MLK Day is no time to argue for gun rights
Posted: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:32:39
I guess the fact that MLK was a supporter of the Second Amendment and the RTKBA is irrelevant when you have an agenda to push.
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http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/ ... 03/318535/
http://tinyurl.com/ykek2kh
Michael Paul Williams: MLK Day is no time to argue for gun rights
By Michael Paul Williams
Published: January 19, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't die so that an angry, firearm-toting crowd could take the day off to lobby for gun rights.
It just seemed that way yesterday morning at the Bell Tower of the state Capitol during what has become an annual debasement of King's legacy.
Patrick M. McSweeney, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, seized the occasion to perform a pre-emptive strike on those who would attend a prayer vigil for gun-violence victims yesterday afternoon.
"They will swear he was for letting people die helplessly," McSweeney said.
Some gun-rights supporters like to make the case that King is really one of them.
As evidence, they cite a speech in which the civil-rights leader said: "It goes without saying that people will protect their homes. This is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and respected even in the worst areas of the South."
But they leave out this part of the same 1966 King speech,
"Nonviolence: The Road to Freedom":
"Violence, even in selfdefense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear."
Without fear, indeed.
The gun-and-states'-rights gathering yesterday was punctuated by on-cue boos and derision for the "antis" to follow. The gun-violence vigil featured about 50 people doing a "lie-in for peace" on the damp state Capitol lawn to the strains of gentle acoustic music. Also, participants filled a basket with hearts bearing the names of gun-violence victims.
A woman in the crowd at the rally held a sign that read: "People w/o Guns = Slaves." The inability to carry a concealed handgun into a restaurant or a church apparently is viewed as akin to slavery.
Frankly, I doubt King would be supportive of House Bill 106, sponsored by Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, which would allow concealed handguns in a house of worship. King's mother, Alberta Christine Williams King, was fatally shot in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church six years after her son's assassination.
At the gun-violence vigil, Jermal Mabine, a Norfolk State University student, read in King's own words how he could not reconcile gun ownership with his leadership of a nonviolent movement.
"When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it," he quoted King as saying after his home was bombed. "Had we become distracted by the question of my safety, we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors."
Some of us have become so distracted by questions of safety that we've lost perspective. We are slaves not to state and federal laws that regulate gun use, but to a culture of gun violence that pervades our society.
It's one thing for 1,000 people to assemble at a pro-gun, states'-rights rally.
What's sadder is that a crowd only a fraction of that size could be amassed to honor the memory of the gun-violence victims.
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Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
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---
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/ ... 03/318535/
http://tinyurl.com/ykek2kh
Michael Paul Williams: MLK Day is no time to argue for gun rights
By Michael Paul Williams
Published: January 19, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't die so that an angry, firearm-toting crowd could take the day off to lobby for gun rights.
It just seemed that way yesterday morning at the Bell Tower of the state Capitol during what has become an annual debasement of King's legacy.
Patrick M. McSweeney, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, seized the occasion to perform a pre-emptive strike on those who would attend a prayer vigil for gun-violence victims yesterday afternoon.
"They will swear he was for letting people die helplessly," McSweeney said.
Some gun-rights supporters like to make the case that King is really one of them.
As evidence, they cite a speech in which the civil-rights leader said: "It goes without saying that people will protect their homes. This is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and respected even in the worst areas of the South."
But they leave out this part of the same 1966 King speech,
"Nonviolence: The Road to Freedom":
"Violence, even in selfdefense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear."
Without fear, indeed.
The gun-and-states'-rights gathering yesterday was punctuated by on-cue boos and derision for the "antis" to follow. The gun-violence vigil featured about 50 people doing a "lie-in for peace" on the damp state Capitol lawn to the strains of gentle acoustic music. Also, participants filled a basket with hearts bearing the names of gun-violence victims.
A woman in the crowd at the rally held a sign that read: "People w/o Guns = Slaves." The inability to carry a concealed handgun into a restaurant or a church apparently is viewed as akin to slavery.
Frankly, I doubt King would be supportive of House Bill 106, sponsored by Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, which would allow concealed handguns in a house of worship. King's mother, Alberta Christine Williams King, was fatally shot in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church six years after her son's assassination.
At the gun-violence vigil, Jermal Mabine, a Norfolk State University student, read in King's own words how he could not reconcile gun ownership with his leadership of a nonviolent movement.
"When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it," he quoted King as saying after his home was bombed. "Had we become distracted by the question of my safety, we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors."
Some of us have become so distracted by questions of safety that we've lost perspective. We are slaves not to state and federal laws that regulate gun use, but to a culture of gun violence that pervades our society.
It's one thing for 1,000 people to assemble at a pro-gun, states'-rights rally.
What's sadder is that a crowd only a fraction of that size could be amassed to honor the memory of the gun-violence victims.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
--
Have you remembered to sign up for the VA-ALERT yet? If so, are you enjoying it? If not, what are you waiting for? It's FREE! just click
http://www.vcdl.org/va-alert.html
