A Place of Honor in Every Black Home

Commentary From Charles Turot on American Thinker.com (Apr. 17):

Ida B. Wells, born into slavery in 1862 and orphaned at 16, rose to fame as a journalist by shining light on things we didn't want to see — in particular, the horror of lynching.  Five thousand Americans were lynched over 90 years, three quarters of them black.  The numbers don't account for the notoriety of the practice; rather, the demonic zeal of its practitioners does.  Even reading about it will turn your stomach.  Do not look at the photos they displayed with pride of charred bodies.  Lynch mobs spread terror among non-white people and those who would defend the rule of law.

Ida B. Wells proposed a solution.  "A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home," she wrote, "... for that protection which the law refuses to give."  "The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away," Ida noted, "[were] when he had a gun and used it in self-defense."

Translated for today, Wells's proposal will sound radical to some.  The Civil War began with muzzle-loading muskets but ended with breech-loading rifles firing modern cartridges.  The Winchester lever-action debuted in 1873.  The “gun that won the West" was a repeating rifle that stored as many as a dozen cartridges in a tubular magazine fitted under the barrel.  Someone armed with a Winchester could fire as fast as he could work the cocking lever and pull the trigger.  Fans of old westerns like The Rifleman recognize the gun.  It allowed an individual a new level of self-defense against multiple attackers.  Atticus Finch used it to face down the mob in To Kill a Mockingbird.  No one improved on it until 1905, when the self-loading, or semi-automatic, rifle made the lever unnecessary — its more advanced action loads a fresh cartridge from a magazine each time the trigger is pulled.

When Wells was writing, the Winchester, battle rifle of the U.S. military, was state-of-the-art.  Wells wanted one in the hands of every black family.  Its modern civilian counterpart is the AR-15.

Wells was a Republican.  The lynch mobs were Democrats; the KKK, the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party.  A friend once asked me whether a black female journalist like Wells would be Republican today.  If she wanted civilians to have access to that sort of firepower, she sure as hell would be.  That's heresy now among Democrats. [read more]