citizen it would be wrong with every possible negative thing that can be said and done a list imaginable language. we don't throw out any punches today. ..

>> up next on booktv, "after words." former senior researcher of colombia diversities malcolm x. project. nicholas johnson and his book will be featured. in at the law school professor discusses the tradition of african-americans using firearms to defend their communities. it dates back to reconstruction. the nonviolence help to bury this fact of black history, he argues. this program is about one hour. >> host: "negroes and the gun: the black tradition of arms" strikes me as an important intervention in three ways. one that is story of the black freedom movement. and the increasingly new work that revises the way that we understand the role of violence

related to the kind of predominant narrative of nonviolence. the other intervention is cultural in terms of who we see or who we think of when we think of gun owners and also how we think about black resistance. finally there is a public policy implication as well for the presentation of the black traditions of arms. so i look forward to really getting into those three areas with you. but before it, i was interested in hearing from you a little bit about your background and how you got into this topic. >> guest: i am happy to be here. i think that your sense about what the book encounters with the current conversation is accurate. my background in this is that there are two influences. i grew up in rural gun culture.

and my grandfather and father with both ministers. and when i got to law school i found that you know, there is a lot of resources. even before i could articulate something about the fundamental rights. so there was this tension. then there is a cultural response to the fire on issues that i got in lots of these venues that i was operating on. the sense in the early '80s when i was there, it was the second amendment thing.

we don't really need to talk about that. and it was sort of a dismissal is something that culturally was quite important to me in the community that i had grown up in. >> host: where did you grow up at? >> guest: my grandparents had a garden. and they were half an hour away from any sort of police response. and they needed and use guns in daily life and there was keeping the pass out of the garden and there was also a clear recognition, i think, in the community on matters of personal community. it was sort of deep in the background and almost irrelevant

>> i want to hear about when you talk about this edition of arms, what exactly is the black tradition of arms? >> it is almost a repeat of what i suggested. it is church people and strivers and merchants. those embracing gun ownership and gun use and carrying guns and armed self-defense as a sort of practical necessity. as an important response to that time of the failure, the place in any island encountered. i think that maybe we can talk about this in a bit, and the book talks in the chapter about foundations.

and they sort of if i are walking around expectations. about how escaped slaves were faring in the kind of systems that they die. >> and he became a turning point in this conversation himself. there's a a lot of other examples that uk. i don't know if you can talk about william parker? >> guest: though the resistance and lower central pennsylvania was prompted by a fellow named

liam parker who is a conductor on the underground railroad and are lots of institutes in the first chapter where you get snippets and something of a newspaper reported. and then you don't hear anything more about it. but the thing that is interesting about the parker case is that william parker and they have homes right here and there is a slave master that obtained a attained the one in philadelphia under the new version of the slave law. 1850 version. black spies right there at the doorstep who found out that they had gone to war and it was coming to parker's homestead with two u.s. marshals and the word got there and the head of

the marshals and black folks from the surrounding community is gathered together with guns and cholerae and by the end of the the marshals and one of the slave catchers, he was dead. and others were wounded. and william parker and the two fugitives and the running north. and it was just wonderful. because i didn't actually know the details of all of this until i got deeply into the book. and he says that we were sheltered at a friend's house in rochester. and in the region to frederick douglass and his narrative and he talks about how these people, and he names parker explicit way. i help them across and you couldn't write it vendor.

and douglass and parker are on the ferry and they are about to get off and turn him off into canada and parker and trey parker takes off out of his pocket the revolvers snatched from the dead hand. and it's like the ending scene of the movie. but there are countless examples like this with less detail. and some of them appear with others. some who call the underground railroad. three of the images in the book showing fugitive slaves and firing guns against slave catchers that come from his energies in the original count. >> host: so one distinction that you make early on and talking about the tradition of arms is the dissension between self-defense and political violence. i was wondering if you could walk us through as to why this

-- first of all, what self-defense is. how you define self-defense and how you've defined political violence and why is this important? >> guest: it is important. it is my primary and political contribution in this book and it's based on a more scholarly piece. and so what i founded and what i uncovered was that black people made a distinction between political violence and self-defense and they saw political violence is faulty, although it is a risk. by that, it articulated in different details from using different details. and what they meant by political violence is trying to advance the race. trying to get political rights

and the right to vote and arguing about the access schools. all of the things that we think about when we think about group rights and the idea is that we are not going to prevail using violence on those sorts of questions. but on the other hand self-defense is an individual response to a threat that occurs within that window of eminence. where it's impossible for this state, even if the state turns out to be not a malevolent type of state. they are motivated by good will. he you start to recognize that there is a place that is a matter of physics where the state can't respond. and on those sorts of fundamental self-defense scenarios, there is a long embrace of the importance as a private resource for black folks. and that is the economy that runs throughout the book.

