The link between gun 'enthusiasm' and racism is strong

First topic message reminder :

NOTE: This thread in no way claims that everyone who owns a gun is racist. Anyone who claims otherwise did not even read the first two sentences of this post and is thus to be disregarded as a fool, a fool!

The gun-rights advocate group the National Rifle Association recently did away with its Internet TV station, NRATV, amid controversy over some of its content, such as this:



https://www.thedailybeast.com/nra-officials-found-nratv-messaging-to-be-distasteful-and-racist-lawsuit

This made me remember other times when I've found that two issues -- the right to gun ownership and racist attitudes -- mysteriously linked. I say mysteriously, because it doesn't immediately follow, to me, that people who want to preserve their right to own a gun would also be really worried about television shows with diverse casts.

So I dug a bit and found a few things I remembered seeing online before, some things I'd never seen, and even remembered a conversation I had a few years ago:

* Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul had a controversial newsletter published in his name. He vehemently denied writing the worst passages, but obviously people who liked Ron Paul wrote them. In one article, about rising crime rates among black Americans, you can find this gem:

“... even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense, for the animals are coming.”

Whoa.

* Here's a nice little rhyme about one of the first machine guns, which was instrumental in the European colonization of Africa:

“Whatever happens / We have got / The Maxim Gun / And they have not.”

* In the colonies that would become the United States, European settlers were required by law to own firearms for the specific purpose of fighting off Indians trying to reclaim the lands they'd been driven from.

* Samuel Colt invented his revolver, the weapon that “won the west,” specifically to quell slave rebellions.

https://medium.com/s/story/the-racism-driving-american-gun-culture-f24aba50cd88

* Finally, a few years ago I was talking to a neighbor in Texas who is a serious gun enthusiast. In a discussion about America's problems, he casually brought up all the many millions of Americans who, in his view, "sit around smoking crack and cashing welfare checks all day."

I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he meant black people ...

Seen through these examples, it's pretty easy to understand how a racist fear of non-white people would drive many to embrace guns, thinking they needed them to defend themselves against the overblown "threat" of non-white violent crime.

Ben Reilly wrote:Note: I said gun enthusiasm, which isn't the same as gun ownership. Until quite recently I'd been a gun owner for years, but I had no enthusiasm for guns.

Sure, some gun enthusiasts just really geek out over guns and it's their hobby. I'm not calling all of them racists.

However, I do think that racism, particularly of the conspiratorial ("white displacement" theory) or political variety, fuels many people's gun enthusiasm.

Well, that's a horse of a different color. White displacement is a whole different theory. It is, however, psychological and not political. It may well fit in with my sexual inadequacy (viewed as displacement) theory in my twofold analysis.

Ben Reilly wrote:Note: I said gun enthusiasm, which isn't the same as gun ownership. Until quite recently I'd been a gun owner for years, but I had no enthusiasm for guns.

Sure, some gun enthusiasts just really geek out over guns and it's their hobby. I'm not calling all of them racists.

However, I do think that racism, particularly of the conspiratorial ("white displacement" theory) or political variety, fuels many people's gun enthusiasm.

OK, some gun enthusiasts are racists. So are some ballet enthusiasts. So are some rap enthusiasts as well as fans of the New York Yankees.




What you are trying to do is cast aspersions on those that like guns, because they tend to be supporters of a party that you don't like. You sound a lot like Quill shit talking about Texans.

It's an honest question, and one that merits asking: does gun enthusiasm bear any relationship to racism? It's especially appropriate because of the pocket of the country that seems to harbor both: the south.