NRA’s million dollar Supreme Court bet: Gun lobby to spend big on Neil Gorsuch

(Credit: NRA via Twitter)

Nearly one year ago, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a stunningly honest admission: No Supreme Court nominee would be confirmed without the approval of the National Rifle Association. The Kentucky Republican told Fox News last March that even if the Democratic nominee eventually won the presidential election, “I can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame duck session, a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association.”

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court seat last occupied by Antonin Scalia has sat vacant for more than six times longer than the average length of the previous 15 high-court vacancies, the NRA is launching a $1 million television advertising campaign in support of President Donald Trump’s nominee Neil Gorsuch.

McClatchy News reported the $1 million launch will place ads across the nation on broadcast, cable and satellite starting Tuesday through March 22. The campaign will reportedly emphasize the impact the Supreme Court has on gun rights.

“Four Supreme Court justices believe you have the right to defend yourselves with a gun,” the ad begins. “Four do not,” the narrator then says, alluding to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “The men and women of the NRA will not let anti-gun elites strip away our rights or our freedom.”

The NRA’s ad blitz looks to capitalize on Democrats apparent slow start to any opposition campaign against Trump’s pick. Republicans refused to give Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee, a hearing or a vote last year, arguing that the vacancy shouldn’t be filled during a presidential election year.

“The only thing we’ve decided as a caucus is to ask members not to make any public commitments until the hearing phase is finished,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, recently told Politico. According to Politico, Gorsuch already “has breezed through more than 70 meetings with senators.”

Senate Democrats have vowed to filibuster the conservative-leaning Gorsuch, meaning 60 senators would have to vote in favor of his confirmation, McClatchy noted.

“You need nine members. It doesn’t work with eight,” West Virgina Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said of the Democrats who would deny Gorsuch a seat. “I understand the Democrats being so upset. I understand it. … That doesn’t make it right to go along with eight. If you think [Republicans] are going to give you a center-left [judge], they’re not! Come to grips with it.”

Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee are scheduled to begin Monday and are expected to last several days. Now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he aims to hold a floor vote before the Senate leaves for its Easter recess, currently set to begin April 8.

“There’s a fierce urgency at the grass roots that is not being echoed by the Senate Democrats,” Ben Wikler, the Washington director for MoveOn, which joined 10 other groups in a letter urging Senate Democrats to step up criticism of Gorsuch, told Politico. “The notion that Democrats should wait until after the hearings to speak their mind is a strategy to win a race by running hard in the last 30 seconds.”

But California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, pushed back on the pressure emanating from the Democratic activist base.

“Why have a hearing if everybody is going to take a position?” she asked. “So to be talking about whether I’m for or against at this stage makes no sense at all to me because it’s uninformed.”

Liberal groups are opposing Gorsuch’s nomination, in part based on views that his overall record on criminal justice is too harsh. Gorsuch’s views lean conservative and the judge sat on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit covering Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah and portions of Oklahoma for a decade.

UCLA law professor and Second Amendment expert Adam Winkler recently noted to the Guardian that in the gun cases that Gorsuch has decided, his opinions “ very much fall in line with the NRA’s view.”

Chris Cox, president of the NRA Freedom Action Foundation, told McClatchy that the group supports Gorsuch because the Supreme Court has “played a pivotal role in affirming our Second Amendment rights in its historic Heller and McDonald decisions.” Cox explained that “it’s critical for Americans to remember that their basic right to keep a gun in their homes for self-defense survived at the court by only one vote. This ad campaign highlights that important reality.”

In a 2012 dissent, Gorsuch stressed that “Gun possession is often lawful and sometimes even protected as a matter of constitutional right,” noting that a felon convicted of possessing a firearm “might very well be wrongfully imprisoned.”

He has also generally ruled against defendants who claim they received unfair trials and those appealing their convictions.

In 2013, Gorsuch wrote a majority opinion ruling that a police officer did not use excessive force when he shot a man suspected of growing marijuana in the head with a stun gun during a chase. Gorsuch’s colleague on the bench, however, noted that the officer’s training manual specifically warned against aiming a stun gun at the head unless necessary.

