Marchelle Tigner, a firearms instructor, teaches a student how to shoot a gun (AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane)
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That feeling when you start to challenge some of your most deeply-held preconceptions and the conventional wisdom of those in your chosen social and professional circles:

Even as the survivalist movement took me a distance from my own experience (unlike Ms. Ross, I would have no idea how to kill a wild turkey and roast it for dinner), I began to wonder: What about those close to me? I took an informal family poll that left me reeling. I learned my relatives have guns.

They store weapons in hidden chambers inside homes where we gather; they possess permits to carry concealed weapons and take target practice; they have friends who bring guns to church in case the congregation should need shielding; they are prepared to “protect my family no matter who comes through the door” and readying themselves for a “major environmental act.”

At last, I was left having to examine myself. “You’re not anti-gun,” Maj Toure told me. “Ask yourself this. It’s a zombie apocalypse. Tomorrow, you wake up, and you can’t find your children. You go out to search for them. Do you want a gun now?”

His analogy was not outlandish. This was, of course, the constant threat enslaved people endured. Had I been fooling myself about my anti-gun stance? I don’t think so, but I did come to realize through a series of unexpected exchanges that the issue was more complicated than I had allowed and that my views of just coexistence and human flourishing might not require the absolute prohibition of arms.

– Harvard history professor Tiya Miles in The Black Gun Owner Next Door

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62 COMMENTS

  1. I am conflicted about educating and informing leftists about real life. On the one hand, it would be nice to experience less of the idiotic, “common sense gun control.” But these people have spent so much of their lives ignorant and incompetent, what is the likelihood that a newly aware leftist would be capable of becoming competent? Do we really want grossly incapable ex idiots walking around with firearms?

      • I came to the comments to say this exact same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if she penned a follow-up piece entitled, “I’m trying to convinced my black gun owning neighbor and family members the virtues of being unarmed.”

        • More likely “I am no longer quite as antigun as I was, but will continue to pillow-plump for massively antigun candidates because I can’t connect cause and effect”.

    • That is why we encourage them to find training for their situation. Offer to take them to the range. Help them become less incompetent.

    • The point, Bob, is that she realized that she believed herself to be one of those idiotic bigots… although at the time she didn’t see herself that way. She had believed she was simply right and that the prejudices she held about guns and gun owners didn’t need to be questioned or explored because how could she possibly be that wrong about them?
      But she did question the prejudices she was told to believe… and found out the truth. She also learned that while she had always considered herself to be a Liberal, she learned that she was in fact a Conservative all along but had been told that she couldn’t possibly be one due to the color of her skin.
      It really was a great read. I’d love to save it to a file for future reference but the Times wants money from me to be able to go back to it again later.
      🤠

      • Always look at both side of an argument, would of saved her some time and confusion. This will help sot out the facts from the fertilizer.

    • You know I have found out After I started carrying 25+ years ago I found myself changing my whole demeanor I calmed down just thinking about the responsibility I had taking on and thinking about if I had to use my gun and took somebody’s life that was not guilty of something of not just the legal stuff but of the mental stress I would live under the rest of my life think about it folks I know a lot of gun carriers do buy all you people that are gun control freeks just remember we control our gun not the other way around and also consider this that car you are driving and speeding in is one big dam bullet so be quite and slow down and use your brain

    • After reading the article, I have one question. How did I miss that part about Trump wanting to reintroduce the institution of slavery?

      • Gov, if all you read is MSM you ‘know’ that’s what Trump really wants: slavery. We can’t talk politics at family gatherings anymore. (mostly because of the adult children). They still think Trump is a racist, homophobe, mysogynist etc. They were never taught what Clinton did, and don’t really believe it, even tho I told them the whole Monica story.

        • So, Monica goes to the dry cleaners to take a dress to be cleaned. She asks if she can pick it up the next day. It’s very noisy in there with all of the machinery going and the shopkeeper doesn’t hear her well so he asks, “Come again”? She responds, “No, this time it’s ice cream”.

  2. “May not require an absolute prohibition of guns” is a long road to Piccadilly for this Liberal professor and at the end of that road she will find that it’s ok for her to have a gun, because she is enlightened, but not ok for the proletariat.

  3. I want to be hopeful about this. I really do. I wish her well, and I hope she keeps going along her road.

    But deep down, the brewing culture clash/war/whatever isn’t about guns; they’re guidestars but not at the root of things. Rather, I think it’s more about power … who has it, who wants it, and how it should be used for (or on) the population at large. There seems to be to be a large overlap between “people of the gun” and “leave people as alone as you can” schools of thought; on the other side, there’s, well, people like Bloomberg, Obama, Pelosi, etc., who want to micromanage every aspects of everyone else’s lives. (And often in ways I find repulsive; but it’s more the management thing that’s the problem. If they just wanted whatever for themselves, well, okay, have fun.) Owning a gun provides a veto – an extreme one, in the eventuality, but a veto nonetheless – against that sort of control, and generally the micromans don’t like anyone to have that freedom.

