a tradition that dates back to reconstruction. he argues that and non-violence of the civil-rights era helped bury this back to black history. this program is about an hour. >> so, it strikes me as an important intervention in three ways. one in the historiography of the black freedom movement of the years of being increasingly knew works that revise the way we understand the role of violence relating to the kind of predominant non-violent. the other intervention is cultural in terms of who we see or think of when we think of gun owners and also how we think about black resistance. and then finally there is a public policy implications for your presentation of the black

tradition of warm us. so i look forward to really getting into those three areas with you, love for a was interested in hearing from you a little bit about your background and how you have gotten into this topic, how did you arrive at this topic. >> happy to be here. i think your sense about the way the book encounters occurred conversation is accurate. my background and this is there are two influences. i grew up in rural gun culture, which was black and culture. so everyone that i knew, all of the, you know, good people of the community, my grandfather and father were both ministers, both those guns. so did everybody else in the community. really unapologetically. when i got to law school i'll bet that there was a quite different impression of about something that i took as being sort of one of the clear fundamental rights.

before i could articulate something about the fundamental rights. there was this tension in the way that i was dealing with what i knew verses what i heard in law school end the kind of cultural response to issues that i got and lots of the venues that i was operating in. certainly at harvard the sense in the early 80's was, oh, well, the second amendment thing, we don't really need to talk about that. it was a live dismissal of something that culturally was quite important to me as a community when i had grown up and. >> that's interesting. so where did you -- >> i grew up in rural west virginia. my grandparents had a garden. they did not have a telephone that unremembered.

there were half an hour away from any sort of police response they also needed end use guns in terms of sort of daily life. there was talk of killing, keeping the pass out of the garden. but there were also sort of a clear recognition to my take, and the community that on matters of personal security the government, the state was really deepen the back rent and almost irrelevant. >> in your book you really, i feel, try to recover this tradition and put it in a long-term historical context. so i wanted to hear the when you talk about the black tradition alarms, what exactly is the black traditional arms? >> it is almost a repeat of what i suggested. it is church people and scribers and merchants embracing gun ownership, gun used, carrying guns, armed self-defense as a

sort of practical necessity. as an important response to that time of state failure, that place in any sort of a violent encounter with the state just is not able to respond. and you find this occurring very early on. so, as you said, the book actually after the introduction which focuses on the robert williams case that we would talk about in a bit, the book talks in the chapter title foundations about the earliest iterations, fugitive slaves and stealing guns, acquiring guns, and fighting of slave catchers, sometimes very successfully in ways that are justifying our walking around expectations about how escaped slaves were fearing end the kind of assistance that they got. will we find really is that this tradition goes back as far as we can trace the black american

experience. >> he started with frederick douglass. for many people who read the narrative, frederick douglass, familiar with this fight that they had with his former master that became the turning point in his coming. but what i didn't know about or what i knew less about were some of the other examples that you gave. one in particular was the case, i don't know if you can talk about william parker. >> the resistance in lower central pennsylvania was prompted by a fellow named william parker who is a conductor on the underground railroad. and there are lots of instances in the first chapter where you get snippets. a newspaper report, slaves fire of pursuers and you don't hear anything more about it. the thing that is interesting is that william parker threw as a slave was illiterate at one point in time -- that people can

test this, at some point along the way he learned how to read and write and wrote actually his own narrative recounting the christiane resistance. so he was sheltering to work free slaves at his home. the slave master obtained a warrant in philadelphia under the new version of the fugitive slave law. there were blacks buys right there at the door side. >> to found out that this fellow had gone toward was coming back to parker's homestead with two u.s. marshals. the word got there ahead of the slave catchers and the head of the marshals. black folk from the surrounding community gathered together with guns and cutlery and by the end of it the marshals, the slave catchers, one of them was dead. several others were wounded. william parker in the two fugitives in the running north.

