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IPFS News Link • Self-Defense

Armed and Black

• http://fee.org, by B.K. MARCUS

In Dallas, Texas, the newly formed Huey Newton Gun Club marches in the streets bearing assault rifles and AR-15s. "This is perfectly legal!" the club leader shouts. "Justice for Michael Brown! Justice for Eric Garner! … Black power! Black power! Black power! Black power!"

Meanwhile, closer to Washington, DC, the venerable National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) responds to the fatal shooting of two New York City police officers in December by repeating its call for tougher gun-control laws.

How, then, do black Americans feel about guns?

They are divided on the issue, as are Americans generally. But that doesn't mean they're evenly divided. The 21st-century NAACP represents what one black scholar calls "the modern orthodoxy of stringent gun control," whereas the members of the Huey Newton Gun Club are a minority within a minority, as were the Black Panthers of the 1960s, from whose founder the gun club takes its name.

It turns out, however, that the gun-toting resistance may better represent the traditional majority among the American descendants of enslaved Africans — including the original NAACP.


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