    I’m afraid, as echoed in some of the comments above, what we now have is an authoritarian who is starting to understand just how useful guns can be. That can be a dangerous combination, especially in someone who’s supposed to understand history.

    • A TTAG commenter a long time ago posted this in response to a similar topic. I saved it, since it captures your sentiment perfectly:

      He correctly recognizes that gun-grabbers and gun-rights supporters have different interests and mindsets regarding personal risk and the best way to manage that risk. What he fails to recognize is that it is an insult to our humanity when one group tells another what they can or cannot do to manage their own conclusion about their own risks. And that is where gun-rights supporters have the moral high ground. We choose to own and carry firearms so that we can decrease our risk of a bad outcome when evil strikes. Note that the gun-rights solution to evil does not directly force anyone to do (or NOT do) anything. Gun-grabbers, on the other hand, choose disarmament as their idea to decrease the risk of a bad outcome when evil strikes. Note that the gun-grabber solution to evil FORCES EVERYONE to to do something — namely give up their firearms and go about their business defenseless.

  4. I hope she’s ready for what comes next. She’ll be treated like a heretic, and shunned by her Liberal friends. She’ll be trashed on social media, maybe fired or given a “window seat” by the University. She’ll have no choice but to continue her journey to the rational side of society, buy a gun and learn how to use it.

  5. So, it seems racist fear is a stronger force than thoughtless anti-gun instinct. Who knew?

    WTF does slavery have to do with anything in this woman’s life, apart from being a theme to her racism? Trump’s goons aren’t coming to take her babies away anytime soon /derp.

      • Exactly. And, she’s useful for the enslavement of others.

        (Although, I would argue that in much of black American culture, the mental enslavement begins right after birth. They are often surrounded by art, discussion, church, and many other indoctrination elements from day 1 of life.)

    • “So, it seems racist fear is a stronger force than thoughtless anti-gun instinct. Who knew?

      WTF does slavery have to do with anything in this woman’s life, apart from being a theme to her racism? Trump’s goons aren’t coming to take her babies away anytime soon /derp.”

      If you look at her remarks purely from a white, “we work for a living” attitude, then yes you question her statement about slavery. But those on the other side, that is POC look at the gun situation as protection of family and loved ones. Not just from slavery but from such things as the internment camps during WW2 or the burning of Vietnamese fishing boats in Texas in the 70’s. POC believe the government will protect them from everything. They are finding out that’s a fallacy.

      I’m sure this woman will continue to vote left/liberal but at least she now has an understanding that not all POC will agree with her. And if a day comes when TSHTF, well it’ll be interesting to see if she picks up a gun.

      • “Not just from slavery but from such things as the internment camps during WW2 or the burning of Vietnamese fishing boats in Texas in the 70’s”

        Being black gives her no more insight into those things than anyone else. In fact, being black doesn’t give her any more insight into slavery. She’s likely been indoctrinated into the mindset and attitude since birth. Traditional, institutionalized slavery in this country has not existed for a long time. The only place it continues to harm is in the minds of many black Americans. Extreme black culture in America further separates blacks from mainstream society. They create their own segregation. They put themselves in chains. They have only their own modern culture to blame for it.

  6. Nothing worse than an elitist who will now claim to have inside knowledge of the “gun culture” because someone in her family “takes target practice.”

    It’s like saying one is Cherokee because someone in the family said there was someone in the family with Cherokee blood.

    Neither are true. But as someone else said, we now live in a “post-truth world.” Personally, I call it “upside-down backwords world” because if you hear a Democrat accusing someone of bad behavior or some misconduct, it is almost invariably the Democrat who was engaging in the bad behavior but trying to take the offensive and focus the cameras on someone else.

    So whatever happened to Virginia Governor Ralph “Klan” Northam who, as editor of his medical school yearbook put in a picture of a klansman in a hood next to someone he claims wasn’t him in blackface on his page of the yearbook? Nothing. Accused raper Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax? Nothing. The other person who wore blackface, Attorney General Mark Herring? Nothing. Why? Because if all three were driven out of public office, Republicans would regain leadership in Virginia and the Democrats simply can’t have that.

    The DNC has declared that none of their candidates will participate in any Presidential debates hosted by Fox News. Why? Are they afraid of going on a station which won’t give them the questions first? Going to stick with CNN giving their candidates all of the questions so they can prepare? They might lose power and they can’t have that.