on parker's telling commend it was just wonderful. i did not actually know the details of all of this until i get deeply into the book. on parker's telling he says, we were sheltered at a friend's house in rochester. in the new retentive frederick douglass is narrative. he says -- the talks about how these people @booktv and the name sparker explicitly, they came, sheltered at my house, help them across. the ending seems to me you could not ride it better. the ending scene is douglas and parker on the ferry. as douglas is about to get off to a partakes of of his pocket. he calls it the revolvers natural the dead hand of the slaver. so it's like the ending scene of the movie. but there are countless examples like this with less detail. and some of them appear actually

in william stills account, called the founder of the umbrella railroad who wrote this law and 800 page exposition of fugitive slaves who were coming through philadelphia. three of the images in the book showing fugitive slaves firing guns against slave catchers come from william stills images in the original account. >> so this distinction the maker leon in talking about the black tradition of arms is the distinction between self-defense and political violence. i wonder if you could walk us through why this distinction -- first of all, was self-defense is, how you are defining self-defense and how you're defining political violence and why this distinction is important. >> okay. it is important, and it is my prairie a political contribution in the work. this book is based on a more scholarly peace that i published

in the connecticut law review in 2012. what i felt and what i argue or what i show over and over again is that black people laid a distinction between political violence in self-defense. faceup political violence as folly. political violence as the rest. but political violence, articulated in different details within the above political violence is trying to advance the race, trying to get political rights, arguing about the right to vote, arguing about access to schools, all the things that we think about what we think about group rights. the idea was that we are not going to prevail using violence of those sorts of questions. on the other hand, self-defense is this individual response to a threat that occurs within that window of of evidence.

it is impossible for the state, even if the state turns out to be not a malevolent state, turns out to be operating motivated by good will, you still have to recognize that there is a place just as a matter of physics for the state cannot respond. and on those sorts of fundamental self-defense in areas that are really just baseline fundamental, there is this law embrace of the importance of firearms in our self-defense as a private resource for black vote, and that is the dichotomy that runs really throughout the book. >> is this more like a specter that people have flooded back and forth? i'm thinking about the case of william parker or frederick douglass, especially the 19th century were the acts of violence were aggressive acts of violence by whites or by the state itself. and so with that self-defense

and political violence? is there a way that we cannot see that as not political? >> and your point is well taken. allows me to sharpen the last denture. so the first chapter, i actually titled boundary land. what i am trying to evoke is this notion that there is this area of contested or can testable scenarios where there are people engaged in violent acts that either self-defense, or if he pushes cannot think about and talk about it you could say, that is really getting to the range of political violence. what we see rather than people overtime talking about being of one side or the other, political violence versus self-defense, what easy is the more conservative and cautious members of the community talking about self-defense and talking about arms with the level of

restraint that recognizes the possibility that you could very easily have something that started out as an active legitimate self-defense leak into or filter into or swirl out into a scenario where now you are thinking, this is political violence. now we have armed the movement. we have our request for freedom by striking out in the way it is going to produce this sort of political violent political backlash. it is a tension that runs through the conversation. you see by the time we get to the end of it, as i am sure we will have a chance to talk about , will we get to the end of the movement and see this transition into what i call the modern orthodoxy, one of the impulses that drives the modern orthodoxy is the use of self defense team's by black radicals in some areas that we have to say really are political violence. you see this debate and

dissension within the community about whether that is a legitimate act of self-defense are not. >> okay. and very interesting. my sense is that you are doing or suggesting that within the tradition, there was this feeling that self-defense was an easier explanation. it and a moral weight to it. and legal protection to it in ways that political violence did not. is that -- >> at think that's right. political violence is essentially revolution. you know, we will upset the game board. you see over and over and over again, roy williams talking about it in the 20th-century. but you also see the boys talking about it at the turn of the century. talk about it at the end of the 19th century. and lots of other people that

you probably have not heard of expressing it in the same way this idea, you are a 10 percent minority. you're not going to win a revolution. you're not going to achieve your goals of inclusion. that does not mean that you give up the right or that there is that elimination of the need for these instances of individual self-defense. >> he mentioned qaeda be well. >> host: of the things that i thought was really interesting in great about your book is that you focused on women. there were women who participated in this tradition. salicylate and the russell of the women. >> it was not any sort of purposeful effort. they were there. a bit of background. i have been working on these issues for two decades. every six months a pick up a new