>> is this more like a spectrum of people have floated back and forth? like frederick douglass or many of the people that you cover, especially in the 19th century. where are the acts of violence by the state itself. kind of like a collusion of the church. and so was that self-defense and political violence? or is there a way that we can't see that as not political? >> your point is well taken. it allows me to sharpen the last answer. and so the first chapter i entitled boundary land and what i'm trying to evoke vote is the notion that there is this area of contested or contestable scenarios where there are people engaged in violent acts of either self-defense or if you push it.

if you think about it and talk about it and say okay, that is really getting to the range of political violence. and what we see is people over time talking about being on one side or the other. political violence versus self-defense. and what you see is the cautious members of the community talking about self-defense and arms and the level of restraint that recognizes the possibility you could easily have something that started out as an act of legitimate self-defense too leak into wards were allowed into a scenario where now you think that this is political violence and now we have harmed the movement. we have harmed the quest for freedom by striking out in a way that is going to produce this sort of political -- violent political backlash. so that is a tension that runs through the conversation and ec the time we get to the end of it and when we get to the end of

the movement and we see this transition and they are right here by black radicals and scenarios that we have to say i really political and you see this debate within the community about whether that is a legitimate act of self-defense or not. >> okay, so that's very interesting. so we are arguing or suggesting that within the tradition there was a feeling of self-defense that was an easier explanation had legal protection to it. >> guest: i think about his record political violence is

revolution. and we see over and over again. and i do wells talk about it in the 19th century. talking about it at the end of the 19th century. in the same way that this idea is that you are not going to achieve your goal and that doesn't mean that you give off an elimination of the need for these individuals and self-defense. >> host: you mentioned i do wells. you focused on women. there were women who participated in that.

that tells about some of the women who made up this tradition. >> guest: it is a purposeful effort but they were there. and i've been working on these issues for two decades. and i pick up new book every two months and i always think that 15 years ago there was this tradition of arms. their scholarships out there that start to affirm these things. i do wells is known to so many viewers of the show. she was one of the foremost anti-lynching advocates in the 19th century. and she has this little pine double woman. very small and little demure

woman. just a fire brand. and she goes to memphis and she's a newspaper editor there. and she ends up getting chased out of memphis because of some inflammatory things that she had written about lynching there. and she is well-known. even people who are not familiar with what i call the tradition of arms, most people familiar with ida b. wells are familiar with how it deserves a place of honor in every home. and she was not just off the cuff, sort of making these statements but for she had survived an episode of violence which included the whingeing of tom and three others. but she also was commenting on two episodes of averted

lynchings. and another in jacksonville, florida. and as she was making these efforts and sort of today's standards of inflammatory statements she was talking about responding to racist terrorist. and she has a quote in one of her several books that talked about how right after it is mentioned that she ran out, there are other continuing references to her advocating on self-defense or peering herself for armed self-defense. we don't have an instance of of her firing a gun, but as we move through history over and over again, people that one would not think of, rosa parks, people

called the first lady of little rock. through the process of integrating the high school. people that you've never heard of. one of my favorite parts were quotes is capturing the dynamic in the political violence on one hand and self-defense on the other. in response to the beatings and abuse and she says you just have to love them. what she's talking about is a response to her enemies. and it's what you would think of in terms of the nonviolent movement and she goes on to say that hating people make you weak and sick. and so how did you survive as the second question, so many years of abuse and so forth. and then she says i will tell

you why. i keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom in the first one of these folks that wants to throw dynamite on my porch won't write his mother again. or something like that. so it captures in a way that you see over and over again. the dynamic that we are talking about. and i've mentioned this. it really spills over with women who are just in this tradition, just as justice emerged as the men in this tradition. and it seems that is part of the tradition. that is if the threat arises it's not a point of waiting for your husband or whose role it is to pick up a gun and engaged in an act of self-defense. if you are by yourself in the threat comes, then you are going to respond in a way that is consistent with what principle

