansmen, who were murdering white and black Republicans
to control the ballot box.”
“There’s a direct correlation between gun control
and black people control,” he added.
The Founder of God, Guns
and the Constitution William Owens, Jr. said, “This current administration is
far from the truth.” “When they take our guns, they will also seek to take our
God, and that’s when Americans will fight back,” he added.
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I'm black and
conservative and I find this a non credible bunch of drivel, even assuming that
they have all their history correct. For the record, I don't have a
problem with reasonable gun control measures. I also don't have a problem
with gun ownership. I'm a bit uncomfortable at the idea that its
desirable to live in a society where everyone carries a gun or that that is
somehow a really good thing. If you are my neighbor out here in the burbs
where I live and you have a mini arsenal in your house and seem enamored of
high volume magazine automatic weapons, I'm sorry, I'm gonna be worried about
you. But I don't favor taking away people's right to own and possess
guns, which is not being proposed anyway.
I do seriously question the
efficacy of the proposals on the left, I've yet to be convinced they really get
us anywhere. When it comes to gun control, I would have been more
impressed with these black conservatives if they had said, here's is what we
favor to address gun violence and here's why we think the democrat's proposals
are ineffective. Instead, they engage in the same level of ridiculous
fear mongering that Wayne Lapierre is doing. Coming for our guns is akin
to coming for our God? That's just hysterics.
What this group of
black conservatives is doing is what conservatives have decried for years, playing
the race card. But conservatives apparently have no problem when they
think it serves them. What's the purpose of alluding to the racial dimensions
of the history of gun control in this context? They play the race card to
suggest that the Obama administration and the left in general is out to
suppress blacks and keep them from having weapons because they are
racists? Its a ridiculous premise, as ridiculous as such charges are when
the race card gets played on other things. But since its being played
here to support a conservative opinion, it's okay to suggest people are racists
or there is a racist agenda when you know full well there is not? Suddenly,
that's okay? Now we're going to laud such behavior and applaud these guys as
examples of good independent thinking black folk? You have got to be kidding
me.
Furthermore, they don't sound
like independent thinkers at all. They didn't articulate a single
original thought. They just regurgitated talking points and hysterical
ones at that. Is this the kind of silliness that black republicans have become
complicit in now, providing race based rhetorical political cover for
conservative positions? And don't be fooled. This kind of shilling
is not intended to be persuasive with black voters. It's aimed at the GOP
base and at the party as a way to garner support and raise money from the
party. Another example of republicans only talking to each other, with people
who agree with them. Most black voters live in the cities where gun
violence is experienced and they have a different take on the utility of easy
availability of guns, one which is rational. You could craft gun control
proposals that they would agree with that also lined up with conservative
positions on gun rights.
But black voters in the
cities who experience gun violence will not be receptive to a message
that seems to hysterically argue that we MUST have guns everywhere to be
safe. So this is utterly stupid messaging if you were actually trying
to get the attention of black voters. And that's how you know that's
not the goal of this silliness. They are talking to the GOP base and far
right. They are not trying to actually persuade black voters at all, not with
this nonsense.
This behavior is a pitch
perfect example of the type of black conservative I do NOT aspire to be, a
black conservative that regurgitates talking points without reference to
whether they are actually in the permanent interests of black people in
the first place.
