Mark Hughes, wearing a camouflage shirt and legally, openly carrying an AR-15 rifle, was among dozens of black people in downtown Dallas on Thursday evening who were peacefully protesting against the recent back-to-back officer-involved killings of two black men. But in the hours between when Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire on Dallas police officers and his death, Hughes found himself at the center of controversy when the Dallas Police Department circulated a photo of him on social media and referred to him as a “suspect” in the attack. Police later retracted their initial assertions and deleted the photo after determining that Hughes had nothing to do with the attack that killed five police officers and injured seven other people, but their methods have sparked controversy among black gun owners who say they’re discriminated against for exercising their constitutional right to bear arms.
One of the great unspoken hypocrisies of Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © is the unspoken, thinly-veiled racism that informs their part of the gun control debate.
Think about it for a moment. Even if you’re a staunch defender of the inviolability of the 2nd Amendment, I’d wager you react differently when you see an African-American person carrying a gun than you would if that person was White.
Even in states where open carry is legal, a White man carrying a weapon is a patriot exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, while a Black man doing the same thing is a menace to public safety- a time bomb looking for a place to explode.
White people carrying guns are patriots. Blacks are suspects. It’s not right, and it’s certainly not accurate, but it’s the truth…and I think most White folks- if we’re honest- will admit to this reality.
As a society, we have no hope of achieving equality, of creating a world in which skin color doesn’t determine how a person is treated, until we recognize, acknowledge, and address double standards like this.
We have a LOT of work to do, y’all….