book and think, well, there he is again. there is this thing. years ago, 15 years ago and thinking is by tradition of arms . a lot of scholarships that starts to sort of a firm listings. well, well-known to lots of viewers of the show and hopefully readers of the book. she was one of the foremost anti lynching advocates and the 19th century. she is just this very small, little, a demure woman. just a firebrand. she goes to live this. she is a newspaper editor. she ends up getting chased out because of some inflammatory things and she had written about lynching. she goes to new york reporters with the thomas fortune working for the new york heat. and she is well known. even people who are familiar

with what i call the black tradition of arms, most people are familiar with her. the winchester rifle deserves a place of honor and every black coat. well, she was not just off the cuff making these statements. the context was first she has survived an episode of violence which included a lynching. one of her best friends and memphis. she also was commenting on two episodes of averted lynchings, one in kentucky, another in jacksonville, florida. as she was going about her journalistic efforts and making these by today's standards inflammatory statements about firearms unless she was talking about people in the community were doing in response to racist

in the other things we know who she has a "and one of her several books the talks about the right after the thomas lynch and she went out and bought a pistol and carried it. there are other references that these continuing references to wells advocating armed self-defense and preparing herself for armed self-defense. we don't have an actual instance a wells firing a gun. as we move through the history, over and over and over again. people that one would not think of, rosa parks, people you have never heard of. one of my favorite parts or quotes captures the dynamic that you were talking about. that is the political violence on one hand and self-defense and the other.

so in response to people who are questioning her about the beatings and abuse. she just had a horrible or early life. she says : you just have to love them. but she is talking about is this crucial response to her enemies. and it is exactly what you would think of in terms of the nonviolent movement. she goes on to say, hitting just makes you weak and sick. and then someone has to the second question. how did you survive so many years of abuse and so forth. and without missing a beat she says, altos you why. i keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom. the first one of these folks was to draw some dynamite unsupportable right is, again or something like that. and it just captures in no way that uc occurring over and over and over again that endemic to we're talking about. one, i mentioned just a few, but the book really, as i said, to

spills over with women who are just as in days to in this tradition has been. and this seems to me that really it is an illustration of the pragmatism that undergirds the tradition. that is, if the threat arises, it is not a question of waiting for your husband or rouge role is to pick up again engage in nectar self-defense. if you are by yourself and the threat comes, you will respond in a way that is consistent with what principle would dictate regardless of whether you are a man or woman. it is an interesting reflection of this law dynamic between black men and black women "particularly in the south. there is degree of equality year >> fascinating.

>> so also called stagecoach mary. at one point or another, blackberry. so she starts out in tennessee, most of ohio, eventually finds herself in cascade montana. so she is 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, a dark black woman. your instinct -- and she is in cascade been operating in the west, the latter part of the 19th century. your instinct about the life of someone like that would have in that context is completely different from the reality. she turns out to be just this iconic local hero. that is not to say this season of face instances where she had to pick up again and self-defense. she actually had to do with a white man. they were working at a place where she was in charge. the fellow says, of the dishes have to take orders from an acre slaved.

she is diplomatic first. that didn't work. as the conflict escalates the comes in and sucker punches there. she gets up, dust yourself off, as is go get your gun and mimi behind the bar. so the men are who. the terms of the mission where she was working were all aghast. they go behind the barn, she shoots and then kills as many she goes on, has other sorts of episodes, she becomes famous as a stagecoach driver for wells fargo. and while she has these

altercations, she is of lynched. we don't have -- it is not an episode of violence where blacks of defenders when the battle but lose the war. she becomes a hero tsk. this famous quip the elevating mary field as one of his childhood heroes. her house burned down in the early 20th century. the whole community get together and built her a new house. this is this episode showing that you cannot really stereotypes the experiences that black folk were having. so like much of the book, this is a surprise, and defies many of the expectations that people have about health vote were surviving during various times.

