WRONG ON GUNS: Congressman John Lewis Puts Lives at RISK By Pushing Anti-Gun Agenda

Bigotry works for politicians. After the civil war, white Democrats promoted fear of newly freed blacks. Today, black Democrats promote fear of free blacks who will defend themselves and the people they love. Politicians always wrap themselves in the cloak of public safety. In fact, that cloak is usually the white sheet of bigotry directed against minorities and the poor.

Democrat Congressman John Lewis said we need him so we can be safe. Lewis also said that honest gun owners are not welcome in Atlanta. “I must say to the NRA that you are not welcome here in the 5th district, you are not welcome here in Atlanta.” That would have come as quite a shock to gun owner Martin Luther King Junior who was born in Atlanta. Last month Congressman Lewis said, “We need to make our cities, our states, our neighborhoods free of gun violence.”

Murder isn’t a racial problem. Murder isn’t a national problem. Murder is a local problem, and let’s see if Democrat politicians actually keep us safe. Research by the Crime Prevention Research Center found out that here in the US only a few counties produce most of our homicides. These are populous counties, to be sure, but there remain large areas of peace and quiet even within our most violent counties.

Los Angeles gives us a living example. California has strict statewide gun laws. In Los Angeles today, ordinary citizens cannot get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public. Those are the restrictions Congressman Lewis asked for, yet Los Angeles County had over 500 murders and thousands of assaults last year.

Violence is concentrated into small areas. Even within Los Angeles County, the cities of Beverly Hills, Hawthorne, and Van Nuys had one murder each. Like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Georgia has areas that have very little crime, even though, taken as a whole, the city is four times more violent than the US average.

Congressman Lewis is wrong. Guns are not the problem. Eighty-one thousand NRA members flooded into Atlanta at the end of April. There were more than 20 thousand armed individuals in one room for days on end. There was no surge in “gun violence”, to use the Congressman’s phrase. When the statistics are made available, I predict that crime fell in Atlanta while the NRA was in town. That is the pattern we’ve seen year after year, in city after city.

It is worth noting that even in the most violent section of our deep blue cities, only a few percent of the population cause crime. The vast majority of us are law-abiding. That is true everywhere. Unfortunately, bad government policies have poisoned the life of our inner cities. Democrat politicians drove out industry and encouraged dependency. Local prosecutors refused to remove violent criminals from our streets.

Politicians also protect their donors. That is true in both a political sense, and in a literal sense. We’ve seen big-city mayors move police into elite enclaves while crime flourishes in the ghetto.

Poor minorities are disproportionately hurt by crime. Black women have the greatest need to defend themselves and their families. Marchelle Tigner is a black firearms instructor who teaches in the Atlanta area and helps fill that need. Tigner said, “My end game is to teach a million women how to shoot.” She’s taught hundreds of black women this year alone. Her students learn the safe and responsible use of firearms. And Tigner’s classes are full.

My end game is to teach a million women how to shoot. Marchelle Tigner

Tigner advocates self-defense for women. Maj Toure is a hip-hop artist who tours the US teaching that everyone has the right of self-defense. He says that black guns matter.

“I don’t think there’s a black gun culture or white gun culture, I think there’s an informed gun culture and an ignorant gun culture.” Maj Toure

That Tigner and Toure have eager audiences shouldn’t surprise us. This is not the 1960s. Today, our society embraces self-empowerment. That includes self-protection and self-defense. A poll taken in late 2014 by Pew Research showed that 54% of black people felt that owning guns did “more to protect people than endanger personal safety”. That attitude explains why we see more and more minorities taking firearms classes and learning to legally protect themselves.