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The myth of an American ‘gun culture’
...But even after slavery was abolished, the experience of African-Americans should convince liberals that armed resistance is sometimes appropriate. Robert F Williams, a black civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s, debated non-violence with Martin Luther King at the 1959 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) conference. Whereas King’s non-violence tactics are widely celebrated, they were not effective in getting local ordinances changed. On the other hand, after some members of Williams’ 200-strong black militia traded shots with KKK nightriders, KKK cavalcades were promptly banned from the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, something the NAACP branch had been requesting for years.

As Williams said, guns were essential for those at the bottom of society as ‘racists consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity.’ Williams made the case for armed self-defence in a book chapter aptly titled ‘Self-Defense Prevents Bloodshed’.

It is also worth recalling that the Black Panther Party – immensely popular among liberals in the mid-1960s to early 1970s – began by protesting proposed gun controls, marching armed into the California legislature to make their voices heard. ‘Grab a gun’, they advised, ‘before only pigs have them’.

Today’s attack on the so-called gun culture is actually an attack on the constitutional rights of American members of the public. After all, campaigners for gun control do not protest the rights of police and security officers to use deadly force when necessary. Instead, they want them to have a monopoly on guns. It brings to mind the British woman who was arrested for taking photographs in a shopping centre that was filled to the brim with surveillance cameras. ...