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Martin Luther King Did Not Agree With Gun Nuts and the NRA on the 2nd Amendment
Here is what Dr. King said after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963,
Our late President was assassinated by a morally inclement climate. It is a climate filled with heavy torrents of false accusation, jostling winds of hatred, and raging storms of violence.
It is a climate where men cannot disagree without being disagreeable, and where they express dissent through violence and murder. It is the same climate that murdered Medgar Evers in Mississippi and six innocent Negro children in Birmingham, Alabama.
So in a sense we are all participants in that horrible act that tarnished the image of our nation. By our silence, by our willingness to compromise principle, by our constant attempt to cure the cancer of racial injustice with the Vaseline of gradualism, by our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim, by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing, by allowing all these developments, we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.
Much like President Obama today, Dr. King believed that the readiness of our culture to allow guns to be purchased and fired at will was a moral issue. Judging from these words, Dr. King would definitely not be siding with the NRA’s position that the answer to gun violence is more guns. Events like Gun Appreciation Day spit on the very values of civil disobedience and non-violence that Martin Luther King fought and died for.
It is quite likely that Dr. King would have been speaking out against the culture of violence and fear that the NRA and Republicans exploit for political and financial gain. The idea that violence can be reduced by the threat of more violence is nauseating to people who believe in non-violence. Dr. King owned guns in the mid-1950s, but his attitude on the role of guns in violence is best reflected in the above quoted 1963 comments.
Martin Luther King certainly thought that the Second Amendment wasn’t an unrestricted right after President Kennedy was assassinated, so any claims that Gun Appreciation Day is an honor to the legacy of a man who fought for change through non-violent civil disobedience and died by an assassin’s bullet demonstrate the intolerable depravity of some Second Amendment extremists.
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16 Responses to Martin Luther King Did Not Agree With Gun Nuts and the NRA on the 2nd Amendment
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Reynardine
Jan. 18th, 2013 at 5:20 pm
And then they shot him.
Sugapea
Jan. 18th, 2013 at 5:29 pm
January 17, 2013
Gun Restrictions Have Widespread Public Support: Poll Reuters
www.reuters.com/article/2...
djchefron
Jan. 18th, 2013 at 5:44 pm
The same john birches,christian identity right wing people who slander MLK as a un-american communist is now a hero for their cause.
WE HAVE OVERCOME
harris stein
Jan. 18th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
This is the same ridiculous mythical nonsense that the right wing extremists are trying to spread about the Jews in pre World War 2 Germany and in Europe during the war. That if all the Jews in Germany and Europe were armed to the teeth when the SS Einsatzgruppen came to haul them off to the detention and extermination camps, Hitler would have been a minor little politician. That’s nonsense. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 took away German citizenship from Jews and essentially made it illegal for Jews to own or purchase any kind of firearm.
These right wing idiotlogues are living in a fantasy world that has no connection to history or reality.
Anne
Jan. 19th, 2013 at 8:41 am
Their attempts to attribute views and motives to MLK that are anti-thetical to the life he led smack of cynicism and hypocrisy. While he may have been a Republican as they claim, he would have been one of the sensible, reality-based ones from years past. For a long time, black folks did vote for Republicans, who were rightly viewed at one time as the party of Lincoln. But the party has changed radically into one that the long-dead elderly blacks who voted for Republicans most likely would not recognize if they were alive. They would most likely see it as one that is trying to negate everything King and others died for, and they would be right.
Citygirl
Jan. 19th, 2013 at 9:08 am
I agree with your article, but you should not use the phrase ‘gun nuts’. It is better to respect each other and stay away from labels.
Anne
Jan. 19th, 2013 at 10:52 am
Unfortunately, the term “gun nuts” does tend to accurately describe those on the lunatic fringe who confuse sensible gun control with taking away all gun rights.
Maryann
Jan. 19th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
You all who believe that making guns illegal to law obeying citizens are crazy.
Shiva (Moderator)
Jan. 19th, 2013 at 2:52 pm
is that all guns or just the guns that the SCOTUS says can be illegal?
