[BearwWthoutBorders] FIREARM RIGHTS AND CLOSELY RELATED STUFF (MY ROUNDUP)

[Hunter Gray]

This is going to our several discussion groups -- and to a few individual friends who hold varying views on all of this.  There are, I should add, some other matters on my personal agenda which will be taking much more of my time. This most certainly does not call for an answer from anyone.)

Hunting firearms, hunting, sensible self defense, and the NRA have all been commitments of mine from my very early years.  I received my first hunting gun -- a Winchester .22 pump action -- when I was seven; at 15, I was president of our Junior NRA group at Flagstaff High (Northern Arizona Junior Small-bore Rifle champs); I qualified in the very top marksmanship categories in the Army; and I've been a Life Member of NRA most of my life.  I have written and spoken widely on all of these over many years -- especially on self-defense and firearms rights.

Yesterday, I saw on Facebook, lots on gun issues but also some of the vilest stuff imaginable on the NRA.  (Ambivalent about Facebook, I have 212 FB friends -- only about a third of whom I really know.  On a couple of reasonable FB posts from genuine friends, I made a friendly comment or two.  On one of the really vile posts, I wrote a little more, reasonably by my standards.

The guy, one of whom I know nothing, immediately shot back:  "As an NRA member you can add your name to another list -- the list of people who support groups that murder little children." 

I began, in a laid back fashion (but admittedly with my teeth gritted), to correspond with him back and forth.  Gradually, he calmed down.  Like almost all of the critics of guns and the NRA, he knew nothing about firearms at all -- and Zero about the NRA.  I doubt that I convinced him of anything but we parted on civil terms. (No, I'm not going to "defriend" him -- the FB term for ending a "friendship.")

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massive tragedy, there came the usual calls for more -- and more "gun control" and, almost immediately, attacks on the NRA -- most of these obviously uninformed, some of them vicious.  Some of this came stridently from MSNBC and more cunningly from CNN.  The thoughtful NRA proposal to fund the training of qualified volunteers from qualified vocations  -- e.g. retirees --  as in-school security, was not mentioned in any of the media last week that I saw or heard.  In talking about NRA, CNN posted conspicuously in upper corners the glaringly red poster print of protesters who rudely tried to interrupt the NRA press conference:  "NRA murders children" or something very close to that.

(It isn't, and I say this very seriously, the Native way to interrupt anyone who is publicly speaking -- no matter how much one might disagree. There are individual exceptions to this but I'm talking about the general rule.  Outside protest picketing is fine.  Responding with a counter speech is quite OK.  But rude and direct interruptions of a speaker -- No.)

There is an interesting paradox in the current school security issue.  In the wake of Sandy Hook, there was widespread fear of comparable attacks in other United States locations.  Immediately, we were all told more gun control was needed as fast as possible. (A vast number of us disagree with that, of course.) When it became clear that, in any event, the gun control issue was destined for a very long debate, one would assume those frightened of comparable tragedies elsewhere, would welcome specially trained security personnel (something that was lacking at Columbine and Virginia Tech) who would function protectively within the schools. (Many schools already have such personnel.)  But, apparently, since this came from the NRA, it was widely dismissed on the grounds that "We don't want more guns in our schools."

So, what alternatives:  Arming teachers and, in higher ed institutions, students?  I am extremely wary of that in any classroom setting.  It's too dangerous and it would chill, unconsciously at least, the teaching/learning process.  Utah has that policy; Idaho's legislature voted it down.  (I do think college and university students should be able to keep firearms in their dorms.  As far as I know, that's OK in Idaho and most other states.)

The other alternative is, no internal security -- and depend on police who, even under the best of circumstances, may take awhile to get there.

Today, three top NRA people appeared on the cable networks.  Wayne LaPierre, Exec V.P, was on Meet the Press (NBC) with David Gregory.  Gregory was direct to the point of being implicitly hostile at points -- and Wayne L. responded  bluntly and very effectively. David Keene, NRA President, was interviewed on Face the Nation (CBS) by Bob Schieffer -- who is a commendably friendly and laid back guy, but a shrewd interrogator.  David K. was friendly and also laid back but very effective.  On Cindy Crowley's CNN State of the Union, Asa Hutchinson, NRA's  Special Consultant in its internal school security personnel initiative, had a good and effective interview with Cindy C. who was O.K. Asa H. made the very relevant and analogous point that he had overseen and managed the placement of Air Marshalls on U.S. commercial aircraft -- something widely appreciated by passengers.  All of this should help greatly in putting NRA into much more accurate perspective.

