"The right to own weapons is the right to be free." - A.E. Van Vogt
Danny Glover, star of the "Lethal Weapon" movie series and a host of other violent shoot-em-ups, has a unique take on the origin of the Second Amendment.
"I don't know if people know the genesis of the right to bear arms," Glover said. "The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect, to protect themselves from slave revolts and from uprisings from Native Americans."
"A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from - that's what the genesis of the Second Amendment is."
Quite the opposite, Mr. Glover, as Mr. Tracy Morrow (aka Ice-T) will now explain to you.
"I'll give up my gun when everybody else does. It's legal in the United States, it's part of our Constitution. The right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police."
Just so. The Second Amendment isn't about the majority forcing its will upon the minority; it's about making sure the smallest minority, the individual, has the means to protect himself or herself against those who would do harm to them. Gun rights aren't about perpetuating racism, they're about eliminating racism. Let's here another voice in the argument, former Secretary of State and Stanford provost Condelezza Rice. 
"The way I come out of my own personal experience, in which in Birmingham, Ala., my father and his friends defended our community in 1962 and 1963 against White Knight Riders by going to the head of the community, the head of the cul-de-sac, and sitting there, armed. And so I'm very concerned about any abridgement of the Second Amendment."
Well certainly Mr. Glover didn't dream up the idea that gun rights activists are racist out of thin air, right? I mean, somewhere in the 200+ year history of the United States, there has to something that talks about gun control and racism.
Unfortunately for Mr. Glover, there is. There is law after law and ruling after ruling showing how gun control started with racism, continued with racism and is still racist today.
"Forner's book reveals how, before the Civil War ended, Southern States enacted 'Slave Codes' that prohibited slaves from owning firearms. After Republican President Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the rebelling States, and after Republicans pushed through the Thirteenth Amendment freeing all the remaining slaves, Democrats in the South persisted in keeping the newly freed slaves from owning the means to protect themselves - guns."
"It cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them (slaves) as included in the word citizens, or would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens ... it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." (Emphasis mine)
"The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied."
"The Black Panthers took Malcolm X's approach to the extreme, openly carrying guns as they patrolled for police abuses on the streets of Oakland. They even made guns part of their official uniform, along with the black beret and leather jacket. Every member learned about Marxism and firearms safety. California passed a law to disarm the Panthers and then Congress, after King was assassinated by James Early Ray, passed the Gun Control Act of 1968 -- the first major federal gun control since the 1930's."
Gun rights isn't about white people having the guns in order to oppress others. Gun rights is about freedom for everyone, regardless of race, color, sex or creed. Gun rights aren't oppressive, but rather, owning a gun is the first step on the road to freedom.