>> during the 19th century we have talked about how the distinction between self-defense and political violence could easily get blurred. but you suggest that moving into the 20th century that distinction becomes clear. so and thinking, can you talk about how they illustrated the distinction? >> sure. you're right to see this, and that dr. exclusively in the book about the pre slavery time, a lot of data see from frederick douglass to let henry barnett, charles rule, from others who were in the vanguard of the early freedom movement, and they were unapologetic about the idea that slavery was a state of war. so you had at that time prior to the civil war a lot of statements suggesting, listen, we just have to fight. there is no reason to be

reticent. we don't have any political rights. we're not really operating within the system. after the civil war and certainly during the time of reconstruction where there was some sense that we have a really promising political opportunity, we start to see people backing off a bit set in terms of the rhetoric of political violence the still elevating individual self-defense. but 1876 or reconstruction ends we have another sort of bump in the transformation. now we're and appointed with a concert of individuals of defense becomes much more important because people have lost their political rights. in some sense they have now in 1876 are all that they will get commended is a bleaker legal time. you start to see almost says just a residual mater, lots of

references to self-defense rather than the political violence. he moved into the 20th century and there again is this sort of concerned that four things to get better we have got to proceed in a fashion that evokes the tools of the democratic process and maybe the guild's of the american population. so in a variety of ways you have got instances that could move into the range of political violence, but the surrounding rhetoric from lots of the people who are sort of like people who are shaping the story, you know, the surrounding rhetoric people who commented on the tulsa riots from the 1920's in a way that really casts it as a relic, but self-defense rather than as

political violence. you see the same thing in the naacp reporting and the crisis magazine about the episode in rosewood and lots and lots of other listings. some of the best examples come from black america's preeminent intellectual, working at the crisis during that early time, he talks about a variety of episodes and actually urges vehemently self-defense by people who were facing mobs. there are a couple of release alien "that had the book where he talks for half of the "about the necessity of self-defense and then goes on in the other half and says, but we should not and can seek to achieve reform by violence. so he is very cognizant of the fact that 10 percent of the population is not going to get their political agenda executed

in in the serious way through violence, but he is also urging people to take up guns in self-defense against muggers. and it is sometimes surprising. showed what was doing, the early versions of the book people would look at this and say, the boys said this? well, not only did he say that, but he picked up a shotgun at the beginning of the lead to riots fast in made some quite inflammatory statements about his willingness to defend itself and his family. >> this long tradition of arms, self-defense. at the one of the reasons why people are not aware of it to the push toward non-violence civil disobedience, with the selc. so talk a little bit about how

what happens to the black tradition of arms during the height of what we would consider the source movement and the self >> sure. so this is the time -- the book addresses this into ways. the first chapter action to talks about a part of this era that is central because it reflects the statement and talks in detail about the origins of the statement that we differ martin luther king that crystallizes this dichotomy. and then as we get into chapter seven which is the longest chapter of the book, over and over again we see people in the movement in beijing this question of how much to -- we have to worry about violence, project and then demonstrate that this is an effort to achieve our political goals non violently. the center of you have this long

tradition, especially in the south and in the rural areas with lots of this work is going, gun ownership, gun used to carrying guns. and so try to summarize a couple of ways. in the first chapter where talk about is this conflict between his memoir, and the dress with guns, the title of this booklet variation on that theme. williams and came in the in this debate to this widespread exchange, widely we published exchange of essays. the genesis was that robert williams made inflammatory statements after the trial where a white man was acquitted of raping a black woman. he made some statements and were considered to be advocacy of political violence. wilkens removed robert williams

from his post as president of the monroe county north carolina naacp. williams appeals that removal to the national board of the naacp. the annual meeting there is this vote. ultimately the removal is upheld, but in the process there is justice why engagement from across the community, across the country, branches of the naacp riding in to a lot of statements in the crisis magazine. just this significant engagement of this question of whether robert williams stepped over the line into advocacy of political violence. a lot of people disagreed. martin luther king crystallizes the debate but basically saying, all right. you have three things to think about. one possibility in terms of the nonviolent theme of the movement is pure pessimist. king says it's a religious commitment that very few people ever going to achieve. it requires extraordinary