it dictates, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman and it is an interesting reflection of this long dynamic between black men in black women in the south. there is a degree of equality. >> host: stagecoach mary was fascinating. you could tell us about her. >> guest: yes, at one point she was called the blackberry as well. she starts out in tennessee in the east ohio and then she finds herself in cascade, montana. she is 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, a dark black woman. and she is operating in the latter part of the 19th century. so the instinct about this life that someone would have in our context is completely she turns

out to be this iconic local hero and that is not to say that she didn't have instances where she had to pick up a gun and self-defense. she had a dual with someone and she says i don't think i should have to take orders from a slave. and she is diplomatic at first and it didn't work. and the conflict escalates and sucker punches hurt. to the ground. and says go meet me behind the barn. and the nuns of the mission where she was working, she goes behind the barn and she gives him the first and kills them. and that is the beginning of her legend of mary field, blackberry, there's at least a

snippet who covers or depicts her as a role in the 1970s. and there are other sorts of episodes, she becomes a stagecoach driver for wells fargo and all she has these altercations, she is not lynched. it's not an episode of violence like many others that we saw. where self defenders that when the battle and lose the war. in of ends are much more of this. and mary becomes a hero. and there's a famous quip of aiding her as one of his childhood heroes. the whole community got together and they built a new house.

the mother episode that says you can't stereotype the experiences that they were having a different times. and so especially those that are surviving during various times of experience. >> host: during the 19th century, we have talked about the distinction between self-defense and political violence, it should easily become blurred. the suggest that the distinction becomes clear in the early 20th century. so i'm thinking of this, can you talk about how they have illustrated the distance between the two? >> guest: sure. you are right to see this and i talked explicitly in the book about this. the period be slavery, there was

lots of advocacy from others who are vanguard of the early freedom movement. and they were on a apologetic about the idea that slavery was a state of war. and so lots of statements suggesting that we just have to fight. there is no reason to be reticent about political violence because we don't have any political rights. we are not really operating within the system. and after the civil war, during the period of reconstruction, where there was sense where we have a promising political opportunity, we stopped to see the people backing off and it's still elevating individual self-defense. by 1876 where reconstruction ends we have another sort of bump in the transformation.

in the concept of individual self-defense becomes much more important because people have lost the political right that they have and they are all that they would get. and it is a bleeker period, so you start to see almost a residual matter, lots of references to self-defense rather than political violence. and we move into the 20th century and for things to get better we have to proceed in a fashion that evokes the tools of the democratic process and may be the american population. so in a variety of ways you have instances that could move into the range of political violence. but the surrounding rhetoric from lots of the people that are

shaping the story. lots of black people that are shaping the surrounding redeker. those who commented on the tulsa riots in the way that cuts that this heroic including the same thing that you see including the naacp report in crisis magazine about the episode and rosewood. and some of the best examples come from the boys, america's preeminent intellectual. and working during that early period, he talks about a variety of episodes and he urges these and self-defense by people who were facing mobs. but there were a couple of

really salient quote that i have in the book where he talks about, about the necessity of self-defense and he says that we shouldn't and can't seek to achieve reform by violence. so he's very cognizant of the fact that 10% of the population is not going to get their political agenda executed in a serious way through violence. but he is also urging people to be in self-defense against others. and it is sometimes surprising. people will look at this and say [inaudible] not only did he say that but he picked up a shotgun at the beginning of the event arrives and made some inflammatory statements with his willingness to defend himself.

>> host: so even though there is a long tradition of arms in self-defense, i think one of the reasons that people are not aware of it is what happens in the 50s and 60s. and the push towards nonviolence . and so talk a little bit about the black tradition of arms during the height of what we would consider the civil rights movement in the south for desegregation. >> guest: sure. okay. this was the period -- and the book addresses this in two ways. the first chapter actually talks about a part of this era that is central. it talks about the statement that we get from martin luther king that really crystallizes this economy that i have been

talking about in self-defense and then as we get into chapter seven, which is the longest chapter of the book, we see people engage in this question of how much we have to worry about violence. and we would demonstrate that this is an effort that is a long tradition and we have gun ownership and carrying guns and the first is the conflict between robert williams whose memoir, negroes with guns, is a variation on that theme. they end up in this debate and in this widespread exchange of

essays. the genesis was genesis was that robert williams made inflammatory statements after each trial where a white man was acquitted of raping a white woman and he made some statements that were lukens considered to be advocacy of political violence. as a lukens removed robert williams from his post as president of the monroe county, north carolina, doubling this. to the naacp. and at the annual meeting there is this vote. ultimately it is upheld. and there's this white engagement from across the country, branches of the naacp, arriving in lots of statements and the significant engagement of this question of whether

