Negroes and the Gun (58 page)

Wading into these concerns sends us to the root of the black tradition of arms and the realization that the tradition is only incidentally an outgrowth of America's racist past. Fundamentally, the tradition rests on universal principles of self-defense. Those principles are a basic response to structural state failure within the hard boundaries of physics—episodes of imminent violence where it is impossible for the government to act.
30
It is true that the black tradition of arms evolved in a context where state failure was often pernicious. But from the perspective of people at risk, the reason for state failure matters little.
31

More than a century ago, T. Thomas Fortune urged, “in the absence of law . . . we maintain that every individual has every right . . . to protect himself.”
32
Ida B. Wells advocated armed self-defense as a response to government failure, noting the folly of trusting the government “that gave Blacks the ballot, to be strong enough to protect the exercise of that ballot.”
33
Wells championed the Winchester repeating rifle on the view that even if the federal government was not overtly hostile, it was not equipped to protect blacks from imminent threats. W. E. B. Du Bois operated on the same impulse, wielding a shotgun to protect his home and family, with a clear appreciation that, for some undetermined period, he was on his own.

A century later, Shelly Parker in Washington, DC, and Otis McDonald in Chicago were similarly besieged. The difference was that their tormentors were not racist terrorists but young black thugs and drug criminals. Within a specific window
of risk, they also were on their own against looming threats. We do not begrudge earlier generations of black folk their guns, and their grit might even raise a patch of prideful gooseflesh. But Shelly Parker and Otis McDonald, under the full weight of the modern orthodoxy and over the objection of America's leading civil-rights organization, required intervention by the United States Supreme Court to validate their right to armed self-defense.

Some found it perplexing that when the Court affirmed the individual right to arms, the litigation was fueled by these black plaintiffs. Were they serious? Were they dupes? The answer is that Shelly Parker and Otis McDonald, laboring under the two most restrictive gun-control regimes in the country, were just seeking what generations of black folk before them had sought in response to an array of threats. They wanted access to tools that might give them some additional chance of escaping or defeating violent attackers who were on them before help could arrive.

Standing solidly on the black tradition of arms, Otis McDonald and Shelly Parker agitated through the courts in separate civil-rights challenges, seeking access to handguns to combat threats primarily from a slim criminal microculture of young black men. And that, in a nutshell, fuels the hard questions about the current implications of the black tradition of arms.

How then should the complexion of the threats to the lives and safety of innocents like Shelley Parker and Otis McDonald affect our assessment of supply-side gun-control policies that ground the modern orthodoxy? People must do their own thinking about this. But we all are constrained by the basic inputs. The
next chapter
details those variables.

The black tradition of arms evokes heroic images like Hartman Turnbow repelling Klansmen with rifle fire. The modern orthodoxy responds to the tragic scene of swaggering neighborhood tyrants warring over turf, their gunfire piercing the kitchens and bedrooms of innocent people. These images evoke vastly different reflexes. And that largely explains the appeal of modern orthodoxy.

Supply-control policies at the heart of modern orthodoxy rest on the straightforward logic that no guns equals no gun crime. But fuller consideration raises a litany of questions that reveal the modern orthodoxy as more reflex than considered policy. For example, is the no-guns-equals-no-gun-crime formula realistic in a country that is already saturated with more than 300 million firearms? And what about people who want guns for self-defense? Does the traditional self-defense calculation change when the focus shifts to black-on-black crime? And even granting that modern intraracial violence may resonate differently from the story of Hartman Turnbow, is that enough to turn the tradition of arms on its head? Is it enough to justify, in the name of civil rights, policies like zip code–targeted gun bans that some earnest friends have proposed? These questions trigger wide-ranging intuitions that undergird both the modern orthodoxy and the black tradition of arms. Critical evaluation of these competing approaches requires careful unpacking of the undergirding intuitions and assumptions.

To start, consider the self-defense foundation on which the black tradition of arms rests. Self-defense is a universal exception to the state's monopoly on legitimate violence. State failure drives the self-defense doctrine through the imminence requirement
.
Private violence is justified where one faces an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to which the government cannot respond.
The
imminence requirement defines that space where the state, regardless of its motives and ambitions, simply cannot help.

State failure within the window of imminence is a reality for everyone. But one might expect blacks to be particularly sensitive to it. The window of imminence is often larger in black neighborhoods where various challenges stretch public resources. Certainly state failure is less galling today. Under slavery, Black Codes, and Jim Crow, the state was often just another layer of threat, and reliance on the state for personal security was more obviously an absurd proposition.

Today, the malevolent state is thankfully an anachronism. That makes it easier for those ensconced in government bureaucracies to urge reliance on the state and to ignore the continuing failure of government within the window of imminence. But it is sheer hubris for public officials to ignore the inherent limits on state power and claim that they can protect people within a space where that is impossible as a matter of simple physics.

