The USS California
USS Oklahoma
The USS Arizona
USS Nevada
USS West Virginia
USS Maryland
And here is what it got the Empire of Japan in the long run.
This was a major city in Japan in 1945
Ditto
I also found this and thought it was interesting.
It is an Air Force Map of Cities in Japan that we wiped off the face of the earth. Let us hope that stuff never happens again!
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I found this Article on the WEB a few days ago. For me at least it makes a fair amount of sense. So I thought that I would pass it along to you. In order for you to ponder upon it.
Return of Kings by the way. Has some interesting ideas about the decay of our Country.
But it also has a strain of what I think is also of some anti semitism. Which I abhor by the way! Just so that you are also aware of this also.
Grumpy
“He who controls the language controls the masses.” I hate quoting such a leftist like Saul Alinsky, but the man has a point here.
Liberals, unlike people of reason, seem to delight in their ignorance of what the terms tossed around in the gun control debates actually mean, or at least they don’t care at all.
This week’s article will list some popular gun control buzzwords, what they actually mean, and what they don’t.
The AR-15 is a rifle of some controversy on the national scene due to its reputation on the left as a scary, black killing machine, and on the right as a proven, affordable, ergonomically friendly rifle used as home protection by millions of Americans.
What it really is: The AR-15 is a trademark registered to Colt Firearms. Originally developed by the Armalite division of the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation, the Armalite Rifle Design 15 was a select fire prototype rifle that led to the design of the military M-16. Colt, who received the government contract to make the M-16, holds the license to use the AR-15 model name for their civilian rifles. All other “AR-15” style rifles made by other companies are technically “clones” and not actual AR-15s, but the name is used in contemporary slang to mean AR-15 style rifle made by any manufacturer. They are ALL semi-automatic only.
What it is not: It is not “Automatic Rifle 15”, nor is it “Assault Rifle 15,” nor “15 rounds a second.”
This term is tossed around to imply that a rifle or pistol is a bullet spraying killing machine that all you have to do is hold down the trigger and people die.
What it really is: Fully automatic rifles, per se, are actually not made anymore. A fully automatic rifle will discharge a round, eject the old one, chamber a new one, and then fire it and repeat the cycle until you either run out of ammo, release the trigger, or melt the barrel. Many old machine guns and sub-machine guns were fully automatic. Now, most rifles with a fully automatic option are correctly called “select fire,” which means they have fully automatic and semi-automatic firing modes.
Fully automatic weapons are illegal to manufacture for civilian use. Any fully automatic rifle or sub-machine gun in civilian hands must have been registered prior to the 1989 ban, and requires an extensive background check and special stamp. They are also prohibitively expensive for most Americans to own.
What it is not: No AR-15 is fully automatic. No civilian owned legal gun, other than those mentioned above, is fully automatic. Any gun used in a mass shooting, 99 times out of 100, in the US, is not fully automatic. The only possible exception is foreign guns smuggled in, or stolen military guns, both of which are damn hard to get.
M-16s have a position for automatic fire; AR-15s don’t. It’s that simple.
This term is highly misunderstood by the left. A synonym is “auto-loading.”
What it really is: Semi-automatics, or autoloaders, will fire a round, eject it, and chamber a new round with one press of the trigger. The trigger must then be released far enough to reset the sear, then can be pressed again for another shot.
What it is not: Semi-automatics are not fully automatic. It is very hard, outside of a machine shop, to modify a semi-automatic into a fully automatic, and it’s almost easier to make a new gun from scratch than attempt it. This is done on purpose to prevent conversions by people with normal skills. All civilian rifles, with a very rare grandfathered exception outlined above, are semi automatic.
“Assault Rifle” is a term used to describe a specific category of military firearm.
What it really is: Assault rifles are lightweight rifles that fire intermediate cartridges like the .223/5.56×45 and the 7.62×39 and have select fire operation. The most common used today are the M-16/M-4 and the AK-47/AK-74 families of rifles. They are used by militaries worldwide.
AK-47. That big handle above the trigger is the safety. See the two dimples in its downward path; those are full auto, and semi auto, respectively, because it’s an Assault Rifle, and has full auto.
What it is not: AR-15s, and other civilian-legal semi-automatic rifles are NOT assault rifles, because they lack the select-fire capability of assault rifles. While they may LOOK similar, due to use of modern materials, ergonomic features, and similar goals of design, they are legally nowhere near the same thing.