Or are you the paranoid right that thinks their guns are being taken away?
Busefalis
Jan. 20th, 2013 at 6:56 pm
If someone owns a rifle with an extendable stock, or a pistol grip in NY, they have to register it, and cannot pass it on to their family within the state if they pass on. Sounds like it is being taken away.
Or if you say that they are not having it taken away because they can keep it til they die, what about their magazines which hold over 10 bullets. no grandfathering just get them out of the state. sounds like it is being taken away to me.
Shiva
Jan. 20th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
awwwwwww
But you know how many will register right?
Busefalis
Jan. 20th, 2013 at 7:31 pm
So that would turn them into criminals, which they do not want to be. Why make them into criminals. Even the last Federal AWB grandfathered in current owners.
And why would you go “awwwww….” like a high school bully? Merely making a point.
Phil
Jan. 21st, 2013 at 8:10 pm
And of course they “took away our guns” when they restricted ownership of automatic weapons too. Ridiculous nonsense. In fact the NRA actually supported that ban AND the “Common Sense” bans enacted when the Black Panthers made the same case that modern “gun nuts” are currently making. Our very first “gun control” law was passed in 1792 if the source is accurate, and included Gun Registration. To be fair that first law was a mandate to OWN a gun AND be a mandated part of the Militia but the first gun ban (concealed weapons bans) was implimented in 1813 and NO ONE has lost their 2nd Amendment Rights yet (but then if the RIGHT would read the WHOLE Amendment AS WORDED with a mind toward trying to understand why those words were used instead of resorting to unrelated, out of context ‘quotations’ from 4 or 5 of the FIFTY FIVE members who set all this up…)
djchefron(Moderator)
Jan. 21st, 2013 at 8:16 pm
These are the names of people who were shot or killed on Gun appreciation day
•A 14-year-old suburban Atlanta boy shot and killed his 15-year-old brother while playing with their mother’s handgun.
•A 26 year old was shot and killed while driving in San Francisco.
•A man was found dead from a gunshot wound in his home in Kansas City, Kansas.
•A woman in an El Paso County, Texas CO shooting range was hit in the knee by a bullet that ricocheted off a trash can.
•Two women were shot to death in a Dallas-area home.
•Two women were injured after someone opened fire at a crowded soccer field in Las Vegas.
•A 15-year-old girl was shot while sleeping in her bed when her Anchorage home was shot at.
•A 7-year-old boy in Tallahassee shot a 5 year old with a gun he found in a 22-year-old relative’s room.
•A Huntsville woman shot her boyfriend after the two had an argument.
•A 23-year-old man died after being accidentally shot in a Greshman, Oregon home.
•A Cleveland father has been charged in connection with the death of his 6-year-old daughter from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
•One man was shot in Elyria, Ohio, just west of Cleveland, early Saturday morning.
•A man was found shot dead in a parking lot in Greenville County, South Carolina.
•Two people were shot and killed outside an inn in Hampton, Virginia.
•At least 10 people were shot in Chicago, at least two were fatal.
•A Colorado Springs man was driven to the hospital with a gunshot wound.
•A Jackson, Mississippi police officer was shot while responding to a disturbance call.
•One man was shot at a Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Jackson.
•Two men and one woman were shot at a home in Oakland.
•An 11-year-old boy was shot in an Oklahoma City apartment complex.
•Police in Richmond, Virginia are looking for three men who shot another man in his thirties.
•Police believe gang violence is to blame for the shooting death of one man in Santa Ana, California.
•An early morning shooting in Tuscaloosa injured two teenagers.
happy gun day indeed
Shiva(Moderator)
Jan. 21st, 2013 at 9:25 pm
Oregon Girl, 16, shot dead at side of highway by attacker who then turned gun on himself – today
UncaJoe
Jan. 21st, 2013 at 9:38 pm
Wait for the trolls to diminish these tragedies by asking how many were killed by baseball bats or mosquito bites today.