robert williams took over into the line to advocacy and political violence. martin luther king crystallizes the big debate by saying that you have three things to think about here. one possibility in terms of the nonviolent game is pure pacifist and king said it's a religious commitment that very few people are ever going to achieve and it requires extraordinary discipline. regular folks would say the two never urged others to condemn people in that sense of nonviolence and then he says that there is self-defense and he said even gandhi did not condemn that. and he also said that people who engage in that sort of self-defense, they command a level of respect for the kind of grit that it shows. and for purposes of what we are doing, that is achieving political goals, we have to press through marching a

nonviolent demonstration. that is the way we are going to achieve their political goals. so crystallizing us and them later roy wilkins still under pressure from lots of people argues in a pamphlet called the single issue in the robert williams case. he said that this is not an issue of self-defense. so wilkins looked at what he said was self-defense and said that that is not what you advocated. you advocated political violence and we will have none of this. and at the same time he said the naacp cut its organizational support on supporting black folks who stood up for firearms to defend themselves. he talked about this case which maybe we'll have a chance to talk about later. but it was a case that funded the impulse that funded the legal defense fund. steve green is another example. all of these early 20th century cases.

they stood up and said that we are going to support people that have used firearms and self-defense. the 1960s and 1970s, we are not going to be in the lynching business. and this is the place where that distinction that runs through the book really becomes crucial. because the next turn it is the efforts of radical is to conflate those two things and i argue this pushes the black establishment away from the wrong tradition and pushes them toward that kind of embracing this new modern supply restrictions. >> i look forward to after the break. absolutely. >> are you on the go? "after words" is available through itunes and ask them.

visit booktv.org and click on the podcast on the other side of the page. download and listen to while you travel. >> there is a challenge that was posed to the traditional bonds as people understood it. under the rise of activists that maybe didn't see the distinction between political violence. we have this quote from him saying that it is paraphrasing. this is a political act. and the question of the defense of others in self-defense. and so can you talk a little bit about the challenges in the tradition with the emergence of

these new ideas in terms of how this is related? >> yes, there was always the danger that acts of individual self-defense and would steal into political violence. and i have countless instances where there is an episode of self-defense and it leads to backlash that becomes a swirl of violence that you have to characterize as political violence. over an idea and not a threat he was fighting off an individual situation. so that has always been part of the worry. that has always been part of the weakness, if you will. of the conceptual foundation that was running throughout the tradition. it comes to a head in the

1960s. not only are the blacks protesting, still defending themselves individually against terrorists attacks, but also the cities are on fire and within that context, you have more aggressive radical organizations and the black panthers are emblematic and the book talks about others as well. and so this really crystallizes the problem for the black moderates. what you so what you see coming to a head in this point is the naacp, the urban league, they all sort of irvine during the early part of the 1960s.

than they really becomes sort of this organization in terms of fundraising and partly a consequence of this radical shift of the quarter. and even at that point, they are antiwar. the people who are on the outside funding the civil rights movement. they really become the most viable option. there is a record level of fundraising that occurs during a period. part of it is a consequence of outside support coalescing around a conservative and moderate naacp model and casting off are pushing to the edge the more radical organizations. one of the things that is important to think about in terms of this transition is who are the groups and who are the

entities that are pressing this mainstream movement? those entities are sort of the new black political class. and the new black political class looks at the tradition of arms and recognizes that that tradition is being conflated with political violence by the new radicals and you start to see the separation that becomes very hard. saying that black people have the right to arms in the self-defense is crucial is a crucial thing. especially when many others are saying that it's self-defense, political violence, they are exactly the same thing. and so you have this turmoil and this period, where this new and emerging and prevailing black leadership has to make a decision about whether to embrace the tradition of arms were to abandon it.

>> host: so the further distinction, do you see this coming from the black panther party, even malcolm x., calling for self-defense in a pragmatic way. so it's not like self-defense were someone is in imminent danger. but it's more like a program of self-defense. >> guest: right. that is correct. >> host: city you see this as, you know, diminishing the tradition? you know, do you see the tradition and does the tradition of eminent self-defense give a threat or even if, even if something that people find agreeable, does it also have this kind of aggressive or political collective of

self-defense? >> guest: will certainly not radical strand that i talk about is part of the story. and so you'll use a term as trying to capture different aspects and then it takes on its own weight of its own inertia. and i don't mean to say the efforts and advocacy of the radicals is not a part of the story. quite clearly it is a significant catalyst that causes a significant change in sort of the mainstream attitude about firearms ownership and firearms use. that sort of an enormous question that can we embrace the radical attack in some ways. i try not to be preaching here. but what i try to do in the book