The odd reticence of modern orthodoxy to acknowledge structural state failure within the window of imminence is highlighted by contrast to the thinking about state failure in the context of other issues on the progressive agenda. For example, progressives have keyed on state failure to support reproductive rights and to expand the range of legitimate violence by abused women. In advocacy for expansion of the battered-woman defense, one school of thought would actually eliminate the imminence requirement in favor of a “no genuine alternatives standard,” wherein state failure would justify self-defense absent an immediate threat of death or injury.
1
Here, state failure is urged as the justification for a woman, who endures years of torment, to kill her partner in his sleep. Notice how this feminist advocacy does not depend on any assertion that the state is overtly hostile to the interests of women. It is simply the
fact
of state failure that would justify a broader range of legitimate self-defense by battered women. Compare now the “things have changed” justification for the modern orthodoxy. It would constrict armed self-defense for black folk on the view that government failure is no longer malicious.

Other progressive arguments invoke state failure to justify the right to abortion. One says that “to whatever degree we fail to create the minimal conditions for a just society, we also have a right, individually and fundamentally, to be shielded from the most dire or simply the most damaging consequences of that failure. . . . We must have the right to opt out of an unjust patriarchal world that visits unequal but unparalleled harms upon women . . . with unwanted pregnancies.”
2
The modern orthodoxy defies this reasoning even though the principle resonates at least as strongly in the context of armed self-defense. In a society where physical attack is a real danger (especially in communities where the risk is generally higher) and government is a demonstrably incomplete response, the feminist abortion
justification is a solid foundation for a robust right of self-defense using standard civilian technology.

Compared to other progressive critiques, the modern orthodoxy seems not fully thought out on the issue of individual exposure within the window of imminent threats. Of course, the discussion of imminence does not settle things. There are other possible ways to justify the modern orthodoxy.

Some argue that in urban communities
where black voters have elected black administrations, gun prohibition should be respected as an exercise of community autonomy
. But the critical question is, how much does black electoral success diminish the worries that make self-defense a crucial private resource? Even the best-intentioned administrations must wrestle with practical, fiscal, and political limitations.

What do we say to the young black woman in Detroit who arrived home after midnight to find her front door broken open and waited three hours for police to respond to her 911 call? At some earlier time, in some other place, such a delay might signal overt racist neglect. But here the problem was simply overtaxed resources. We might discount this worry by saying that slow police response is rare. But how to dismiss the black policy chief's triage approach, focusing only on the worst crimes, letting the others go, and betting that the security bureaucracy can tell the difference?
3

From the perspective of the victim, how different is the three-hour police response in Detroit from the situation of Mississippi activist Robert Cooper in 1965? Cooper called the sheriff when a cross burst into flames in front of his home and waited until the next day for someone to show up. One difference is that Cooper had an “automatic shotgun” by the door and used it to let the cross burners “know he was home.”
4
So was it a good thing that Cooper was armed? Was it a good thing that the young woman from Detroit was not?

It oversimplifies things to assess policy through particular examples. But the reality is that many in our age think in pictures rather than in words, and examples give us a foothold for conversation. Our young woman from Detroit is an unknown and might therefore resonate lightly. Other, more familiar images threaten as much noise as clarity. That is the worry with Otis McDonald, the seventy-six-year-old black man who challenged Chicago's gun ban and was celebrated on the cover of the National Rifle Association's
First Freedom
magazine. It is also the worry with Shelly Parker, the black community activist who challenged the District of Columbia gun ban and whose white lawyers defended her constitutional right to arms as part of a broader libertarian vision.

But other images give us a cleaner focus on the sober, mature members of the community who want tools to defend themselves against violent threats. Consider Mary Thomas, mother of basketball legend Isaiah Thomas. Most descriptions of Mary Thomas manage to work in her front-door stand, sighting down the barrel of a shotgun. Her battleground was the housing projects of Chicago's west side. Her nemesis was the gang culture that has captured and destroyed so many black boys. Mary Thomas had her own boys to worry about and she refused to cede the problem or the solution to some local bureaucrat or some far-off federal program. When the thugs came after her boys, they were answered by the dangerous end of Mary's shotgun and her warning, “There's only one gang here and that's the Thomas gang.”
5

This image leaves many questions hanging. Why did this tactic work for Mary Thomas? She could not follow her boys everywhere. So there must have been something else going on. And what about the danger of escalating violence?

These sorts of questions demonstrate that decisions about firearms use amidst personal crises are fraught with complexity. And that sharpens the question to this:
Does the complexity of interpersonal violence dictate a generic bureaucratic response or does it demand individual choice by people facing perhaps the greatest personal crisis of their lives?

We know, of course, that having, brandishing, or using a gun is no guarantee of a happy outcome. That has never been the case. Nonetheless, the black tradition of arms has consistently exalted
individual choice
in preparations for dealing with imminent violent threats. The modern orthodoxy, granted its full range, tells people facing violent threats to rely on the generic protections of the state security bureaucracy.

The traditional elevation of private choice on matters of self-defense prompts us to think more critically about the implications of the decision to keep, carry, and use a gun.
Consider again the young Detroit woman who waited three hours for the police to come. What if she did have a gun? She might have pulled it, then had it taken and used against her. She might have pulled it and scared off an attacker. She might have fired in self-defense, killing or wounding her assailant. She might have fired and hit or killed an innocent, either with a stray bullet or because she mistook an innocent for an attacker. Even if she lawfully shot a criminal assailant, there is still the trauma of the aftermath and the possibility of being targeted for revenge.