“Assault Weapon” is a term coined by liberals when they tried to call a semi-automatic rifle an Assault Rifle and got called on their bullshit.
What it really is: This term has no meaning. It’s a liberal inspired piece of mental masturbation that tries to push the point that a gun is somehow scarier if it has military inspired accessories on it and is black. It’s a con game run by the left to make you believe that they only want to ban SOME guns, and not all the other ones that behave and shoot exactly the same, but aren’t black.
What it is not: Non-applicable.
This one hasn’t been seen lately, not since the DC sniper.
What it really is: A magnum caliber bolt action or semi-automatic rifle with a scope and a good trigger capable of making long range shots. Most deer rifles can be called sniper rifles, which is why the liberals usually back way off on this one since it tends to mobilize the Elmer Fudd Army, the reserve troops of the NRA, who don’t care about everyone losing their AR-15s, but will bring the heat if you go after their Remington.
What it really isn’t: Any small-bore rifle of a wimpy cartridge, like a .22. The .223/5.56×45 round, despite the reputation it has amongst the left, is actually a fairly wimpy round that is severely running out of steam at 500 yards range.
This term was coined by the left for any magazine that holds more cartridges than they think it should (i.e. zero.)
What it really is: A true hi-cap mag is one that holds more ammo than the gun was designed to hold in one mag. Usually, these things are aftermarket, cumbersome, and heavy. For AR-15’s, the true hi-cap magazines are drum mags, and coffin mags that hold upwards of 50 rounds a piece. I don’t recommend the real high-caps for anything other than range toys; the Magpul Pmag-40 is about as high as I’d go.
What it is not: The AR-15 and its clones typically ship with either 20 round mags, or 30 round mags. Those are NOT high-capacity, they are STANDARD capacity, as they are what the manufacturer recommends. It doesn’t matter what the limp-wristed, leftist reporters who want only single shots to be legal, but they try to own the language to own the debate anyway. Fun fact: the guy that shot Gabby Giffords was using hi-cap Glock mags, and got stopped because he dropped the one he was going to load.
Select Fire makes a difference on a gun’s deadliness, and it could be argued that magazine capacity does, too, but the following are some ergonomic improvements that the left thinks makes guns more deadly because they look scary and are black.
What they really are: A collapsible stock can be adjusted to multiple positions shorter than fully extended to suit shooters of lesser stature (little girls) and allow for easier entry and exit of vehicles while carrying the rifle. They also store easier in cases and safes.
Pistol grips are ergonomic enhancements that make your hand sit at a more natural angle, allowing for a better grip on and control of the weapon. They will poke you in the back when you sling it over a shoulder, though.
What they are not: A collapsible stock is not a magical device that makes the gun either 50% smaller or invisible, depending on which leftist rag you read. It will reduce the length of a rifle maybe 10%, and it’s not worth getting upset over. A pistol grip stock is not another magical device that makes the gun more deadly.
There is a big debate about end of barrel attachments. Shotguns get chokes, but a rifle doesn’t really need anything, so you can put things like flash hiders, suppressors, and various spiky things that are kind of dumb, like door breachers, on them.
What they really are: A threaded barrel has threads cut around the outside of the muzzle end so that you can screw something onto it. A flash hider is one of those devices, it deflects the outgoing fiery gas out of the immediate upward direction from the barrel so that you are not rendered night blind. A suppressor makes the rifle or pistol quieter so you do not need hearing protection to shoot them. A muzzle brake deflects combustion gas backwards and makes the gun have less felt recoil, but also makes it louder and pisses off the guy shooting next to you.
What they are not: None of these devices make the gun any more deadly; they just make them easier to control, which actually makes them safer to use.
This is a recent hyperbole used by the left.
What it really is: There aren’t any truly “explosive” handgun or small-bore rifle bullets out there. There are tracers, which glow with phosphorescence coating on the bullet ignited by the friction of the barrel so you can see the path of the bullet and there is incendiary ammo, which has a nose cone with some extra gunpowder in it that goes off to try to set things that can burn on fire, like clothing and tents, and there are frangible rounds that simply split apart upon impact, but, to my knowledge, exploding rounds are for things like artillery and grenades.
What it really isn’t: There simply is not enough room in a small bore bullet to pack enough explosive (like gunpowder) to do any sort of real additional damage that more bullet wouldn’t cause. I would be more scared of a wicked hollow point than an “explosive” round.