discipline. later folks would say that king never urged others to -- or never condemn people for not achieving that level, that sense of nonviolence. and he says and then there is self-defense. even involving arms. even ghandi did not condemn that he also says that people who engage in that sort of self-defense may even commando level of respect for the kind of grit that it shows. and then he says, for purposes of what we're doing, that is, the freedom, achieving political goals, we have got to press through marching and non-violent demonstration, and that is the way we will achieve our political goals. soaking crystallizes dichotomy. and later roy wilkens still under pressure from lots of people at the branches are in use in the pamphlet called the single issue in the robert williams case, this is not an issue of self-defense. wellcome's looked at what williams said and said, that's

not what you advocated. you advocate of political violence. we will have none of this. at the same time roy wilkens says to listen, the naacp cut its organizational teeth on supporting black folk who stood up with firearms and defended themselves. talk about the pink franklin case, the o.c. and smith case. for actually the case that funded the naacp legal defense fund. there was -- steve green is another example. all of these early 20th century cases, the naacp stood up and several support black people who have used firearms in self-defense. but says wilkins by the 1960's, 1970's, we are never going to be in the lynching business. you will not be in the business of political violence. this is the place where that distinction that runs through the book really becomes crucial

because in the next turn it is the efforts of black radicals to conflate those two things that i think -- and the argue in the bucket pushes the black establishment away from the long tradition and pushes them toward a kind of embrace of this new modern orthodoxy in support of supply restrictions. >> we definitely get into this. a look forward to it after the break. >> great. >> so much to pick back up, talking about this change, the challenge that was posed to the tradition of arms this people understood it develop the rise

of activists through -- and gusty the distinction for. you know, and paraphrasing. essentially this is a political act. and then the question of the defense of others self-defense. you talk about the deacon to be talk a little bit about the challenges, the tradition as it has been evolving with the emergence of these new ideas, in terms of other two are related. >> again, there was always this lori, always this danger, the ex of individual self-defense would spill into political violence. just careless instances where there is an episode of self-defense that leads to a

backlash that becomes the and a swirl of violence they have to characterize ultimately as political violence. groups of people fighting one another over something that -- over an idea, an episode. that has always been part of the weakness. the conceptual foundation that was running throughout the tradition. comes to a head in the 1960's. we find not only of blacks protesting, still defending themselves individually against. but also the cities are on fire. and within that context you have got new, more progressively

radical organizations. the black panthers are emblematic. the "the you give from huey newton really crystallizes the problem for the black moderates. so what you see coming to a head at this point is the naacp, as dlc, the urban league, all sort of vying for influence during the early part of the 1960's it becomes the dominant organization in terms of fund-raising. that's a consequence of even this sort of radical shift of course. and even as the o.c. skynyrd the point is anti-war. so for people who are on the upside looking to fund the civil

rights movement, the naacp becomes really the most viable option. and there's this record level of fund-raising that occurs during that time. part of this is a consequence of outside support coalescing around this sort of conservative moderate naacp model. casting off or pushing to the edge of the more radical organizations one of the things that is important to to think about in terms of the transition , who are the groups the new mainstream black movement those entities proceeding aren't the new black political plans the new black political class looks at the traditional arms. he start to see this policy

separation. because very hard to stand up and say that black people have this right to arms, self-defense is this crucial plan to especially when huey newton and others are on the other side of the street scene in self-defense and political violence are exactly the same thing. so it is this turmoil, this. where the new, emerging, prevailing black has to make a decision. >> so this -- so the distinction again. to use the the expression coming from the black panther party or malcolm x calling for self-defense in a kind of programmatic way.

the thing this is part of the tradition, not being transported? imminent threat, but does it have faith for even if it is, you know, something that people are finding highly disagreeable, does it also have space for this kind of maybe aggressive or political collective self-defense or programmatic self-defense or political. >> that radical strand that i talk about is quite clearly a part of the story. so one of the things that can happen here is you use the term as a way of trying to capture the different aspects of the phenomenon. and then the term sort of takes on its own weight and its