and say okay, you don't know these stories and then you have to let people make up their own minds about it. >> pc that is part of the tradition as well as opposed to seeing that as harming other traditions? >> i think that has always been a part of the tradition in the sense that there was always this disagreement with the community about how far a certain episode has moved into that boundary land or that dangerous advocacy or action that we would say constituted political violence. robert williams is on that line. seeing lots of the late 19th century where people were pressing harder than others. he was criticized by other black publishers is pushing harder on

the boundary line then was wise and advocating certain sorts of action. so there is a point where after a lynching in georgia he said something like that she has an essay about the shootings stand rather than running high policy. and so other publishers at the time said that this is insane. were you talking about. you're pushing over the line. you're not talking about the self-defense but a kind of policy and a program that is the political violence that we think is crazy. and the white press certainly excludes them. so this has always been part of the conversation going back and forth. as well as the physical dynamic that some people would engage in acts of violence that members would say well, that is really

over the line and now you're in danger because political violence means that there is going to be retaliations and backlash and that's bad for the community. until it happens in the 1960s is with the rise -- announce on television, of course, more of a threat and people are getting to make the statements of income were widely publicized my might have been six years earlier. and now what you see is this tension that has always been at the heart of the black traditional arms coming to a head in generating a scenario where the new leadership class has to make a choice. do we align with the coalition. this is exactly the point in time when the newly minted national gun-control movement

comes to the forefront. do we align with our progressive allies and push aside his conversations about self-defense and political violence, and a long black tradition of arms, or do we embrace those things and risk losing our progressive allies. and certainly you can see this in the middle of the 1970s. the first like mayor of atlanta is now the president of the national coalition. he makes a variety of statements that are fully consistent with the new national gun-control movement. the quite at odds with the long black tradition of arms. and it is partly, as i argue in the book, partly a response to the choice of the radicals

embrace. >> especially supply control. >> yes, okay. and what is interesting is there is a black tradition of arms but there is also an american tradition of this as well that started in the 1600s in virginia. even before they became old racialized labor experts. there is already this kind of distinction made between africans who are in the new world and why others had a different view. so i wonder why we think -- and of course ronald reagan, as governor, he wanted to hear the reason they were pushing for gun control is in response to the black panther party.

so how is it that this modern orthodox as the mainstream for the right leadership? they are able to embrace a policy of disarmament? why do you think the people should push back and say that this is dangerous? >> guest: it is odd and complicated i've written a lot about it. the gun-control movement has really sort of push people into a scenario where you rely more on state and local governments to provide personal security. and that is an odd perspective to take for people who had enduring reasons to trust. the first answer is clearly the motion of political coalitions generated by black political

power. so easy in the 1970s move and into the 1980s is a progressive coalition were black political power rests and is a member of the governing class they are going to make lots of sacrifices, you're going to make a lot of compromises. in some sense to the degree that people tell you that you are now in charge of washington dc or detroit and you have these problems with crime and here is a theory and an idea than a set of protocols and legislation that will bring peace to burden neighborhoods. and again it is quite clear that the idea of supply control, if you say that we are sitting in this room, we know for sure there's going to be no guns in this room, that is an impulse in

which they rest. the problem of putting it into practice and recently and haven't succeeded and has generated the failure that i have talked about them last chapter. but in the u.s. we are to have 325 million guns. the talk talk about taking the supply of guns down to zero were asking were to that person get the gun, those are distractions. and i think it has taken a while for these experiments to run through. we are at the state and our people, especially and we have this constitutional right to arms. we are probably now a stage where those in the black political class have to step back and reevaluate or at least i would hope that people would give some additional thought to the policies that have really been in place since the 1970s.

the other point about why people have a look at the history of gun-control involvements really a history kind of race-based distinction starting from the 1600s in moving clearly into the 1950s and even the 1960s. and there's a famous quote in the title of an article called never intended to apply to the white population. which is a statement made by a judge in south carolina but a series of gun-control laws in south carolina and there's a white fellow who is being prosecuted in the job says that i'm dismissing it and i know about these laws in these laws are never intended to apply to the white population. so it's emblematic of the things that also were occurring under jim crow and even in places where it the statute was not explicitly discriminatory. what we find is that there was a

quite discriminatory administration of it. zubin martin luther king and montgomery in the 1950s, 1956, probably. after there was a bomb that went off and came around to sort of defend him and he sent them all home. he and one of the others, they go down and apply for permits to carry pistols in his permit is denied because he didn't show good cause. so that is an example of this scenario where the discussion and an example of a kind of discrimination in the terms of impact. even though on the face of the statute the law is legal.