See the little extra powder up top?
These terms the left use interchangeably to make their legislation more appealing:
What they really are: Considering all the guns rights that have been lost already over the past 100 years, a “compromise” to the liberals is one where you give up some of your rights, because they want to take them all, and you want to keep them all. “Common sense” is simply a lie that they use to make their oppressive legislation sound smart.
What they aren’t: These terms are buzz-words designed to slip in violations of your rights, and they are not honest discourse. The only compromise offered liberals on gun control should be “Shut up, never mention your ideas again, and I won’t shoot you for your treason.”
This military term for an area related to the arms manufacturing industry has been hijacked to sensationalize any shooting.
What it really is: An arsenal is a place where guns and/or ammunition is made, repaired, or maintained. For instance, the Lake City Ammunition Plant, which makes a lot of US military ammo, is an arsenal.
What it is not: It is not a rifle, two pistols, and 73 rounds of ammunition, like reported by a breathless bombshell with big tits on the evening news. That’s not even a good start.
Don’t use this knowledge preemptively; wait until a liberal misspeaks, gently correct them, and suggest that they become educated before talking about the topic again. They never will, so you should be able to shut them down for quite some time with points like these.
Now I am going be a nice guy & say that there will not be a test on this today!
Grumpy
Now I find this hard to write and I am going to assume that a lot of folks are going to do a pass on this one. But hey it’s still a somewhat free country. So here goes.
* The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors and is a better predictor of many personal dynamics, including financial income, job performance, birth out of wedlock, and involvement in crime than are an individual’s parental socioeconomic status. They also argue that those with high intelligence, the “cognitive elite”, are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence. The book was controversial, especially where the authors wrote about racial differences in intelligence and discussed the implications of those differences.
**
Dave Grossman is retired from the U.S. Army. He rose from the enlisted ranks to lieutenant colonel, having served as an infantry officer and as a professor of psychology at West Point.
Today he is a lecturer and author; two of his books, On Killing and On Combat are widely read among military personnel and police officers.
A particular passage from On Combat, titled “On Wolves, Sheep, and Sheepdogs,” can be said to be a distillation of much of Grossman’s writing, explaining as it does what distinguishes the protector’s mindset from those of the protected and the predator. Here is a small excerpt:
The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence.
The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed.
The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16.
The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.”
Last Sunday night, in Las Vegas, a wolf attacked. And as horrific as the night was, it might have been far worse had there not been so many sheepdogs present.
There were hundreds of off-duty police officers (about 60 from the LAPD alone), firefighters, paramedics, and military personnel, active and retired, attending the concert, added to which were those who may not have known they were sheepdogs until the wolf came.
The tales of bravery and self-sacrifice emerging from that night are many (here is another one), and there are doubtless many more that will be known only to those who experienced them.
Though as of this writing little has been revealed about the shooter, he chose as his killing place a location for which there was no effective place to counter him.
When the president or some other Secret Service protectee makes an appearance outdoors, you may notice people on nearby rooftops. You may only see their heads and shoulders, but below and out of view are rifles.
These are Secret Service counter-sniper teams, and while they may not be found on all the nearby rooftops, they will always occupy the highest one and any others required to meet the threat of a long-distance gunman.
In the case of the Mandalay Bay, there is no high-rise to the north or west from which the police might have fired on the shooter’s position.
As the 22,000 people gathered at the Route 91 Harvest on Sunday, there were some among them who, owing to training and experience, looked around and gave a passing thought to the damage a shooter might do from the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel.
And, as improbable as it may have seemed until it in fact happened, when the shooting started those people knew what to do: get to cover and assist others in doing the same.
With the shooter some 400 yards away, there was simply no way for anyone at the concert to confront him, though some perhaps were looking for a way to do just that.
The shooting lasted about ten minutes – an eternity, certainly, to those exposed to the danger – but I can’t imagine a scenario in which the police could have reacted more quickly without having officers posted on the roof of the Mandalay Bay (they’ll be there next time).
And, given the shooter’s position, at the far end of the northern wing of the hotel, even officers on the roof would have been unable to see and shoot at him. The only way to defeat him was to do what the police did: breach the door and make entry.
That it took more than an hour to do so is not a poor reflection of the officers. The killer had stopped shooting, evidently taking his own life after becoming aware of the approaching police, thus changing what had been an active shooter scenario to a barricaded suspect.
