Black, Female And Newly Armed….Whatever It Takes, Protect Yourself

Black, Female And Newly Armed….Whatever It Takes, Protect Yourself

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I want to share an opinion piece from the Washington Post.  It's written by a woman by the name of Danielle King who is identified as a health policy fellow for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University in Boston.

According to the article she is a new gun owner.

(Welcome to the club of responsible gun owners of America.)

However she is an uneasy gun owner and would rather not be one. She has had some life experiences that have more or less forced her hand to make that decision but those circumstances have also forced her to realize a simple fact that we were blogging about the other day as Texas was about to become a permitless (constitutional carry) gun carry state.  What she reluctantly has come to terms with is that - WE ARE OUR OWN FIRST RESPONDERS

Her story starts like this, "I never thought I’d own a gun. But there I was, in Hazard, Ky., in the middle of a pandemic on a Saturday, buying a .38 snub-nosed revolver."

I should say up front the piece was titled - The police won’t protect a Black woman like me. So I bought a gun.  That's the wrong place to start her personal defense journey but she reached the right conclusion.

She says guns were never part of her family history and she knows black women gun owners are a statistical rarity. It was the murder of her beloved brother by a suicidal mentally ill roommate that started her thinking that the police wouldn't protect her.  She writes that  the police knew about the killer's unstable nature but did nothing to protect her brother.  She writes. "I can only conclude that race played a part in why so many people minimized the threat Dillard  (the roommate) posed to my brother.....My brother was unprotected by a gun. Unprotected by the police. Unprotected by society."

Race? Gotta be. Right? It has to be race, right?  I mean, why else wouldn't the police bring into play something from that long list of tools, techniques, and approaches that work so well in protecting white people from THEIR homicidal roommates ?  EXCEPT there isn't any list.  Under the current law that "protects" people of all races, there is little to nothing that can legally be done and while it is a very real problem, it is not racism.

But it was fear for her safety that pushed her decision to become a gun owner.  She and he husband were the victims of a home break in.  She recalls the night, "The intruder slammed against the door like a battering ram in an attempt to take it down. He nearly succeeded, shattering the frame, but my husband held the rest of the door shut while I hid on the balcony and called the police. It took officers more than 45 minutes to arrive, leaving the intruder plenty of time to wander around, collecting our belongings."

 I encourage you to read the article for the rest of the details of her story.  She believes that the police won't protect a black woman.  She comes from a race first perspective but at least she settles on a race free solution. The handle of a handgun can't tell the race of the person who holds it or the race of the person it's pointed at.  It is a tool that can be used for evil as well as for good.  That all depends on the character of hand holding the gun.
One last word from the article, "To be honest, I am still afraid of having guns in my home — and even of having one in my possession. But we are products of a violent nation, and ultimately, I don’t feel like the police can or want to protect me. In fact, because of the relentless killings by police of Black people, I’m actually fearful of the police."
She researched the article, she saw and reported statistics on firearms use as you will see when you read it.  I guess she didn't see the numbers that show how rare or justified police shootings are given the number of human contacts made every year.  Maybe in time she will adjust her tune, but in the meantime, she is training and learning to responsibly use her gun and that means one more armed citizen in the herd and that should make us all a little safer if and when a bad guy pulls a gun..
Categories: Consumer Awareness, The Morning News With Dave and Lance

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