Gorsuch said the situation facing the officer at the time was “replete with uncertainty and a reasonable officer in his shoes could have worried he faced imminent danger from a lethal weapon.” The suspect died from his injuries.

“At a time when the abuses of our criminal justice system are becoming a national crisis, we cannot confirm a justice who does not understand the role of the Supreme Court to protect the most vulnerable among us,” said a report from People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group.

Still, the NRA has praised Gorsuch as an “outstanding” pick.

SOPHIA TESFAYE

Opinion: Florida Supreme Court Rules “Open Carry” is Not Protected By 2nd Amendment

Stock photo

POLITICUS USA

In Florida last week while the nation was mesmerized  by the non-stop news that America’s government has been infiltrated by Ruskie operatives with a veritable cadre of Russian spies firmly ensconced in the White House, the state’s Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a Florida law that prohibited “open carry of firearms in public.” A practice that has been banned since the nation’s founding and just recently imposed by NRA-indebted Republicans to enrich the gun industry.

The Florida High Court’s Justices ruled that the Second Amendment does not protect that ridiculous “open carry” practice and it was another setback for the NRA’s attempts to force the nation’s courts to abolish any and all firearm restrictions as unconstitutional. The Florida High Court concluded, like many other state and federal courts around the nation, that the Second Amendment cannot be read to prohibit states from regulating the various ways guns are kept and used.

The Court heard the challenge to the Florida statute after a man was arrested and charged with “openly carrying” a handgun while strolling alongside a U.S. Highway. The ruling began by acknowledging that “virtually any adult who has no physical impairment or felony record can carry a gun in public in Florida;” it just has to be concealed. It was too much of a restriction for the Florida gun fanatic who had to show off his “manhood” in public and cried foul. He argued that specifically; the Second Amendment protected his right to openly carry firearms and that the Florida law was an unconstitutional violation of his 2^nd Amendment rights.

The man claimed that according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in “D.C. v. Heller” and “McDonald v. Chicago” created an “individual’s right to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense.” The frightened gun enthusiast said if an individual has a constitutional right to keep a handgun at home for protection, it is just obvious it also granted him the constitutional right to walk around in public with his gun in plain view for all to see.

The Florida High Court used the exact same analysis deployed by virtually every Federal Circuit Court in considering the NRA’s 2nd Amendment challenges to a state’s firearm rules. The Court asked:

“Whether the law ‘burdens conduct protected by the Second Amendment based on a historical understanding of [its] scope,’ or whether it falls into a ‘historically unprotected … category of prohibitions.’”

The court found that the law did not fall into a historically unprotected category, and instead implicated the “central component” of the Second Amendment—“the right to self-defense.”

The Court’s majority quoted an influential law review article and noted what historians, not NRA historical revisionists, have known for a couple of centuries:

“[T]he notion of a strong tradition of a right to carry outside of the home rests on a set of historical myths and a highly selective reading of the evidence. The only persuasive evidence for a strong tradition of permissive open carry is limited to the slave South.”

In a recent 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the Court noted that firearm restrictions that fall outside historical protections for the right to bear arms are presumptively constitutional. However, since the concept of “open carry has no firm tradition in our legal history, there is more than enough justification for the constitutionality of open carry bans.”

Last week’s ruling may not have been a giant win for gun safety advocates, but it was a major defeat for gun fanatics simply because they seem to never lose; at least not any losses the media is willing to report. The Florida Supreme Court decision was handed down barely a few weeks after a 4th Circuit decision ruled that the Second Amendment does not protect assault weapons, and within a year of the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling that there is no constitutional right to concealed carry; something that “has been widely banned” since the nation’s founding.

As noted by Marc Joseph Stern at Slate, “because the Supreme Court clearly has little appetite to expand Heller and McDonald, these decisions will probably stand as the last word on the subject.”

Gun safety advocates can possibly take a measure of solace knowing that no matter how remote the chance to achieve much in the way of “legislative victories” in the NRA-controlled Congress, these few court rulings are highly unlikely to be overturned by the Supreme Court; unless Trump disbands the High Court and replaces it with the governing board of the NRA. It is something that is not remotely implausible.