NRA does, rightly in my opinion, oppose any further gun control laws as unworkable and unnecessary. In all three of these sessions, mental health issues, both preventative and treatment-wise, came up.  There was some brief mention of films, video games, and the like. (I see these as warranting community education but also very much in the realm of parental control -- not governmental regulation and censorship.)

There are at least 80 million gun owners in this country and at least three times that number of firearms.  There has been a tremendous rush on gun stores since gun control talk resurged to the Four Directions.  There is some indication that NRA membership is growing significantly.

During the Clinton witch-hunt on guns in the '90s, I was very active as a volunteer (as I've noted before) in assisting local NRA groups in North Dakota, and eventually in several other Western states, in effective PR and media techniques.  I always made the point in those endeavors and in writing and interviews on gun rights, of stressing the real causes of crime and violence:  racism, ethnocentrism, economic deprivation, urban congestion and, in that context, inter personal and value alienation.  These days, I mention and discuss those and also the obviously negative multi-effects of our perennial and proliferating Wars.  And, too, I deal increasingly with mental health matters.

Attached immediately following this, is an old letter of mine from another time -- that certainly fits this time.  It involves principled and armed self-defense in civil rights and social justice community organizing.

And if interested in more on these issues, see our webpage:  http://hunterbear.org/BLOODSTAINED%20TRAIL.htm

Yours,

Hunter (Hunter Gray)

This article was originally published in the Grand Forks Herald on 10/09/94. http://www.gfherald.com
Posted for educational purposes only.

Prof. John Salter is the Director of the Indian Studies Program at the University of North Dakota.


VIEWPOINT 


  Guns kept the Klan enemies at bay in Deep South
  By John R. Salter Jr.

  GRAND FORKS -- The Herald's Oct. 2 Focus page features lots of seriously misleading material: A ridiculous anti-NRA cartoon from the New Republic and a scare feature on low-membership para-military fringe groups drawn from the Chicago Tribune (Page 1D). I'm alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms. I'm a life member of NRA.

  In the early 1960s, I taught at Tougaloo College -- a black school in Mississippi. My wife, Eldri, and I were extremely active in the civil rights movement and, among other things, I was chairman of the strategy committee of the Jackson Movement during the historic demonstrations in the spring and summer of 1963.

  I was beaten and arrested many times and hospitalized twice. This happened to many, many people in the movement. No one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms within it.

  When the campus of Tougaloo College was fired on by KKK-type racial night-riders, my home was shot up and a bullet missed my infant daughter by inches. We received no help from the Justice Department and we guarded our campus -- faculty and students together -- on that and subsequent occasions. We let this be known. The racist attacks slackened considerably. Night-riders are cowardly people -- in any time and place -- and they take advantage of fear and weakness.

  Later, I worked for years in the Deep South as a full-time civil rights organizer. Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine.

  The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay. Years later, in a changed Mississippi, this was confirmed by a former prominent leader of the White Knights of the KKK when we had an interesting dinner together at Jackson.

  In the 1970s, I was Southside director of the large, privately-funded Chicago Commons Association. Our primary focus involved assisting minority people in developing sensible community organizations -- vis-a-vis schools, city services, anti-crime.

  We were opposed by white racist organizations (e.g., Nazi Party) and various youth gangs of many sorts. My staff and I received countless death threats, there were arson attacks on our offices, and, on one occasion, men with weapons came to my home and told my wife and children that they intended to kill me. (I happened to be at work.)

  Again, I was glad I had many firearms and, again, we guarded our home and let this be known. We responded to hate calls on the telephone by telling the callers we were quite prepared for them.

  I noticed something else in Chicago -- and in other urban areas in which I've lived. The police, honorably committed as the vast majority of them were (and are) simply could not and cannot begin to deal with the crime situation. Large numbers of people and certainly the low-income people with whom I've worked, are glad indeed when they have personal firearms protection.

  If the notoriously anti-gun Clinton administration was involved in banning books, the ACLU (of which I'm also a member) would be properly alarmed. Thank God for the NRA and other reputable civil libertarian gun-rights organizations. Minnesota can be thankful it has Rep. Collin Peterson who defends the Second Amendment. And I will be pleased to vote for Ben Clayburgh for U.S. Senate and Gary Porter for U.S. House. 


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.

See my extensive Movement Life Interview, done by Bruce
Hartford of Civil Rights Movement Veterans:
http://hunterbear.org/HUNTER%20BEAR%20INTERVIEW%20CRMV.htm
And see my reflection ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded in Fall 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
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