Black Guns Matter: Firearms Training for Black Americans, by Black Americans

Courtesy Black Guns Matter’s Facebook page

The right to self-defense knows no color, race, or creed.

The frustration and civil unrest that crystallized around the death of George Floyd can be expressed in one phrase: Black Lives Matter. But when you hear the phrase “Black Guns Matter,” you should know that it doesn’t refer to the AR-15 or any of the variants that we call “black rifles.” In fact, “Black Guns Matter” is a new group headed up by a Second Amendment pioneer named Maj Toure. His mission? To ensure that law-abiding Black Americans are ready and able to safely defend their lives and loved ones with firearms if need be.

In this fascinating article, Maj Toure dared to say what everyone knows but the mainstream media won’t report.

“While many argue that the way to prevent violence is to have fewer guns, he says the opposite. ‘I believe that more Black people would be alive if they were armed,’ Toure told Business Insider Weekly.

Toure won’t find many people in the Second Amendment community who would disagree with that. The cornerstone of 2A activism is the concept that the right to self-defense is a natural right, and it knows no color, race or creed. However, taking that concept from the ivory tower to the streets requires a level of determination that’s unique even among gun-rights supporters…and that’s quite literally what Toure is doing. According to the article:

When protests erupted in late May, Toure bought a flight to Minneapolis, where he began teaching crowds about self-defense and Black Guns Matter just a few blocks from Floyd’s memorial.

“If you would like a free basic firearm safety class, you can get it right here,” he told a group of passers-by, setting up a table with replica handguns. “The police, as we see, will leave. They will not come to save you. They will not save our businesses. So if you want that, I’ll do that here. Anyone can come. It is completely free.”

Here’s another cornerstone of Second Amendment activism explained (if you’ll forgive the metaphor) in clear black and white. The job of America’s law enforcement is not and never has been preventing crime from happening. According to the Supreme Court, law enforcement has no constitutional duty to actually protect you. Black, white, purple, child of Cthulhu, it doesn’t matter: You are your own first (and maybe last) line of defense. The article continues:

“I pick my words very carefully: All gun control is racist,” Toure said. “Whether they change it to make it look like, you know, you got to pay a fee, you got to do this, you do that.” 

Historians say the links between gun control and racial discrimination go back to slavery and, later, Black Code laws that forbade African Americans from owning guns.

“Gun control in America was initially created to stop melanated beings from having arms,” Toure said.

There’s another round right in the X-ring! The origins of gun control in America are racist, and they remain racist. The code words they use are “urban” and “rural.” When you hear politicians yammering about how it’s all well and good for rural people to own guns, but urban people shouldn’t, what they mean is “I’m not scared of Caucasian people with guns, but I don’t want Black people to have them.”

When Toure walks into a Black Lives Matter crowd and meets so many people who have never touched a gun before, his work feels all the more pressing.

“People somehow forget that we have the right to defend our lives with firearms,” he said.