Rmuse

 

 

WATCH: Republican Army Colonel Hammers Gun Nut On Real Time With Bill Maher

(HBO Screenshot)

ADDICTING INFO

This is one of the most epic smack downs of a gun nut you’ll ever see.

During Real Time on Friday night, host Bill Maher was joined on his panel by guests Lawrence Wilkerson and Emily Miller to discuss the Orlando mass shooting and the role guns played.

“This tragedy was brought to you by guns and religion,” Maher said to kick off the discussion.

Maher and conservative reporter Emily Miller agreed that only followers of Islam commit acts of terrorism, forgetting mass shootings that were perpetrated by white Christian males such as Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people at a church in Charleston. Or Timothy McVeigh, who committed the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. He grew up a Roman Catholic and took the Last Rites prior to his execution. And there are so many other examples that they could literally fill this article and more. And here’s a list of violence against the LGBT community, some of which were committed by anti-gay Christians with guns.

But it was Republican retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who stole the show when he buried Miller and her gun nut views, much to Maher’s amusement.

“We need some kind of control on the weapons in this country,” Wilkerson said. “We do not need large capacity magazines, semi-automatic weapons in the hands of anybody in this country, other than possibly law enforcement.”

Wilkerson admitted that he owns 14 guns at home because he inherited many them from relatives who passed away, but he only uses them for hunting and is very selective about who he sells a gun to if he wants to let one go.

Miller immediately volunteered to buy some guns from Wilkerson and he quickly rejected her. “I wouldn’t sell them to you,” he said.

Wilkerson went on to hold Republicans responsible for the shooting to some degree because they have refused to pass a law banning people on the terrorism watch list from buying and owning guns.

Miller then attempted to defend guns as a necessary tool for home defense but Wilkerson, who served in the Vietnam War, didn’t buy that malarkey either, saying that he doesn’t own guns to shoot people and pointing out that we have law enforcement to deal with home invasions. When Miller attempted to discuss law enforcement response time, Wilkerson shut her down.

“I’m 71-years-old. I’ve lived in this country for seventy-one years, except for the years I was deployed fighting for this country when I did need my guns, and nobody has ever entered my house and tried to kill me!”

After that, Miller was stunned into silence.

Here’s the video via YouTube.

By Stephen D Foster Jr

NRA Tells Parents To Keep Guns In Kids’ Rooms For Safety

Twelve-year-old Ciara Palermo and her dad, Tom, at the NRA’s annual meeting |CREDIT: KIRA LERNER

THINK PROGRESS

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — During a seminar on “home defense concepts” at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Louisville, an instructor encouraged gun owners to store firearms in their children’s bedrooms.

Rob Pincus, who owns the popular firearm instruction company I.C.E. Training, paced across a conference room stage as he repeatedly warned against the threat of violent home invasions. After establishing that filling one’s home with weapons is the only solution, he then recommended that gun owners store firearms in their kids’ rooms for easy access.

“Why would you consider staging a firearm inside a child’s room?” he told the few hundred NRA members in attendance. “It’s the first place I’m going to go! As I’ve said…many times, if your kid is going to break into the safe just because it’s in their room, you have a parenting issue, not a home defense issue.”

Pincus then posed a question to the audience (respondents received a copy of his book,Defend Yourself: A Comprehensive Security Plan for the Armed Homeowner): Describe your responsibility as gun owners, in terms of access.

A woman toward the front raised her hand and discussed her duty to “ensure” that unauthorized people don’t get their hands on her firearms. Pincus immediately toned down her response.

“Ensure is a strong word,” he said. “So I’m going to say we have an obligation to try to prevent unauthorized access.” He added that hidden, instead of locked or secured, is a perfectly appropriate way to secure a gun.

Researchers have found that only 39 percent of gun-owning families keep their firearms locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. For those that do not, the consequences can be terrible.

Everytown for Gun Safety reports that the U.S. has one of the highest rates of unintentional child gun deaths in the world. At least 265 people were accidentally shot by kids in 2015, and so far in 2016, there have been at least 96 accidental shootings by children. In one week in April, four toddlers accidentally shot and killed themselves, according to a New York Times report.

