'Black Guns Matter' Group Teaches Responsible Gun Ownership, Advocates for More Guns
“I believe that more black people would be alive if they were armed. So, when I hear ‘unarmed black man,’ I’m sad because there should be no such thing,” Maj Toure told Business Insider.
According to the outlet, Toure, a black Philadelphia native with a healthy love of firearms, has dedicated years of his life to traveling the nation with his Second Amendment advocacy organization, Black Guns Matter, in an effort to inform Americans from the inner-city about their constitutional right and responsibility to keep and bear arms.
So, when another series of widely publicized officer-involved killings prompted nationwide riots and widespread calls for radical criminal justice reform, Business Insider reported, you can bet Toure was on the next flight out of town, preparing to present a unique general safety solution to the black community: Responsible gun ownership.
“If you would like a free basic firearm safety class, you can get it right here,” Toure said told passersby in the BI story, which described an unspecified day in late May, as he set up tables for an impromptu firearm safety lesson on the streets of Minneapolis.
“The police, as we see, will leave. They will not come to save you. They will not save our businesses. So if you want that, I’ll do that here. Anyone can come. It is completely free.”
The results of the learning session were apparently astounding.
More observers than one might expect reportedly stopped by when Toure stepped into action; some interested in learning about firearms firsthand, others ready to debate the activist on his gun control position.
Unfortunately, however, those who do stop to listen, learn and debate are often far less informed on their constitutional rights than civically engaged citizens might hope the average would be. But then again, that is what Black Guns Matter is there for — to educate and encourage.
“We saw so much ignorance going on,” Toure said. “Guys that lived in rough neighborhoods may have been missing some information in order to carry a firearm on their person.
“So what we in essence did was we created the space to let people know what was their process and what process it was of getting a firearm, lawfully carrying it on their person if they chose to, while being safe and responsible,” he added.
Can we get 50 retweets on this Solutionarys?
Historical reasons. Self defense reasons. Home defense reasons. Investment reasons. Sport reasons. Check the fucking government reasons.
Whatever your reason, it’s YOUR reason.Support:https://t.co/riuZuC2Cdq pic.twitter.com/89Zxm24lZg
— Maj Toure (@MAJTOURE) February 14, 2020
Since its founding in 2016, Toure’s organization has also led the charge in educating black Americans and firearms-averse individuals about the racist underpinnings of modern gun control policy.
“I pick my words very carefully: All gun control is racist,” Toure said. “Whether they change it to make it look like you got to pay a fee, you got to do this, you do that … Gun control in America was initially created to stop melanated beings from having arms.”
On a bipartisan basis, high-profile legal studies experts have long pointed to the Southern Democratic strategy of black disarmament during Reconstruction as the origin for modern gun-control literature and common law. In an August 2017 piece for The Hill, David Kopel of the conservative Cato Institute and Joseph Greenlee of the pro-Second Amendment Firearms Policy Coalition cited the post-Civil War South as the “racist origin of gun control laws.”
At the other end of the political spectrum, the liberal website Slate in February 2018 published a piece by Fordham University professor Nicholas Johnson on “The Arming and Disarming of Black America,” which again cited laws in Southern states aimed at keeping blacks from owning guns as the source of current gun control laws.
Crafted explicitly for purpose of keeping freed slaves unarmed, gun control laws left an untold number of Southern blacks entirely at the mercy of the Ku Klux Klan.
As decades passed and overt legal discrimination was done away with, however, strict firearm licensing and registration laws deeply restricted legal firearm access in America’s largest metropolitan areas and made the process of procuring a firearm more expensive — policies the experts argued hit hardest among black supporters of the Second Amendment.
Despite the hard work being done by organizations like Black Guns Matter, however, who teach this history, the problem of discriminatory gun control only seems to be getting worse as leftist politicians feed their constituents anti-gun propaganda in order to garner support for expanding “gun-free zones,” increasing after-purchase waiting periods and wider bans on particular firearm models.
“People somehow forget that we have the right to defend our lives with firearms,” Toure told Business Insider.
Philip Smith, founder of the National African American Gun Association, agreed.
“A lot of times in our community, we have a lot of our politicians, unfortunately, say, ‘Don’t have a gun. You don’t need a gun,'” he told Business Insider. “Well, I pushed back on that and say, that’s the very thing that we do need.”
He could not be more right.
Hundreds of millions of dollars woth of property was destroyed in the Floyd riots nationally, and that’s just the financial costs.
In terms of human lives lost, unofficial tallies indicate at least 17 people — the majority of them black — have been killed during the protests and riots, Fox News reported.
A number of majority-black communities have also seen major spikes in violent crime since the unrest began. According to WMAQ-TV, Chicago has seen shootings increase by approximately 75 percent over the past month and the city is now on track to record a 34 percent increase in homicides this year over 2019.
Of course, metropolitan Democratic leaders refuse to accept help from federal law enforcement agencies or tamp down on the crime problem themselves, unwilling to cooperate with the Trump administration or, worse, give in to the suggestion that law and order matter.
Thankfully, there are still folks like Toure out there. You know, men and women who actually care about the black community for more than just the votes it’s worth come election season.
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