Gun Control: Racist and Elitist

By John Bender – SUSSA

From the start, of our organization, Seniors United Supporting the Second Amendment (SUSSA), has tried to spread the word that gun control is racist and elitist. It is shocking to find out how few people, White or Black know about the role guns played in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

How many people know that the NRA helped train Blacks in Monroe, N.C. and the local NRA chapter mounted an armed defense against the Klan, routing them in a gun battle?

How many people know that a group called Deacons for Defense and Justice guarded the voter registration workers that C.O.R.E. had working in the Deep South to register Black voters?

How many people know that Floyd McKissick, of CORE, and Martin Luther King, of SCLC, had the Deacons protect the marchers on the "March Against Fear" in 1966? This march, from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, was organized after James Meredith was shot while trying to make the 220-mile walk by himself. When the marchers reached Greenwood, Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael gave his famous Black Power speech.

The Deacons for Defense and Justice scouted ahead of the marchers looking for snipers, and ambushes. They also guarded the marchers at night as armed guards against raiders. Why isn't this taught in our schools and by the civil rights leaders of today?

Why are Black voters supporting politicians who are stripping them of their rights?

It is because nobody is telling them their history. Dr. King is gone. Floyd McKissick is gone. James Farmer is gone. The last of the big name civil rights leaders of the 1960s is Mr. Roy Innis, National Chairman of C.O.R.E.

Mr. Innis knows the history of guns in the civil rights movement. Mr. Innis was there in the 1960s. He was working in the South being guarded by Black men with guns. But the elite media ignores Mr. Innis.

Today politicians are turning Black neighborhoods into target rich environments by pricing and regulating guns out of the hands of the good people who live there. The gangsters and crack dealers have plenty of guns. They buy them or steal them.

The $10.00 an hour single mother down the street from the crack house is priced out of having a gun to protect herself and her family. Registration fees and license fees as well as laws that leave issuing a license up to the discretion of some good old boy keep poor and minority people disarmed and vulnerable.

Blacks and other minorities should be the strongest supporters of all of the Bill of Rights including their right to own and carry a gun. Too many people died and sacrificed so that the Bill of Rights would apply to Blacks for them to let it be stolen from them again.

John Bender
Executive Director
Seniors United Supporting the Second Amendment