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Would MLK, RFK Have Supported Gun Control?
Josey1
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Would MLK, RFK Have Supported Gun Control?
By Christine Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 24, 2002
(CNSNews.com) - A national gun control group is using the legacies of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. to promote their political agenda, but one prominent black conservative says King would not have championed gun control measures.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is hosting its annual Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday night to honor gun control activists and a member of Congress.
According to coalition president Mike Beard, that's just what the two American political icons would have wanted.
"There's absolutely no way to know that they would support this specific legislation," Beard acknowledged, "but [Sen. Robert F.] Kennedy talked about gun control in his [1968] campaign for president.
Even though "it was not an issue at that time," Beard added, "I think it's very clear from all Dr. King had to say and the way he led his life, that he would have been an active participant in this movement in this time."
The coalition is currently lobbying for new restrictions on gun show purchases, such as criminal background checks. Several members of the Kennedy and King families support the coalition's goals, Beard said, including the widows of both slain leaders who were coalition co-chairs and King's son, Martin Luther King III who has written fundraising letters for the group. Beard also noted that the Kennedy family's political campaigns have included gun control as "one of their major issues."
They "understand that private citizens carrying hand guns without restrictions simply is not a way to have a safe society," Beard concluded.
Another coalition spokesman pointed to Kennedy's speech "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" in which he spoke of "a rising level of violence that ignores our common
humanity and our claims to civilization alike," and went on to speak of "reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands."
The spokesman also noted King's "A Testament of Hope" speech in which he spoke of being "much more afraid in Montgomery (Ala.) when I had a gun in my house."
"When I decided that, as a teacher of the philosophy on non-violence, I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it. And from that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid," the civil rights leader said in his speech.
But the Rev Jesse Lee Peterson takes issue with Beard's use of the King legacy to promote gun control causes, like background checks for gun show purchases. Peterson is president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, a black group dedicated to rebuilding urban families.
"I've never heard what he thought or felt about guns, period, not to speak of gun control," said Peterson. "I can't imagine him supporting gun control.
"I think that it's offensive to use his name, because there's no evidence of what he really thought," said Peterson.
Peterson, who is 53, draws upon his own past to dispute the notion that King would have urged a gun control message to blacks in the 1950s and '60s.
Growing up in Alabama, said Peterson, "I know that the blacks that I knew, they all had guns in their homes, they all used them, not only to hunt, but also to protect themselves. I knew that once I turned 15, I was going to get my gun because ... the men got one at the age of 15. So I can't imagine that Dr. King would be against it, when it was really the thing to do and popular and was expected when you turned a certain age."
In the aftermath of the 1968 assassinations of Kennedy and King and the increased focus on gun violence, Congress passed the 1968 Gun Control Act, which set forth a number of regulations on the ability of Americans to purchase, sell and import guns. For example, the law prohibited felons, minors and certain others from buying or owning a gun.
At its awards ceremony, the coalition will honor Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, for his sponsorship of gun control legislation, along with two youth activists who helped launch the coalition's youth outreach program, Hands Without Guns.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200209\CUL20020924b.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Christine Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 24, 2002
(CNSNews.com) - A national gun control group is using the legacies of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. to promote their political agenda, but one prominent black conservative says King would not have championed gun control measures.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is hosting its annual Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday night to honor gun control activists and a member of Congress.
According to coalition president Mike Beard, that's just what the two American political icons would have wanted.
"There's absolutely no way to know that they would support this specific legislation," Beard acknowledged, "but [Sen. Robert F.] Kennedy talked about gun control in his [1968] campaign for president.
Even though "it was not an issue at that time," Beard added, "I think it's very clear from all Dr. King had to say and the way he led his life, that he would have been an active participant in this movement in this time."
The coalition is currently lobbying for new restrictions on gun show purchases, such as criminal background checks. Several members of the Kennedy and King families support the coalition's goals, Beard said, including the widows of both slain leaders who were coalition co-chairs and King's son, Martin Luther King III who has written fundraising letters for the group. Beard also noted that the Kennedy family's political campaigns have included gun control as "one of their major issues."
They "understand that private citizens carrying hand guns without restrictions simply is not a way to have a safe society," Beard concluded.
Another coalition spokesman pointed to Kennedy's speech "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" in which he spoke of "a rising level of violence that ignores our common
humanity and our claims to civilization alike," and went on to speak of "reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands."
The spokesman also noted King's "A Testament of Hope" speech in which he spoke of being "much more afraid in Montgomery (Ala.) when I had a gun in my house."
"When I decided that, as a teacher of the philosophy on non-violence, I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it. And from that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid," the civil rights leader said in his speech.
But the Rev Jesse Lee Peterson takes issue with Beard's use of the King legacy to promote gun control causes, like background checks for gun show purchases. Peterson is president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, a black group dedicated to rebuilding urban families.
"I've never heard what he thought or felt about guns, period, not to speak of gun control," said Peterson. "I can't imagine him supporting gun control.
"I think that it's offensive to use his name, because there's no evidence of what he really thought," said Peterson.
Peterson, who is 53, draws upon his own past to dispute the notion that King would have urged a gun control message to blacks in the 1950s and '60s.
Growing up in Alabama, said Peterson, "I know that the blacks that I knew, they all had guns in their homes, they all used them, not only to hunt, but also to protect themselves. I knew that once I turned 15, I was going to get my gun because ... the men got one at the age of 15. So I can't imagine that Dr. King would be against it, when it was really the thing to do and popular and was expected when you turned a certain age."
In the aftermath of the 1968 assassinations of Kennedy and King and the increased focus on gun violence, Congress passed the 1968 Gun Control Act, which set forth a number of regulations on the ability of Americans to purchase, sell and import guns. For example, the law prohibited felons, minors and certain others from buying or owning a gun.
At its awards ceremony, the coalition will honor Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, for his sponsorship of gun control legislation, along with two youth activists who helped launch the coalition's youth outreach program, Hands Without Guns.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200209\CUL20020924b.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878