I have heard and read much speculation on how the killer was able to move so many weapons and so much ammunition into his hotel room. “How could that go unnoticed?” people ask.
To this I can only say, spend some time in the lobby of any large hotel in Las Vegas and tell me who looks so suspicious as to warrant a visit from the police.
Any of the rifles used by the killer can be broken down, with perhaps several of them concealable in an average suitcase. And boxes of ammunition are heavy but not large. Thousands of rounds can be carried in a rolling suitcase.
The killer must have declined maid service, but this, too, would have aroused little suspicion as doing so is not uncommon.
The hoteliers of Las Vegas don’t much care about what goes on behind the closed doors of their guests’ rooms as long as the casinos are full, though this now may change.
But even if the shooter had, on Sunday afternoon, aroused someone’s curiosity and the police were called, what could the police have done had the shooter refused to admit them? Nothing.
Any security scheme that might have detected the killer in time to stop him would be so intrusive as to be untenable, especially in Las Vegas.
As inevitably follows a mass shooting, we are now engaged in a debate over what legislative action might be taken to prevent another one from happening.
That there are those who think such legislation is possible is testament to the triumph of hope over experience, for a man as bent on violence as the Las Vegas shooter was is hard to deter.
Take away his “bump stocks” and even his guns, he will still find a way to kill, as was proven by the discovery of explosives in the killer’s home and car.
The wolves of the world will not be wished away or deterred by words on paper.
It is up to the few of whom can be found in Congress, to keep the wolves at bay, and to confront them when they strike.
Here we go again. Although I was hoping we’d make it out of 2017 without some mass shootings, we picked up one last weekend on Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip, where a gunman began shooting from a hotel room into an outside-venue concert across the Strip and continued until the police battered in the hotel room door to find him dead. Many, many questions have been asked about these events, and there aren’t answers to be had. We’ll talk today about some of the details that have emerged, the theories, and the government spin.
Although it’s undergone some revision, the current reports have it that the gunman, one Stephen Craig Paddock (have to use all three names, for some reason, when talking about serial killers, assassins, and the like) had a lot of weapons in his hotel room, but none of them were fully automatic. This was after CNN desperately drummed up some experts saying how easy it is to convert a semi-auto AR-15 into a fully auto version.
Folks, as I come off hiatus to once again don the ROK Gun Writer hat, I can assure you that it is, in fact, NOT easy to modify an AR-15 into a fully automatic rifle, or, to be more precise, a select fire rifle. The serialized (as in, has the official “number” of the gun) part is the lower receiver. That is “the gun” and everything else is a part bolted onto “the gun.” You can buy registered fully automatic guns (discussed in a bit) and registered fully automatic capable parts, but those parts will not fit in an AR-15 lower receiver as there is extra aluminum there on purpose to block them.
The idea is to make it as mechanically difficult to mount full auto hardware in a semi-auto receiver as it is to just make a new receiver on a mill. That requires skill, and time, and good machinery to do. It’s easier (but more expensive) to undergo the background checks, get permission from the government, and buy one of the “transferable” machine guns that are now all over 30 years old, pre-dating the 1986 legislation stopping the sale of new ones.
However, Paddock didn’t have any fully auto weapons, either legally obtained select fires (as described above) or hack jobs where you make the gun into a runaway that will dump mags until it runs out of ammo (which is technically full auto, but really dangerous.) What he had was at least one rifle modified with a “bump fire” device.
A Vegas suite, some rifles, and presumably the dead shooter.
Bump firing is the idea of rapidly pressing a semi-automatic trigger to mimic full auto cyclic rates. The term comes from modifying the gun to hold your trigger finger steady and press the rifle into it. The gun will go off, recoil will happen, the action will cycle, the gun will come forward, and “bump” your finger, doing it all over again.
A very popular bump fire stock, the SSAR-15 by Slide Fire Solutions, involves a free floating stock with pistol grip and “trigger finger rest” that will hold steady while the rest of the rifle recoils. You simply place your finger across and in front of the trigger onto the rest, and push the gun (and trigger) forward with your support hand, and the cycle happens.
SSAR-15 stock by Slide Fire. Note the pistol grip and trigger finger rest, all part of the stationary stock. You press the fore-end forward, moving the trigger into your finger.