During the three days of the NRA convention, a three-year-old girl accidentally shot and killed a seven-year-old girl in Beverly, Illinois, less than 300 miles from where the leaders of the country’s most powerful gun lobby gathered to discuss their opposition to any type of gun safety legislation. And just over 700 miles away in LaPlace, Louisiana, a five-year old girl accidentally killed herself while playing with a gun in her home.

Meanwhile, the threat of a violent home invader is far less likely than Pincus claims. Not only is the national rate of household burglary decreasing steadily, but so is the rate of violent crime during a home invasion. Less than one percent of homicides in the U.S. occur during a home invasion, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report from 2010, the most recent year the issue was studied. The roughly 100 homicides per year that occur during household burglaries is far dwarfed by the number of shootings by kids who accidentally get their hands on firearms (not to mention the staggering number of unintentional shootings committed by adults every year).

“If the NRA is really are a gun safety organization, they should be lobbying for stronger laws that will protect children,” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, told ThinkProgress. “Instead, they are trying to promote and sell guns in a way that actually puts them in danger.”

Bowling Green, Kentucky-resident Haley Rinehart is all too aware of the very real danger of young children getting their hands on guns. In 2002, her then-four-year-old son, Eli, was at a relative’s home playing in a bedroom when he found a loaded gun laying between children’s books. He picked it up, his hand slipped and hit the trigger, and he shot himself through the eye.

Luckily her son recovered from his shooting, and the 18-year-old will graduate from high school next week. But for months, Rinehart said her family was unsure if he would pull through.

CONTINUED>>>

Republicans Want Guns In Schools But Not At Their National Convention

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/JACQUELYN MARTIN

THINK PROGRESS

In response to an epidemic of gun violence in America, Republicans reject any effort to control gun use. The solution, instead, is more guns.

“The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the expression goes. It’s available as a t-shirt from the NRA.

One idea that is subject to particular derision is the idea of “gun-free zones.” Instead of creating safe spaces, Republicans argue, gun-free zones just create attractive targets for criminals.

Here is Donald Trump deriding the idea at a rally earlier this month:

So it might come as some surprise that this year’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland will completely bans guns. The event will be held at the Quicken Loans Arena where “firearms and other weapons of any kind are strictly forbidden.” (Guns were banned at the 2012 Republican National Convention as well.)

At lot of people are trying to change that. More than 29,000 people have signed a petition demanding Republicans “allow open carry of firearms” during the convention.

It’s unclear if the person who started the petition really wants people to bring guns to the convention or is just trying to make a point — although it appears to be the latter. Many of the signatories, undoubtedly, are just trolling.

Ultimately, it won’t matter. Security at the convention is controlled by the Secret Service. There isno evidence that gun-free zones provide an attractive target for mass shooters. Since the Secret Service is charged with protecting the safety of the candidates, not right-wing ideology, expect guns to remain banned.

UPDATE MAR 27, 2016 9:29 AM

On Sunday morning, Donald Trump was asked if he supported the petition and allowing people to bring guns to the convention. Trump said he needed to look at the petition before commenting but that he was a strong supporter of the Second Amendment.

BY JUDD LEGUM

NRA lobbyist rants after avoiding Obama town hall: ‘What are we going to talk about, basketball?’

Fox News ScreenCap

THE RAW STORY

The head of the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of perpetrating a distraction by taking part in a televised town hall — one his organization did not attend, Media Matters reported.

“He doesn’t support the individual right to own a firearm. That’s been the position of his Supreme Court nominees. That’s been the position of his administration,” Chris Cox told Fox News host Megyn Kelly. “So what are we going to talk about, basketball? I’m not really interested in going over and talking to the president who doesn’t have a basic level of respect or understanding of the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners in this country.”

The president ripped Cox’s organization during the event, which was aired on CNN, pointing out to host Anderson Cooper that the NRA was invited to participate alongside other gun enthusiasts as well as gun safety advocates.