ownership. i don't mean to say that the efforts and advocacy of the radicals is not a part of the story. quite clearly is his signature in catalyst that causes a significant change in sort of the mainstream attitude about firearm ownership and firearms use. and this kind of limited question, can we embrace the radical attack in some way. and that embrace -- i try not to be preachy. what i try to do is to say, here is what happens. let people make up their own minds. >> what i'm asking, do you see that as part of the tradition as well as opposed to seeing that as harming the tradition? >> actually, i think that has always been a part of the tradition in the sense that there was always this

disagreement within the community about how far a certain episode has moved into that boundary land or that dangerous advocacy or action that we would say constitute political violence. so robert williams saw in the 1950's was on that line. a lot of episodes in the late 19th century were people -- some are pressing harder. a great publisher was criticized by other black publishers as pushing harder on the boundary line then was wise. in advocating certain sorts of action so that there was a point in the 1890's were after a lynching in georgia uses something like -- he has an essay called the shooting stand rather than run and hide policy.

>> something like standard round. >> absolutely. other publishers of the times said this is insane. what are you talking about? you're pushing against for the reader not talking about to self-defense because the policy and program that uses his political violence that we think is crazy san. conservative excoriated him. this has always been a part of the conversation going back and forth. not only the conversation, but it has been part of the physical limit. some people would engage in acts of violence that members of the community would look at and say, wait a minute cops, that is of a line. you're endangering all this because political violence means there will be retaliation, backlash. that is bad for the community. so what happens in the 1960's with the rise -- now it's on television of course. more of a threat.

people are getting a state to make these statements that become more widely publicized and that might have been. this tension that has always been at the heart of what i call generating scenarios where the new black class estimates the choice. do we align with the progressive coalition? and this is early 1970's, it is said to the point in time when the newly minted national gun-control movement comes to the fore. do we align with our progress of dallas and push aside the conversations about self-defense and political violence. by the way, the loyal black tradition of arms, or do we embrace those things and risk losing our progress in dallas?

and what happens -- sibley you can see this tracking in the middle of the 1970's. maynard jackson, first black mayor of. now the president of the national coalition to ban handguns. he makes a variety of statements that are fully consistent with the new national gun-control movement. but quite at odds with low long black tradition of arms. it is partly, as i argue in the book, the response to the choice that the radical. >> the emergence of the modern -- >> the orthodoxy. >> guns. >> what is interesting is, of course, there is a black tradition of arms but there is also an american. in the 1800's, virginia became

the racialist labor exploitation system that it was. there was already this kind of racial lines distinction made between africans who were in the so-called new world and whites that outlaw their owning weapons and so there is this -- is so wonder why. pushing for gun control in response to the black panther party. so how is it that this modern orthodoxy, the mainstream leaders are able to embrace a positive disarmament even with this history. why do you think that people did not push back and say, you know, this is dangerous. >> so, this is hot and

complicated and never know about it again control movements really sort of push people into a scenario where you are relying more and more and more of state and local governments to write your personal security. people who have such long and enduring reasons to distrust. the first answered quite clearly is the notion of political coalitions generating black political power. what you see in the 1970's moving to the 1980's is the progressive coalition is the place where black political power rests. end as a member of that the governing class you in the black political establishment by going to make lots of sacrifices, you're going to make lots of compromises. and in some sense to that degree

that people tell you, you are now in charge of washington d.c. where detroit or you have these problems with a black on black crime. here is theory or an idea, a set of protocols and legislation that will bring peace to blighted neighborhoods the burden by violence again, is quite clear that in theory the idea of supply control residents believe. ♪ will we are sitting in this room, no guns. we know for sure ended there will be no gun crime, that is the instinct, the and also with the supply control argue the rest. the problem in putting into practice and the reason it has not succeeded in the u.s. and has generated instances of failure that talk about in the last chapter is that we in the u.s. already have triggered a 25 million guns. talk about take misapplied and the zero craft were that person

got together and distractions. i think it has taken awhile as a matter of policy for these experiments run through we are probably now the stage where those in the black political class have to step back and reevaluate. at least that would hope that people would give some additional thought to the policies that have really been placed, dominant policy since the 1970's. your other point about why people have not looked at the history of gun-control and thought, well, it really is history of kind of this race-based distinction to moving quite clearly into the 1950's,

even the 1960's. there's the famous ," the title of an article of a friend of mine wrote called never intended to apply to the white population which is a statement made by a judge in south carolina about a series of gun-control laws in south carolina. there was a white fellow who was being prosecuted. the judge says, dismissing it. and of these laws. these laws were never intended to apply to the white population it is emblematic of the things that also were occurring and the black codes, jim crow, and even in places where the statue was not explicitly discriminatory. will we find is that there was course quite discriminatory administration. so even more licking in the country in the 19 -- probably 1956 after there was a bomb that would of thinking so, black men in the neighborhood tomorrow with their guns to sort of defendant pieces the mall.