and people have to make up their own mind about whether they are impacted in terms of their current decisions about policy that they are influenced by that history. it influences so many people, lots of people that i know. but for the political class i think that if you are facing an immediate crisis it is hard to look back and say that i'm going to avoid some policy measure. because its intention with things that happen. >> host: part of this is the crossing of racial lines does alter how we see this. and so when you look around and you see the most vocal advocates for gun control. it is usually for the acquisition or the use of guns to protect from a criminalized

black or brown face. and so when you see, as you talked about how calls for disarmament, so it is either side. whether it's calling for the protection of the second amendment, it doesn't seem to be speaking for black people and it is also part of it. and here we are now and we talked about the cases that kind of secure the second amendment. and you can tell a little bit about those cases and why they are significant. including much of your book that focused on cross racial violence. as a defense against white

aggression. but this case of shelley parkins mcdonald is a case of interracial violence. and so again this goes to my argument or my sentiment at the advocates for gun control are advocating on the perceived assailant or aggressor is black. guess that part of the responses that we have to appreciate that lots of this information is coming through a filter of popular media we can get a snapshot of the claim that someone is making about the right to arms and it is that sort of caricatured as part of the debate. and so one of the people i talk about, it's a couple of things. a surprising diversity within the black community was an issue

of the right to arms. and so there was recently a pew standings poll and there were two questions essentially asking people, blacks and whites, whether they supported more gun control were more gun rights and whether they thought that we should err in favor of one or the other. and so i believe that it was something like 60 to 40 in favor of more gun rights. meaning 40% of the survey say that they thought that more attention should be paid to gun rights. and that is a remarkable component of the community embracing what one would say is a kind of tradition of gun rights views. it's a much bigger slice and you would presume given the degree to which the democratic party commander support from black

folks. and so the details are more interesting than the caricature that you get from this tv show. and the next thing about this is mentioned shelley parker and most people know that over the last few years, in 2000 and 2010, the u.s. supreme court in a case called colombia versus heller and mcdonald versus chicago, the supreme court upheld a have been arguing the last 20 years. but the second amendment actually does guarantee an individual the right to bear arms. as of the first case was out of washington dc. the lead plaintiff initially denominated parker versus the district of columbia. shelley parker, a community

activist and a black woman, she was laboring under what was really the most stringent jacobian gun-control measure in the country. washington dc said handguns are banned. other sorts of guns were grandfathered. because even if you have one you have to keep it in your house disassembled, they said. so no practical armed self-defense and washington dc. shelley parker was represented by lawyers who were instrumental and she argued that i am under siege. i am an activist who has been threatened basically by young men that she described as the others. she was afraid of them and they came after her in a variety of instances. she had a little gate and fence area trying to keep her house safe. they drove a car through trying to get away. she said i'm looking for a tool that will help me survive and

maybe prevail during that time before this and that was essentially her claim, plus to the united states supreme court. and they said that yes, there is an individual right to arms and it actually means something like this with limitations. and the same thing happens in a similar thing happens two years later in chicago. so chicago is another case. in the first case was in the district of columbia. that for purposes of limiting the federal government, they establish his this individual right but it was still unclear whether you have an application of the second amendment to the state. the mcdonald case established that proposition and otis

mcdonald was a 72-year-old black bear, and an army veteran who is living in the neighborhood and he was besieged by young black men. and he said that the court ultimately upheld his case. >> host: in the final moments that we have, we traced the traditional black arms and how it has been challenged in the mid-20th century and now with the current kind of discourse with gun rights and the protection of black lives, many who fell to the hands of gun violence. how do you see long rich tradition of arms being revised in this short time that we have left? >> guest: i say that people have to make up their own minds about. i try to give lots of data. this is something that deals

with lots of the details on the questions of the risks and the benefits. we have all kinds of data about the benefits of firearms and defensive gun uses ranging into the millions per year. we don't hear about them because they are branching and no shots were fired. the current value of firearms chronicled by the centers for disease control and the crime victims survey. we could read the detailed in the book. my assessment of this coming away is that on balance we are better off if the sober and mature members of the black community have a choice of owning firearms for self protection. ..