After the usual hand-wrigning and fear-mongering on open carry, Guns in Your Face – New York Times columnist Gail Collins’ anti-open carry diatribe – takes a strange turn. “Some commentators have attributed the whole open-carry phenomenon to white American men trying to work out their insecurities. We’ve got to stop blaming white men for everything. Really, they’ve contributed a lot to the country. Still, you can’t help but notice that there’s a certain demographic consistency to the people who are making a scene over their right to display arms.” Yup, she’s going there . . .
It wasn’t always that way. California passed its first ban on open carry in the 1960s in response to the Black Panther Party. “The Legislature was debating an open-carry law when 30 Black Panthers showed up at the Statehouse with their guns,” said Adam Winkler, a professor of law at U.C.L.A. and the author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”
“The same day Gov. Ronald Reagan made a speech, saying there’s no reason why a law-abiding person should be carrying a gun on the street.”
Maybe the way to turn this debate around would bring new recruits into the gun rights movement. “If open-carry advocates today were Marxist-leaning black radicals,” said [Adam] Winkler, “we might have a very different situation.”
Winkler is the anti-gunners’ go-to “voice of reason.” Who knew that Winkler was a racist? Sorry…who knew that he thinks that gun rights advocates are white racists? To my mind, the fact that Winkler sees racism where it isn’t – click here or on the picture above to view TTAG’s multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-everything gallery of gun owners – indicates that he is racist.
Wait. Is it racist to mis-characterize the rainbow coalition of Americans seeking to defend and extend their natural, civil and Constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms? What is that? Gunist? Anyway, Winkler – of all people – is well aware that the Supreme Court’s pro-gun McDonald decision relied heavily on the oppression of disarmed blacks, from whence cometh ALL American gun control laws.
Shame on him. As for Collins’ arch, condescending comment – “we’ve got to stop blaming white men for everything . . . they’ve contributed a lot to the country” – I’m thinking that indicates that some of Collins’ friends are actually white. In any case, it’s exactly as I predicted: open carry is normalizing guns. Every mainstream media article or TV report bemoaning firearms “flaunting” where nothing bad happens (save liberal whining) is a solid win. Yes? [h/t JP]