I own one of these very stocks, although I have not had it mounted on a rifle in years. Bump firing is a cute little trick to do at a range, but all it does is burn up ammo and pretend to be fully auto. It’s not fully auto; it’s way too slow. If you listen to the shots in the videos, that’s not automatic gunfire you are hearing (although everyone says it is,) it’s extremely fast semi auto-shooting. An M-16 will truck along at 400-900 shots a minute, which is a minimum of around 7 shots a second. I don’t think Paddock’s guns were running that fast; they seemed to be going some 50-70% of full auto speed and were similar to bump fire speeds (which need to reset and break the trigger each shot.)
The real reason bump firing and their stocks, or other things like a hell crank trigger are just toys is because of the absolutely horrible degradation in accuracy you suffer while using them. A reasonably competent marksman, with a rest, at the 300-400 yards at which Paddock was shooting, should have been able to connect with every shot had he been shooting an AR-15 the way it was designed.
300 yards with a decent, but fixed, amount of drop is fairly easy shooting with a bipod and rest. However, if you’re pushing a bump fire device, accuracy suffers to an extreme degree.
However, he apparently was just dumping Sure Fire coffin mags (which hold either 60 or 100, depending on the model and are easily identified by their doubled thickness) into the crowd and not really aiming. Multiple guns were found in the hotel room, and more were found in his home.
The guys over at RVF have come up with seven theories of what might have happened:
1. Lone-wolf “snap” theory: He was angry, frustrated, or bored at life. He had simmering mental or financial issues that went undetected. This caused him to snap and plan a military-style shooting. This is the current mainstream narrative.
2. Lone-wolf “radical” theory: He’s a far-left/antifa sympathizer. He wanted to kill conservatives while advancing gun control or civil war. The authorities are hiding his motive to prevent a political or national crisis.
3. Deep state asset theory: He’s an undercover agent that was participating in a high-level arms deal. The arms deal went bad and the buyers covered their tracks by mowing down a crowd. Possible variant: Mexican bagman.
4. Deep state false flag theory: This was a deep state operation (CIA/FBI) to advance a police state agenda (body scanners, gun control, facial recognition etc.). Paddock is the fall guy they murdered and placed in the crime scene.
5. ISIS theory: He was radicalized by ISIS to kill infidels. He may or may not have had assistance from ISIS members to carry out the attack.
6. Far-left terrorism theory (including multiple shooters): He was part of a larger far-left cell that had planned for massive destruction in Las Vegas. The plan went wrong and he became the patsy while the FBI shields the truth to prevent mass panic.
7. Independent arms dealer theory. He was dealing arms illegally and independently of any sanctioned government black-op program. Some of his clients murdered him and the Las Vegas victims in a deal gone bad.
In addition, how did a guy get so many pounds of weaponry up into a hotel room, defeat the window and the security and the fire alarm, then rain down automatic hell for so long?
More to the point, why did he do it? Paddock was not a “gun guy;” no one knew he had guns, knew guns, or used them. Me, I’m an amateur enthusiast with a modest collection, but my close confidants would say “yeah, he has guns and knows how to shoot.”
None of it makes sense. His brother has no clue; he sent his girlfriend to the Philippines so she’d be out of the country when this went down (and she doesn’t know anything, apparently, either) and even ISIS has claimed credit multiple times for the event (while some Muslims have the temerity to lecture us about terrorism; they ARE experts in the field, after all.) He was a white, retired, accountant, and those aren’t the kind of guys who shoot up country concerts, even if it WAS Bro-Country.
The really interesting thing is that no one actually saw him shooting. He was dead, amongst a pile of guns, when the police broke down the door. It’s a stretch, but this all may be a setup.
As the reports come in about more and more guns that Paddock purchased over the years, and how they were stashed in multiple locations, and how he apparently did a casing run the previous week, the pundits have tried to put some spin on it, with very little traction.
Hillary, desperate to retain relevancy after getting Trumped last November, starting tweeting politics too soon, and got shut down by people of good taste. Other liberal politicians, who took a more measured response, have found precious little to work with and an unreceptive, GOP dominated government of whom they must convince of the merits of their gun control ideas.
These two bitches got right to work.
Just like the Congressional Baseball shooting, there is not a whole lot of gun control to be done here. Automatic rifles and machine guns are illegal for citizens to own without massive amounts of legal procedures, and have been that way for 30 years. Automatic weapons simply are no longer used in US crime because they are all accounted for, and you really don’t need automatic fire for much of anything other than making a statement.