    The list goes on and on. And on. And on. it won’t stop until we start calling liars out on their lies and driving them out of politics, schools, universities and public service in general. Why? Because our society should have no tolerance for giving liars any kind of power nor teaching children their lies or lying ways.

  7. The author hasn’t learned jack which is clear in her last paragraph.

    “After sipping tea at the Hayden House, I am still suspicious of the N.R.A., and I would not abide having a gun inside my dwelling or my children’s schools. But where would I want to be if civil society topples and 2020 feels like 1820? In a home like the Haydens’, in a neighborhood like the North Slope of 19th-century Beacon Hill, in a community fortified by love in action and maybe a powder keg beneath the floorboards.”

    • From such a statement, acceptance of active resistance or defensive violence is fine as long as that person benefits from being physically uninvolved. In this case, it equates to a feeling of moral superiority knowing someone else bears the burden of defense while your conscience remains untouched.
      If that’s her personal view, she has much to learn about free will and personal responsibility. She’s still a contemporary slave.

  8. many people miss or do not understand the primary reason for the Second Amendment, it’s primary task is to protect the individual from the POSSIBILITY of an oppressive government. Re-read the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Protection from miscreants was not the basic reason. Perhaps more people would come to a vocal defense of the Amendment if they truly understood that infringing on the keeping of arms and that attempts to confiscate arms IS despotic in itself. The Declaration says not to overthrow the government for transit reasons but attempts at banning and confiscation would not be considered transit even if it is the beginning of tyranny. Just ask the Venezuelans. Chavez in 2012 flim-flamed them into giving up their arms for some kind of safety and security but as Franklin said, anybody who surrenders a freedom for some safety has neither.

  9. my views of just coexistence and human flourishing might not require the absolute prohibition of arms.

    I always have to wonder who exactly is supposed to enforce this “absolute prohibition of arms”, and by what means.

  10. Oh the sheer joy of sitting in that classroom. And the incredible honor of getting 250K in debt to do it.

    David Hogg must re educate this professor. David Hogg must assume control over all of Harvard, for their own good. Hail the Hogg!

  11. A smart woman who was blinded by her own anti-gun prejudices until the scales fell from her eyes. She didn’t even suspect her closest family members were gun owners. It says a lot for members of the American Intelligentsia.

  12. This is an example of something that’s come up before.

    The trick with a person like this is to keep her going g down the road she’s on.

    I’m not going to trash the lady. I would poi t out that none of us were born with an innate knowledge of rights or even right and wrong. It took humans most of our existence as a species to figure that kind of thing out, so it’s not surprising that while she may have started down the road she has not yet arrived at the destination. May she will get there tomorrow or maybe she never will. All you can do is lead the way and hope she follows.

    • Don’t feed a child or try to smother the life out of him and you will understand that humans come out of the womb having a basic understanding of natural rights. Unless you indoctrinate a human to perform as a slave, they will act as a free agent. I believe you are confusing the philosophy of rights with basic knowledge of rights. Even then, the philosophy of rights has been around since earliest recorded history. She’s dense about the nature of individual rights because her own sub-culture has made her that way. She’s more easily controlled and can be used to control others.

      • I’m not going to get into a long discussion of the evolution of humans and human civilization.

        No matter how you cut it, it took us at least 50% of the time we’ve had recognizable “civilization” (from the beginning of agriculture) to come up with the concept of rights as we see them today. In terms of our overall existence as a species it’s 95-98% of our existence before we arrived at even the basic framework of this kind of thought.

        As such, it’s not surprising that people who’ve been deliberately misled take more than a few days to find the truth.

      • “Don’t feed a child or try to smother the life out of him and you will understand that humans come out of the womb having a basic understanding of natural rights. ”

        “Most children” at a very young age are absolutely self centered. Unless they are educated, starting at a very young age, to speak and act in a civilized manner they will grow up to be wild animals who prey on everyone else. For examples look at south Chiraq with the war going on there.

        In the past, most families with both parents present provided guidance to their children so they turned out to be good citizens.

        Today’s parents both work, (if there are two), and allow public schools to subvert parents and turn out dedicated socialists who hate guns, America and conservatives. Everyone will suffer the consequences of this parental failure.

        No, I don’t believe all, or even most, babies will grow up with a good understanding of human rights nor have the inclination to concede that others have human rights. How many youths today are conservatives?

    • It seems to me big take-away with her on guns is, she’s waking up to the realization that things aren’t quite the way she was told they were about guns.

      That can be brutally powerful stuff, right there.