the next day he and one of the other reference from the surrounding area go down and apply for permits to carry pistols. king spermine is denied because he did not show a good cause. you know, this is a man who had multiple death threats. and that is an example of this scenario where the discretion that is vested in other a share for a judge or sometimes a prosecutor, an example of blatant discrimination the statute is neutral. so there is this long history. people have to make up their own minds whether they are impacted in terms of their current decisions about policy, whether they are influenced by the history. it influences lots of people that i know. i think it -- if you are facing

an immediate crisis it is hard to look back and sale going to avoid some policy measure because it is intentions with things that happened 70 years ago. >> part of it is the crossing of racial lines. alter hell we see this. so when you look around and see the most broker advocates for gun-control, it usually, for the acquisition of view from guns and violence to protect from a criminalist like a row face the cause for disarmament, it is to disarm the criminalize black or brown faith. never, either side. what is the site : four. is the need to be speaking for

black people. end this side calling for gun-control is also -- to you see what i'm saying? the cases that kind of secure the second amendment. significant. but the case of shelly parker and ellen mcdonald was a case of interracial violence. >> short. >> again, this goes to my argument or my says that the advocates for gun-control by advocating when the perceived assailant will be black.

>> so this is interesting. part of their response is that we have got to appreciate that all -- lots of disinformation, lots of the story is coming to us through a filter of popular media we can get a snapshot or a sketch of a claim with the someone is making. and that sort of caricature is the debate. so one of the things a talk about the last chapter of the book is the surprise could be the surprising diversity within the black community on the right to arms. and there is recently a pupil. the essentially asking people to blacks and whites, whether they supported more gun-control law morgan writes. whether that the we should err in favor of one of the other. and it quite split, believe,

something like 60-40 in favor of more gun rights. but blacks actually split the other way committing 40 percent of the black communities surveyed said they thought more attention should be paid to gun rights. that is remarkable component of the community embracing what wall would say is a kind of traditional gun rights view. is a much bigger slice than you would presume given the degree when the democratic party commence support from black folks. more interesting than the carriage to achieve it from the 302nd flash of some tv show. the next thing about this delay in the mention shelley parker and the otis macdonald. most people know that over the last few years, two dozen date

in 2010 the u.s. supreme court in the case call heller district of columbia verses heller, the case, mcdonnell versus chicago, the u.s. supreme court upheld what i have been arguing in lots of people of been arguing, that the second amendment actually does guarantee in individual rights and arms. and so the first case, 2008 was out of washington d.c. the lead plaintiff, community activist who was laboring under what was really the most draconian -- most stringent gun-control measure in the country. handguns are banned. other sorts of guns were grandfathered. you really cannot have a gun for self-defense begins even if you have when you have to keep it in your house disassembled. no practical of self-defense in

washington d.c. .. press to the united states cream court and the court at once the case is now called tyler versus the district of columbia versus keller. there isn't that an individual right to arms, to keep and bear

arms and the constitution means that the delimitation we are seeking out. thinking habits are been through similar thing happened two years later in chicago. chicago is the case, another black plana. the reason the court takes up the second case is the first case was in the district of columbia and all the first is established was for purposes of limiting the federal government, the second amendment establishes individual right. it was unclear whether you had application to the amendment of this day. the tunneling case established that position at august the donald was the 72-year-old lack manned army veteran who is living in a neighborhood where he again was seized by young black men. he said i want a gun for the same reason shelley parker wanted a gun and the court ultimately upheld his claim. >> in the final moment that we