I will say it here; bump fire stocks are stupid, and have no place on a serious man’s rifle (which is why mine is in a box). They won’t be banned, because they don’t matter. It would be like banning the SKS used in the previous shooting; it’s an old gun surpassed by most everything and banning it would accomplish nothing.
The pundits can’t even decide if it’s the worst shooting in US history (it’s not) or just “modern history.” It appears that the only real casualty of the gun control agenda is that the bill on legalizing suppressors will probably die in the House, even though Paddock used none in his attack.
Some country artists are trying to go for the sympathy plea and vocally saying they were wrong and that country music artists need to be pro-gun control. I think they’ll find that this will further solidify the schism between real Country and Bro-Country, and the only ones who will follow them will be their fellow tractor-rap fans.
People are wondering why a retired white guy collected guns and then planned and carried out an assault. He wasn’t a gun guy, apparently had no motive, and wasn’t acting in an unplanned rage. He had no kids, no wife, a girlfriend he met while gambling, which seemed to be his only vice, and a penchant for being left alone.
My only theory on the matter is, as American society fractures further, and more and more people go into their old age with never really having had a family of their own or any serious connection, romantically or otherwise, we will see more of these style of events.
The danger with the liberal solution of dealing with discontented, unfulfilled people with access to guns of removing those guns is that you still have those unhappy people, and they will eventually find a way to make themselves heard, with guns or with other means of violence. Perhaps we should examine ways to better our dysfunctional society and stop causing these people to be so disconnected in the first place.
Read More: Las Vegas Tragedy: Over 50 Dead In Worst Mass Shooting In United States History
Now sadly there are some Folks out there. That should never be in the same area with a gun.
Also the Anti Gun / Anti Civil Rights folks are going to use this Tragedy for their cause.
So when someone asks your opinion. I think that the best answer is this. That yes it is time for the Government to do something about this.
THEN TELL THEM IT IS HIGH TIME FOR THE POWERS THAT BE. TO BEGIN TO START SPENDING SOME TIME & EFFORT TO HELP THE MENTALLY ILL OF THIS GREAT LAND OF OURS!
Good Luck & God Bless you all!
Grumpy
I found this article on Guns.com & I thought it was worth sharing with you. I hope that you will enjoy it.
If It offends anybody out there, I wish to offer my most humble apologies beforehand.
Grumpy
Guns.com
Most people think King would be the last person to own a gun. Yet in the 1956, as the civil rights movement heated up, King turned to firearms for self-protection and he even applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
This was not out of the norm for Civil Rights organizers in the 1950s and 60s, nor was it the only weapon King kept around him. Receiving countless death threats from both civilians and law enforcement, armed supporters took turns guarding King’s home and family after his permit was denied knowing too well that the Klan was targeting him for assassination. They also knew that they would likely receive little assistance from the local authorities.
Indeed William Worthy, a black journalist who covered King in the 1950s, reported that he once went to sit down on an armchair in the King’s living room and almost sat on a loaded gun. King’s adviser Glenn Smiley described the great pacifist’s home as containing “an arsenal.”
John Salter is attacked at a sit-in protest in Mississippi.
T.R.M. Howard, the Mississippi doctor and founder of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, kept a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed and escorted those affected by hate to and from their homes in a heavily-armed caravans. Likewise, white “sit-in” organizer John R. Salter, who always “traveled armed” while working in the South in the 50s, once said, “I’m alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms.”
Stories like these remind us today that even though these great minds preached peace and tolerance, they recognized the intimate connection between gun rights and human rights and the danger the oppression of one meant to the other. Though provisions mandating gun protocol for all Americans had existed since the colonial era, the first actual piece of gun control written in this country was targeted at blacks and keeping them unarmed. Though it would be hard to argue that all gun control is racist, it’s difficult to deny that its roots here in North America are in subjugation, a reality not lost on the thought shapers of the Civil Rights era.
So on this day reserved for the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., Guns.com would like to encourage all of our readers to take a minute remember Dr. King as a man who did more than just pray for peace (he lived it), but was still prepared for war.
This article ran originally on Guns.com as “Guns.com on Civil Rights Leader and Gun-owner Martin Luther King, Jr.” on Jan 21, 2013 and has been edited for content.
Now for some of folks trapped out here in the Peoples Republic of California like me. One has to make due with what they have.
LUKE STRANAHAN
LUKE STRANAHAN