Shall Not Be Questioned

Giron is out too! I didn’t honestly think to get champagne. Bitter and I decided just to open a cheap, crappy bottle of white and mix it with some Pellegrino to improvise. It’s kind of bubbly. I was feeling pretty good this morning that we’d get at least one of the bastards, but felt that hoping for two was getting a bit greedy.

It actually turns out we beat Giron by a wider margin than Morse. I think we ought to dub this the recall heard round the world. Gun control is a losing issue. That can’t be any more clear than it has been tonight. Giron was in a Democratic district, but it was a working class, blue collar Democratic district, and those folks can be motivated to cross party lines when the gun issue is pushed.

I will have more about this later, but if you contributed anything to the recall, even if you were like us and just contributed the cost of a dinner out, pat yourself on the back. If you were part of the on-the-ground recall effort in any of these two districts, go buy yourself a nice steak dinner. You deserve it! You have done the rest of us in this country a huge favor. We owe a tremendous debt to you, especially to those of us in other purple come blue states, like Pennsylvania. This effort will need some serious study. This should become a playbook on how to accomplish great things in the gun rights movement.

Repeat after me: gun control is a losing issue for Democrats. Morse is conceding that he has indeed been recalled. Giron is doing better, but results are very preliminary, and she was a stretch goal to begin with. We can get the rest of the bastards in 2014 regardless, but we can’t go back to sleep.

“Very interesting. They even seem to be organizing into a well-regulated militia of sorts. Read the whole thing.”

Well, let’s be honest, when it comes to the folks who argue that we have to be a well-regulated militia to assert our rights, there wouldn’t be any “militia” that’s “well-regulated” enough for them to be comfortable with the idea.

This is a story that really needs to be told, and I hope everyone will get themselves a copy when the book comes out. Here is an excerpt:

Gun! Just the word raises the temperature. Add Negroes and the mixture is incendiary, evoking images of hopeless young gangsters terrorizing blighted neighborhoods.

This book tells a dramatically different story. It chronicles a tradition of church folk, merchants and strivers, the very best people in the community, armed and committed to the principle of individual self-defense. This black tradition of arms takes root early and ranges fully into the modern era. It is demonstrated in Fredrick Douglass’ advice of a good revolver as the best response to slave catchers. It is evident in mature form in 1963, when Hartman Turnbow of Mississippi fought off a Klan attack with rifle fire. Turnbow considered this fully consistent with the principles of the freedom movement, explaining, “I wasn’t being non-nonviolent, I was just protectin’ my family”.

The black tradition of arms has been submerged because it seems hard to reconcile with the dominant narrative of nonviolence in modern civil rights movement. But that superficial tension is resolved by the longstanding distinction that was vividly evoked by movement stalwart Fannie Lou Hamer. Hamer’s advice about segregationists who dominated Mississippi politics was, “Baby you just got to love ‘em. Hating just makes you sick and weak.” But asked how she survived the threats from midnight terrorists Hamer responded, “I’ll tell you why. I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won’t write his mama again.”

Read the whole thing, and you can pre-order the book here.