Black Man With a Gun
By Neal Shaffer
12/10/03
On those occasions when the debate moves past the obvious, past blind
ideology and one-sided rhetoric, the issue of firearms ownership in America
becomes about much more than just the Second Amendment. It is an ongoing
argument between two camps destined never to see eye to eye, represented
in various moments by a war between urban and rural, between state and
Federal governments, between liberals and conservatives. Firearms, like
abortion and taxes, have become a blanket shorthand for an entire body
of political and cultural beliefs. It is not, of course, anywhere near
that simple, but a lot of people make a point of pretending that it is.
One thing that neither side regularly mentions, however, is that
the gun issue is also partially an issue of race. Isolated incidents
such as Columbine or the various workplace shootings notwithstanding,
the “gun problem” tends to happen in the inner cities,
among largely black populations. You don’t see advocates of
gun regulation making their case with data or anecdotes from largely
white, rural areas (say, Montana) where gun ownership is prevalent
and crime is low. The anti-gun ideology is predicated on the notion
that by eradicating guns we can eradicate crime—the idea that
people will stop being evil if we remove the tools with which they
execute that evil. And when people talk about this evil, this crime,
they are talking (whether they actually say it or not) about the
cities.
Naturally, then, gun advocates tend to be whites who live in relatively
safe, suburban or rural areas. They don’t have a problem with
gun crime, and they don’t believe that they and their law-abiding
neighbors should be told that they can’t keep guns for self-defense.
These are the very people (excepting sportsmen) least likely to
ever need a gun. Gun opponents tend to be closer to the problem,
people who see the damage illegal firearms have done to their communities
(or, in the case of white liberals, communities with which they
sympathize) and who would like to see the trend reversed. This latter
group—often blacks—are the very people who would benefit
most from the responsible ownership and, if need be, use of a firearm.
None of it bears the weight of logic, but there it is.
Periodically, though, a voice of reason comes from somewhere deep
in the wilderness to prompt a needed rethinking of the paradigm
that, itself, is partially responsible for the problem. Such a voice
is that of Kenneth Blanchard.
Blanchard, a former U.S. Marine and federal law enforcement officer, works
as a Baptist minister doing outreach work in the Washington, D.C.,
area. He is also the author and proprietor of BlackManWithAGun.com,
a site he started with the goal of changing people’s perceptions
about the sort of person who is in favor of gun rights, and why.
“I’ve always been a trailblazer. I like being new, I
like being different,” Blanchard says. “As a federal
officer I had all the guns I needed … when I pulled out and
saw that … folks in my community were ignorant about the whole
gun issue … it was pretty easy to jump into that role.”
The role is that of the least likely of gun activists. When you
think of a black man with a gun you tend to think of a criminal.
The very concept is something of a taboo. That’s not a good
thing, but it is what it is. As a result, it’s not often that
a black man speaks up in favor of Second Amendment rights. The black
community’s culturally accepted stance on guns is that of
the NAACP and various other standard bearers—in favor of strong
controls at the federal and state levels and reflective of the broadly
held belief that fewer guns equals less crime. That position is
a natural, if illogical, response to the havoc that gun violence
has wreaked on inner city communities. When a counter to this argument
comes in the form of, say, a Republican congressman or right-wing
talk radio host it’s not going to resonate in the black community.
In fairness, it shouldn’t. But coming from someone like Blanchard,
it carries weight.
“For some people, I’m a heretic. There’s no way
you can be pro-gun and black. And if you say I’m a minister,
that just messes up the paradigm altogether. But the rank-and-file
regular person, who’s just trying to keep alive, listens to
me. A lot.”
Blanchard is by no means the first black man to startle the establishment
with a message of armed black empowerment. The Black Panthers made
this message a major plank in their platform before ending up too
bogged down in controversy for it to ever take hold among moderates.
But the Panthers had this right, and Blanchard is able to put it
in a more moderate and modern context, saying “It’s
easy to go left or right from where you start. My biggest thing
is borrow what works and leave the rest alone.”
This could be read as a thumbnail definition of progress, and Blanchard’s
message is progressive in the most apolitical sense of the word.
His main points are basically those that have been made a hundred
times before: that no gun control law has ever saved a life, that
slavery and control begin with disarmament, that murder and crime
are the actions of people and not objects, etc. Blanchard’s
importance lies less in these sound arguments than in who he is,
and in the fact that he has thrust himself into the public eye and
subjected himself to the public’s criticism. He genuinely
believes that for people to thrive they must stop accepting someone
else’s definition of what is right for them, and he’s
more qualified than many of his peers in the gun rights movement
to make the point stick.
See, Blanchard is neither an extremist nor an ideologue. When asked
about his vision for addressing the gun issue he doesn’t speak
of violence or marching in the streets. Rather, he speaks of the
time he has spent educating inner city kids and their parents in
responsible gun use and ownership. He speaks of wanting sanctioned,
funded programs whereby kids in the inner city learn about guns—and
their dangers—from responsible sources. He speaks of shooting
clubs where martial arts-like discipline and sportsmanship are instilled
in young people who will be better for it. He is, in short, a very
reasonable man who has seen both sides of the issue and wants desperately
to remove the shackles of government funded ignorance from a community
that can no longer afford it.
In the end, this is where the debate over firearms ownership needs to
go. It has become a political issue, but the debate is not served by politics.
Thugs and criminals are empowered by their disregard for the law. They
have decided that they have nothing to lose, and no amount of gun control
is going to stop them. It behooves the hard-working and law-abiding citizens
of those same communities to be able to defend themselves—if they
so choose—instead of counting solely on a police force that is often
apathetic and corrupt or, at the very least, helpless. It’s not,
in short, a question of answering violence with violence. It is a matter
of resisting violence with strength. Thanks to Kenneth Blanchard, the
message is a little bit closer to getting through.
