Why black Americans should continue to bear arms
OPINION - I am still considered a target. In fact, no matter how old you become, being a black-American male, walking outside in the environment, is always rife with inherent risks...
I have in the past and shall continue to argue for no changes, no abolition or erosion of Florida Statute 776.013, or “Stand Your Ground”. Again, I am a black American. I am male.
Unfortunately the issue of the express constitutional right of the 2nd Amendment is confused by the lack of knowledge and history and the ability, rather the inability, fear and ignorance of some black Americans to realize that right to keep, bear and effectuate that right via the statutes of several states.
Because of its historically racist basis, the right to bear arms has been either historically usurped by bigoted state-sanctioned controls or has been intellectually, morally and emotionally usurped by the so-called teachings and suspect leadership of purported self-appointed leaders. This is true, whether the leaders be self-appointed or allegedly anointed, because of their so-called religious positions or piety, or have been compromised politically, though elected by the people.
Consequently, why would I or anyone, give back a right that black Americans have died for access to or have been lynched as a result of the inability to embrace and effectuate that right?
Do you think that any of the lynched martyrs of the black American experience would be deceased if they had brandished a Beretta M9, semi-automatic, hand gun with two magazines filled with 15 rounds of 9 millimeter, hollow point ammunition to defend themselves from lynch mob bigots?
I have often asked African-Americans what other express constitutional right they would like to see either abolished or repealed? I would have been taken aback had anyone answered the erosion or abolition of the 13th Amendment, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude.
In conclusion, the following passage taken from a law review article written by my criminal law professor Robert J. Cottrol formerly of Rutgers Law School-Camden further states my position.
The history of blacks, firearms regulations, and the right to bear arms should cause us to ask new questions regarding the Second Amendment. These questions will pose problems both for advocates of stricter gun controls and for those who argue against them. Much of the contemporary crime that concerns Americans is in poor black neighborhoods and a case can be made that greater firearms restrictions might alleviate this tragedy. But another, perhaps stronger case can be made that a society with a dismal record of protecting a people has a dubious claim on the right to disarm them. Perhaps a re-examination of this history can lead us to a modern realization of what the framers of the Second Amendment understood: that it is unwise to place the means of protection totally in the hands of the state, and that self-defense is also a civil right. [Georgetown Law Journal, Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond. Originally published as 80 GEO. L.J. 1991, 309-361 (1991).]
A licensed attorney in Orlando, Florida, Joseph Haynes Davis was legal counsel to Obama for America in 2008 and 2012 for election poll monitoring in the Orlando metropolitan area. Joseph Haynes Davis, the younger brother of the late trumpeter Miles Davis, and is also a broadcaster with over 30 years of broadcast media experience as an air personality, program director, political talk show host, and operations manager at radio stations in a number of markets throughout the United States.
