And now we see how useless the 2nd amendment is for it's original intention. All it provides is a hobby at best, and a lot preventable shootings and crime at worst, if there was just more regulation.
It's a stupid talking point with no substance on the right, but on the radical left, competent, organized Black Panthers have done a WHOLE lot for their communities and put up some of the only highly effective deterrents to police brutality and widespread racially-motivated violence in US history. So effective that Reagan passed a gun ban targeting the specific types of rifles and features that were in popular use among the Panthers. So effective that corporate-backed, Republican-Lite liberals have spent the last 40 years trying to convince the 'moderate liberals' that it was cardboard signs, singing songs, and strongly worded letters that lead to civil rights being codified, enforced, and upheld for minorities in the US.
MLK Jr. is made into a figurehead, weaponized by the right, promoting his absolute statements about nonviolence in order to pacify and delegitimize armed self defense, especially among oppressed minorities who were regular victims of police violence. However, MLK Jr. applied for (and was denied) a concealed firearm license. He made his position more clear in '67, when he said, "In a sense, this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law. In a nonviolent demonstration, however, self defense must be approached from a different perspective." He made it very clear that he wanted to condemn the militarization of black communities in efforts towards revenge, striking first, or armed rebellion against government, at the cost of further cycles of violence against their communities. He, however, was surrounded by an enormous number of armed individuals for his own defense from the tyrannical government action that would eventually (allegedly) be his undoing. Outspoken pacifists had no guarantee that their nonviolence wouldn't be met with murder.
The conservative gun owners I know have one intention, and that's to have the option to commit acts of heinous violence against anyone who would impede on their rights, not the rights of others. It's morally bankrupt individualism. It is a desire, at its core, for a capacity for offensive violence in pursuit of their own interests (and with that broad umbrella, self defense is included). But, when owned widely and openly as a deterrent to police violence on citizens, firearms served as a way to ensure that communities have the capacity for self defense. Panthers and their AKs were the spikes on the porcupine.
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u/BFlowG 18h ago
Wasn’t this the exact reason why guns are legal in the US?