“There’s a reason that the NRA isn’t here. They’re right down the street,” Obama said, making reference to the group’s Virginia headquarters. “You think they’d be prepared to have a debate with the President.”

Cox told Kelly that the NRA refused because it was only allowed to submit one pre-screened question, as did everyone else who participated.

“This president is trying to create an illusion that he’s doing something to keep people safe,” he said. “He needs to do that because the truth is his policies have failed miserably.”

Watch footage from the interview HERE

ARTURO GARCIA

 

Obama lashes out at NRA for skipping town hall on guns

THE HILL

President Obama on Thursday tore into the National Rifle Association (NRA) for skipping a live televised town hall on gun violence.

Obama said he accepted CNN’s invitation to the town hall because his support for gun control is “consistently mischaracterized” by gun-rights advocates like the NRA.

“There’s a reason why the NRA’s not here. They’re just down the street,” Obama said, growing visibly angry. “And since this is the main reason they exist, you’d think they be prepared to have a debate with the president.

The president said the NRA has declined multiple invitations to come to the White House or have a dialogue.

“I’m happy to meet with them,” he said.

Obama is in a pitched battle with gun-rights activists and Republicans over his executive orders designed to expand background checks for firearm purchases.

The president says the “common sense” measures could prevent mass shootings which have cast a cloud over his presidency. But Republicans have blasted the measures as an abuse of power and threatened to do all they can to block them.

“If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over the top, so overheated,” Obama said, dismissing his opponents’ claims that his policies are an effort “to take away everybody’s guns.

The NRA on Wednesday said it would not attend the town hall event, which CNN said includes supporters and opponents of the president’s agenda.

“The National Rifle Association sees no reason to participate in a public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told the network.

 

 

NRA Releases Statement Blasting President Obama Over Calls for Better Background Checks

NEWS.MIC

It may come as no surprise that the National Rifle Association isn’t in favor of President Barack Obama’s series of newly-announced executive orders tightening gun control. The pro-gun organization released a statement Tuesday criticizing Obama for his “emotional, condescending lecture” on Tuesday and the Obama administration for what the NRA said was its “contempt for the second amendment.”

“Once again, President Obama has chosen to engage in political rhetoric, instead of offering meaningful solutions to our nation’s pressing problems,” executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action Chris W. Cox said in the statement following Obama’s televised speech. The president announced, among other things, the intent to strengthen background checks and implement stricter requirements for selling guns.

Read more:
° A Tearful Obama Announces New Executive Actions on Gun Control
° President Obama Highlights Zaevion Dobson’s Heroics During Speech on Gun Background Check

NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s executive director Chris W. Cox | Source: Steve Ueckert/AP

In the statement, Cox also said Obama’s speech “represents an ongoing attempt to distract attention away from his lack of a coherent strategy to keep the American people safe from terrorist attack” and was “completely devoid of facts.” He also said the proposed orders wouldn’t have prevented any of the recent mass shootings (Newtown, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; and San Bernardino, California, to name a few) and that the NRA “will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be harassed or intimidated for engaging in lawful, constitutionally-protected activity.”

Obama announced the executive order in a broadcasted address Tuesday in which he teared up while reflecting on the laundry list of mass shootings that the United States has experienced in recent years.

The actions, which will go into effect without congressional approval, include measures designed to close the “gun show loophole” that allows people to purchase arms from vendors at gun shows and online without being subject to a background check. Obama is also calling on Congress to invest $500 million to widen access to mental health services.

Jessica Eggert

BBC reporter’s sobering advice to America: ‘Break’ the NRA or your mass shootings will never stop

BBC presenter Aaron Heslehurst (screen grab)

THE RAW STORY

BBC host Aaron Heslehurst advised Americans this week that they would have to “break” or “dismantle” the National Rifle Association (NRA) if they wanted the mass shootings in the United States to stop.

On Wednesday’s Morning Business Report, BBC presenter Adnan Nawaz pointed out that journalists still did not have all of the details about the shooting in San Bernardino.

