You gotta love Maj Toure. He's black, he's smart and articulate, and he's working full-time to educate African-Americans on the proven benefits of firearm ownership. What's more, he's coming to Chicago to share the gospel this Saturday!
Not everyone loves Toure. Not all gun owners support restoration of firearm rights to reformed felons. Frankly, not everyone wants to see blacks with guns. The Ku Klux Klan and Southern Democrats worked hard after the Civil War to keep blacks from both gun ownership and voting. David Kopel has a great piece at The Hill outlining some of this racist history of gun control laws. Here's an excerpt:
Ida B. Wells, the leading journalist opposing lynching, agreed. In the nationally-circulated pamphlet Southern Horrors, Wells documented cases in Kentucky and Florida, “where the men armed themselves” and fended off lynch mobs. “The lesson this teaches,” Wells wrote, “is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
After the thwarted lynching in Florida, the state legislature enacted a law requiring a license to possess “a pistol, Winchester rifle or other repeating rifle.” A Florida Supreme Court Justice later explained: “the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers” and “was never intended to apply to the white population and in practice has never been so applied.”
While lynching began to decline in the early twentieth century, race riots increased. According to historian John Dittmer, blacks fought “back successfully when the mobs invaded their neighborhoods” during the Atlanta riots in 1906. When police stood idle as 23 blacks were killed during riots resulting from a black man swimming into “white” water near Chicago, blacks used rifles to kill 15 attackers.
During the Tulsa Race Riot in 1921, whites (with government approval) burned down a square mile of the prosperous district nicknamed “Black Wall Street,” killing 200 blacks. There would have been more devastation had blacks not fought back, killing 50 of their attackers.
Firearms made possible the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Charles Cobb’s excellent book, "This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" describes how pacifist community organizers from the North learned to accept the armed protection of their black, rural communities.
Heck, not all blacks want to see their fellow African-Americans owning guns. Take today's historically illiterate NAACP head Derrick Johnson for instance.
Gun Safety Is about Freedom
By Derrick Johnson (President and CEO, NAACP)
… Due to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the politicians that support them, meaningful discourse on the issue of gun control is nearly impossible, and in that silence, school shootings from Sandy Hook to Parkland keep the classroom a battleground, not a place of learning.
Given the disproportionate damage gun violence is having on our communities, the NAACP has advocated for sane, sensible laws, to help eliminate or at least to decrease the damage and death caused by gun violence….
Unfortunately, years of ridiculously easy access to guns and ammunition…
Maj and I hate to tell you, Derrick, but buying guns is not "easy". Nor does the right to keep and bear arms "cause" anything.
…has yielded an epidemic with deadly consequences for all Americans, but has been particularly fatal for communities of color who are disproportionately impacted. Gun violence is the number one killer of African Americans ages 15 to 34.
Gun violence – or is it gang violence? Let's blame the bad guy, not the tools he used, mmm kay Derrick?
However, comprehensive, sustainable gun control is achievable. We know this because someone has done it.
Just look to Australia.
In the past 20 years, Australia has proven that sensible reform can prevail over partisan divides and high rates of gun ownership. In the spring of 1996, Australia faced the deadliest mass shooting in its history when a 28-year-old man opened fire at a tourist resort in Tasmania, killing 35 and wounding 23 with a semi-automatic rifle. Following the massacre, the party in power—the center-right Liberal coalition—surprised the country and world by joining with groups across the political spectrum to implement a radical intervention on gun violence. Over the course of mere months, the Australian government bought and destroyed over half a million firearms, banned automatic and semiautomatic weapons, created a national firearms registry, and enforced a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases.
The results were both clear and staggering—there has not been a single mass shooting in Australia since 1996.
Uh, not true. But as you're historically illiterate, you wouldn't know, would you?
Western Australia Today reports on several mass shootings. Since 1996.
The most victims in a shooting was in 2014, when Greg Hunt killed his wife and three children with single gunshots in Lockhart, NSW, before turning his weapon on himself.
Three years earlier, in a suburb of Adelaide, Donato Corbo shot and killed three people and injured three others, including two police officers who had arrived on the scene.
