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Most people think that MLK, a pacifist, would be the last person embrace gun ownership for self-defense. The reality is quite different.
MLK kept firearms for self-defense. He even applied for a concealed pistol license.
King had armed volunteers guarding him, his home and his family out of fear he was being target for assassination, a fear that was well grounded.
William Worthy, a journalist who covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reported that once, during a visit to King's parsonage, he went to sit down on an armchair in the living room and, to his surprise, almost sat on a loaded gun. Glenn Smiley, an adviser to King, described King's home as "an arsenal."
In 1956, after King's house was bombed, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. The local police had discretion to determine who was a suitable person to carry firearms. King, a clergyman whose life was threatened daily, surely met the requirements of the law, but he was rejected nevertheless. At the time, the police used any wiggle room in the law to discriminate against African Americans.
The American civil rights movement often embraced firearms as a means for self-defense. The Black Panthers took this approach to the extreme, openly carrying guns as they patrolled for police abuses on the streets of Oakland. They even made guns part of their official uniform, along with the black beret and leather jacket.
California passed a law to disarm the Panthers and then Congress, after King was assassinated by James Early Ray, passed the Gun Control Act of 1968 -- the first major federal gun control since the 1930s. These laws fueled the rise of the modern gun rights movement, which self-consciously borrowed tactics from the civil rights movement.
One lesson gun advocates took was from the early King and his more aggressive followers: If the police can't (or won't) protect you, a gun may be your last line of defense.
Note: Published a week early due to the United States Presidential Inauguration next Monday.
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