Black gun owners are very important to the overall cause. One could make a very easy argument that they have a stronger claim to gun rights than anyone, if you pass the idea through a "needs based" mesh. Think about it - whites inherited the right by their nature, and it was assumed "we" had that right (speaking from a white male landowner perspective), while blacks were still sold in chains and weren't even counted amongst men as far as any sense of freedom. Even much later in the game, "free blacks" had to pass a litmus test to be able to vote in some jurisdictions, by proving they were literate.
Basic human rights, not so long ago, were strictly meant for white men.
Not women.
Not blacks.
Let's look at this from a different perspective, and talk about entitlement for a minute.
There are some folks who want to go back to the old ways. Life is hard and many white men who come up short on the ladder of success tend to want to blame everyone, and everything (except themselves) for their own shortcomings and failures. "I've failed at life, must be the blacks fault." Or some derivation thereof (I've failed at life, must be the liberals fault", or {insert blame shift subject here}). Basically, "life for white men used to be better and since my life sucks, I will stick the blame on some segment our current society instead of placing it where it belongs, on my own self." Lack of ambition, failure to prosper, failure to have it "easy" all sows the seeds of racism and blame-shift.
I've seen black folks do this as well, "I've failed at life, must be because of white entitlement." Now at one point in the not so distant past folks had a valid claim to this, because a white hand held the chains. But we're several generations past that point and it's pretty safe to say - given we've had a black president - that the "upper limits of ones own success depend not on the color of their skin but the merits of their mind, ambition, and work ethic." We've entered a new world where black men and women are judged by the character of their being, not by the color of their skin.
Those seeds of racism don't necessarily stem from entitlement; or lack thereof - no, in a modern context the seeds of racism stem from a dissatisfaction with one's own life trajectory and the basic human psychological deflection that "I suffer because of some other class of individual", when in fact, ones suffering is proportional to the amount of work, effort, and discipline one lives life with.
There's flawed logic here, however. The essence of the blame-shift root cause is that due to some injustice your life was made overly difficult - when in fact, every bit of your situation can be traced specifically to ones own shortcomings, lack of drive, lack of motivation, or some variation thereof.
There were plenty of poor white folk back in the day. My own ancestors were very, very poor. "Dirt poor." My family wasn't entitled to a dang thing they didn't earn, build, grow, or create on their own labor. Some of my ancestors weren't very enlightened and blamed the blacks. Some blamed Democrats. Some blamed republicans.
I've always owned up to my own shortcomings and when I fail, I blame myself. I'm man enough to admit my flaws.
I had all of the cards stacked against me, as it were, poor family, father shot himself, etc. I even derailed life further of my own accord by dropping out of high school.
But I pulled myself together, became educated in my own way, worked hard, raised a family of six, and forged a small little empire of land holdings and businesses. Not because I was entitled, but because I put in the hard work - and learned very early to blame myself when I screwed things up, not to take the easy road of blame-shifting to ease my wounded conscience.
Taking this mentally and applying it to the larger scale, it can be applied to larger problems, such as we are talking about in this thread. In fact, there's quite a basis FOR this very mindset to be used to solve these problems on a larger scale if you look back at some of what Dr. Martin Luther King once said;
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”
“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better. ”
I'll get off my little soapbox now on the origins of racism as a blame-shift device used by men of weak mind and spirit, and get back on the gun rights bandwagon again, because I've made my point and there's no benefit to pushing it further ....
White, black, or any shade in between, we are all men and women, human beings, equally deserving of our chance to live life to the best of our ability, equally deserving of our lives, equally responsible to share the burden of both our mistakes and our own fortunes through success and failure, and equally deserving of the right to defend our lives, and the lives of our families.
This is the message we need to unite together with.
In many aspects, promoting peace through armed vigilance and carrying firearms as a last-line-of-defense to preserve life is the ultimate unifying factor between every human being on Earth. Being able to take responsibility for our own existence is the ultimate expression of this. Because, in the end, through the revelation that "all life is equally important" we might one day realize, universally, that we're all the same.
White, black, male, female, poor, rich, Christian, athiest, Buddhist, muslim, we all bleed red blood when wounded. We all feel pain. And we all have equal right to protect our lives, as rich or poor as they are, because all life is precious.
If things ever change to the point where a class of folks prosperity and freedom are threatened once again through forced servitude, and men are being sold as property? I'd be more than willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with black men bearing arms, to right the ship again, as we are all humans, and equally deserving at a fair chance at life, to do with what we will.
I encourage all humans to own firearms and learn to use them, to become educated. If only because the likelihood for the need to use them is largely mitigated by the sheer mass of folks who have them. The sins of the past, of human kind, are much less likely to be revisited in the future, upon a well armed population.
Pretty sure some old guys tried to condense that and write it in to a document once, long ago. Some guys who just fought a bloody war to secure their own liberty.