      I was also heartened with the overall tone of the comment section. It’s not the usual screed typical of a NYT piece…

      • Blah blah blah… cognitive dissonance…. blah blah blah… being forced to check a premise…blah blah blah.

        As I say a lot, this has much to do with the way our brain is wired. Take advantage of that and you have either education or propaganda. Fight biology and you will always lose.

        She’s on the path. How far she follows it is the question. Trashing her increases the odds she either quits or gets off the path.

  13. Klamath Falls Herald and News: Tuesday, March 5th, 2019/Letters To The Editor

    Gun control and racist overtones

    Here is what is on my mind for February 2019: Black History Month. I’m not Black, but 100 percent White Anglo-Saxon. Let’s confront the historical racist past of America’s oppressive “anti-gun/gun control legislation.” Bear in mind our government-controlled socialist public schools, colleges, universities, and academia deliberately censor, cover up, and attempt to conceal this from the public. This is both morally and intellectually dishonest!

    My own Jan. 27, 2009 letter, “Gun rights protect all races, not just a few” remains *archived in this newspaper. I allude to the Colt Model 1851 .36 Navy “cap and ball revolver” being the great equalizer. Like a .38 caliber (.38 Special) revolver would likewise be for today’s autonomous citizen: all races, ethnic backgrounds and for both sexes.

    Finally “The Carolinian: African Americans and the 2nd Amendment: The Need for Black Armed Self Defense” http://www.carolinianuncg.org.

    “Gun Control’s racist past and present: October 6th, 2017 by Creed Newton. At http://www.jpfo.org. JPFO, Inc. is “America’s Aggressive Civil Rights Organization.”

    “The Racist Roots of Gun Control” by Clayton E. Cramer

    Thus I dare any treasonous socialist anti-gun Bolshevik legislator in Salem who supports Senate Bill 501 to refute what I have written here. Because In all probability, they and their ilk can’t!

    James A. Farmer, Merrill
    Merrill, Oregon (Klamath County)
    Long Live The State Of Jefferson

    *The link to the Klamath Falls, Oregon Herald and News is http://www.heraldandnews.com. I’m also certain
    the enlightened professor has never heard of Paxton Quigley’s 2010 (Revised) book: “Armed And Female:
    Taking Control.” Or likewise “Dial 911 and Die: The Shocking Truth About The Police Protection Myth” by
    Richard Stevens. Also available for online viewing at JPFO, Inc. via http://www.jpfo.org.

  14. “I did come to realize through a series of unexpected exchanges that the issue was more complicated than I had allowed and that my views of just coexistence and human flourishing might not require the absolute prohibition of arms.”

    Sounds like more than a few POTG I’ve met over the years. It’s still a stance against the unalienable individual right to keep and bear arms. She’ll fit well with the NRA. At least with rabid antis, they don’t rot the minds of your own ranks but invigorate them to fight for liberty.

    Shall not be infringed. Hope the professor wises all the way up and gets there soon; but somehow I doubt it.

    “No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty”
    – Frederick Douglass

  15. Whenever a black person deviates from what’s expected of them by white Liberals, the white progressives, white liberals get very nervous and are perplexed. These white people will complain about white racism. They’ll say the government is out to get black people that you cannot trust the police. So when blacks actually take up arms these same white people are surprised. It’s as if they never expected black people to take them seriously and actually take up arms to defend themselves.

    Which I think is the case. They say all this crap which they themselves don’t actually believe. So when blacks take them seriously and start getting guns and training they’re like “hey you’re not supposed to do that”. “you’re supposed to stay scared and actually not have guns”.

    This black college professor is not the only irrational illogical thinking PhD in Academia. Most of them white, black, whatever color or ethnic background, they lack any reasoning in their thinking about arms. I’m not surprised about the really stupid statements they make.

    And I think this is proof that they really don’t believe in someone using deadly force to protect themselves against an unprovoked attack. These academics are extremely dishonest people because if they were honest they would simply come out and say that it’s better for you to die than defend yourself against an attack by the Ku Klux Klan or some other group or individual.

  16. Behold the adult incarnation of government school/socialist indoctrination camps. Shielded from the real world, and will make an easy target for the invading illegal aliens and rapist hordes of muslims who are readying their assault on the USA.

  17. Fact is guns aren’t the issue power is. This is clearly seen in her position. When she feels the state will do violence on her behalf and in support of her position she is pro ‘gun control’.
    In our current age when those of her ideology feel the state can’t be relied on to impose her dictates she supports gun ownership to #resist. It’s the same with the antifa/commie ‘gun clubs’. No red pills here, plenty of commies carry guns, doesn’t make them any more right wing. As we have always said, guns are merely tools.

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