In 2002, Huan Yun "Allen" Xian killed two people and injured another five when he used a handgun to opened fire on a classroom at Monash University in Melbourne.
And then other cases where bad people with evil in their hearts used other weapons to kill and injure large numbers of people. Of course, there were no armed good guys to stop their attacks. Because all of the good guys were disarmed!
There have been other massacres in the past two decades that have not involved firearms. In 2017, Dimitrious Gargasoulas allegedly murdered six people when he drove a car on the footpath of Melbourne's Bourke Street.
Another horrendous multiple killing was in 2014, when Raina Thaiday stabbed eight children to death, seven of them her own, at a home in Cairns.
In 2015, Akon Guode drove her car into a lake in Melbourne's south-west, drowning three of her own children. A fourth was pulled from the water and survived.
And now back to the illiterate's screed for gun confiscations from the NAACP President and CEO…
Australia’s success story is an example for us all. America will remain a deadly nation for our children, its schools caught in the crossfire, unless we insist politicians and the NRA curb their lobbyist efforts and allow the creation of policy that acts in the best interests of public safety. The solution is simple. America needs sane and sensible gun safety laws. The NAACP has spoken out, delivering a loud and clear message, on the most urgent and impactful policies pending, and we will continue to push and monitor federal action on these proposals.
So imagine a black man with a gun touring the nation, devoting his life to educating members of his own African-American community. While closed minds will ignore or disparage him and his work, he will reach good people. He'll educate them and empower them. Then they will do the same with people in their circles of influence, leading them off the Democrat-led gun control plantation. Imagine that. Free, free at last!
The Chicago Trib covered Toure's Chicagoland visit. And we bring excerpts to you.
Black Guns Matter bringing gun rights workshop to Chicago's African-American community
As hip hop artist Maj Toure toured the country, he kept hearing the same stories of African-Americans facing gun charges because they didn't know they were supposed to, for example, have a concealed carry permit.
Those stories and others about convicted felons having gun rights revoked prompted Toure, of Philadelphia, to create the grass-roots organization Black Guns Matter and take his message of gun rights and firearms education to African-American communities all over. That includes Chicago, where he’s spending a month doing outreach and a training session this weekend.
In two years, the group has raised thousands of dollars to host training sessions across the country, even getting a helping hand from members of the National Rifle Association. Toure’s effort comes at a time when everyone from lawmakers to teenagers are debating gun control as the nation comes to grips with headline after headling about mass shootings in this country.
Toure will lead Saturday’s training session which starts at 2 p.m. at the South Chicago library branch, 9055 S. Houston Ave…
Black Guns Matter decided to do the training at a public library as a way to bring people together at a neutral location, because some might think of guns and convicted felons as a taboo subject.
“They don’t have to be nervous,” he said. “It’s a safe, comfortable and open space.”
Convicted felons attending Saturday’s training also will learn about firearm safety and what to do if they are with someone who is shot, Toure said. He describes Saturday’s Chicago event as an “appetizer” for a larger June 16 training geared toward the general public that’s set for 3 p.m. at 525 S. State St., in the South Loop.
A local group that advocates for gun rights within the city, Chicago Guns Matter, also plans to be part of Saturday’s event, said Rhonda Ezell, the group’s founder. She said Toure is starting the conversation to “overturn the anti-gun laws.”
“The goal is to educate as many people as possible,” she said.
Great job, Maj.
Thanks for doing this Maj, I hope you get some (positive) news coverage.
Not ME.
I wouldn't thank a hip-hopper for doing anything other than, er, "opting out," as it were.
Hip hop is the devil's plaything. It has ruined the ……..um, how do I say it? I won't.
I think this is great news!
I just learned that JB prickster is donating $5,000,000 to democrats so they can swing down state elections and try for a super majority in the general assembly to pass higher taxes and gun control
I hope you are spreading the word to vote Rauner and republican this nov.
Maj Toure is the MAN! I've bumped into him at NRAAM a few times and he is one squared away guy, and still very down to earth.