“There have been more mass shootings in the United States this year than there have been days this year,” Nawaz noted. “We’re at about 330-odd days with 350+ mass shootings. And it’s becoming far too common as far as almost any sensible person including President Obama is concerned.”

Columnist Maike Currie agreed that the figures were “staggering.”

“Obama has said this is not normal, this shouldn’t be considered as normal,” she explained. “And Hillary Clinton has said the same thing. And on her presidential campaign, gun control is actually one of the key things she’s looking at.”

Nawaz observed that Clinton was unlikely to put in place new gun safety measures because Congress would block her.

“The thing that everyone points to is the Second Amendment,” Currie said. “But the Second Amendment was set up in 1789. That was a different world then and something needs to be done about this.”

Heslehurst revealed his own “staggering” statistics: “In the last 43 years, more Americans have been shot by another American — shot and killed by another American — than all of America’s soldiers killed in wars in the last 240 years.”

“And you go where’s the priority?” he asked. “You talk about Congress — NRA, right? If Clinton really wants to get serious, that’s what you have to try to break, dismantle.”

Watch the video below from BBC News 24, broadcast Dec. 3, 2015.

DAVID EDWARDS

Actor Wendell Pierce Knows Exactly How To Get Gun Control Laws Passed: Scare The NRA (TWEET)

Mcrae Speakers & Entertainment

ADDICTING INFO

You’ve seen him on The Wire, Twilight: Breaking Dawn- Part 2, Suits, and a slew of many other movies and television shows. And now actor Wendell Pierce has the perfect solution to get gun control laws passed.

As conservatives continue to push for less and less gun regulation, mass shootings have become an all too common occurrence in recent years. But every time one happens, right-wing gun nuts are quick to say that the solution is more guns instead of stronger gun control laws.

But Wendell Pierce has an idea that could very well work if history is any indication.

On Twitter, Pierce suggested that if every young black person in America bought a concealed carry permit and joined the NRA there would be a massive call to jam gun control laws through Congress at the speed of light.

“If every Black male 18-35 applied for a conceal& carry permit, and then joined NRA in one day; there would be gun control laws in a second,” he wrote.

Here’s the post via Twitter.

If every Black male 18-35 applied for a conceal& carry permit, and then joined NRA in one day; there would be gun control laws in a second

— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) November 23, 2015

Indeed, back in the 1960s, African-Americans actually caused the NRA to beg for the passage of gun control laws out of fear after the Black Panthers began conducting armed patrols of neighborhoods to protect black people from the police and racists who would do them harm for no reason. According to The Root:

The Panthers responded to racial violence by patrolling black neighborhoods brandishing guns — in an effort to police the police. The fear of black people with firearms sent shockwaves across white communities, and conservative lawmakers immediately responded with gun-control legislation. Then Gov. Ronald Reagan, now lauded as the patron saint of modern conservatism, told reporters in California that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” Reagan claimed that the Mulford Act, as it became known, “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.” The NRA actually helped craft similar legislation in states across the country. Fast-forward to 2013, and it is a white-male dominated NRA, largely made up of Southern conservatives and gun owners from the Midwest and Southwestern states, that argues “do not tread on me” in the gun debate.

Pierce later doubled-down on his tweet with this one.

pic.twitter.com/H22fTaBeaD

— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) November 28, 2015

Going back even further, the NRA is now dominated by the descendants of Southern racists who once lived in dread that slaves and free men of color would keep and bear arms. Throughout the decades before the Civil War and for some time after, many southern states passed laws forbidding gun ownership by black people. The Tennessee Constitution was even re-written to read, “That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence.”

You can read several more examples by clicking here.

In short, conservatives and the NRA would recoil in horror if all of a sudden every black person in America began carrying firearms. It would be their worst nightmare and they would likely jump aboard the gun control bandwagon out of fear that they will be shot by a black person who can actually defend themselves.

So Wendell Pierce is right. If the white racists of the NRA and Republican Party want “guns everywhere,” then black people ought to buy them in droves and start carrying them around legally. Then we can all watch as racist white gun owners and police officers back off and whine about it before running to lawmakers to beg for the gun control laws this country desperately needs.

STEPHEN D FOSTER JR