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The Annoyed Man wrote:

MeMelYup wrote:Try "this nonviolent stuff'll get you killed" by Charles E. Cobb Jr. It's his rendition on how guns made the civil rights movement possible.

The bulk of this book so far is exactly that kind of material, going back to colonial days. It is very well researched with lots of references. It seems that the tension between non-violence and self-defense is more than 230 years old. I'm only 15% into the book so far, and right now it's about the immediate post-civil war reconstruction period.

The interesting thing is that when the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution, black firearms ownership was one of the core issues that drove the addition of that amendment. Even back then, when Senator Howard introduced the amendment, he said that the:

...great object [of the amendment is to] restrain the power of the states and compel them in all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees....Secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution [including] the right to keep and bear arms.

Congress even passed a law at the time abolishing the southern state militias because they had been used to disarm the freedmen. This carries the unavoidable implication that it was the intention of Congress that The People be armed.