While there are many reasons I’m a proponent of the right to keep and bear arms one of the biggest reasons is because that right allows one to defend themselves against an otherwise superior opponent. If you’re being attacked by two armed men your chances of survival are very low if you’re unarmed. The tables can be turned completely around though if you give that would-be victim a firearm and some basic knowledge on how to use it. Throughout history oppressed people have been able to defend themselves because they were able to arm themselves. A great writeup form the days of yore I ran across deals with minorities using firearms to defend themselves against the Klan:
In the early 1960s, I taught at Tougaloo College — a black school in Mississippi. My wife, Eldri, and I were extremely active in the civil rights movement and, among other things, I was chairman of the strategy committee of the Jackson Movement during the historic demonstrations in the spring and summer of 1963.
I was beaten and arrested many times and hospitalized twice. This happened to many, many people in the movement. No one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms within it.
When the campus of Tougaloo College was fired on by KKK-type racial night-riders, my home was shot up and a bullet missed my infant daughter by inches. We received no help from the Justice Department and we guarded our campus — faculty and students together — on that and subsequent occasions. We let this be known. The racist attacks slackened considerably. Night-riders are cowardly people — in any time and place — and they take advantage of fear and weakness.
Later, I worked for years in the Deep South as a full-time civil rights organizer. Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine.
The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay. Years later, in a changed Mississippi, this was confirmed by a former prominent leader of the White Knights of the KKK when we had an interesting dinner together at Jackson.
The Klan were cowardly assholes back in the day (and the few remaining Klan members today are still cowardly assholes) and relied on groups of riders who came into a town at night to terrorize minority families and businesses. At this time the government wasn’t too willing to help with the problem so those in minority groups had to fend for themselves. If you’re alone or with a small group and a bunch of jackasses come into town on horses meaning you harm you’re going to be heavily outmatched unless you and/of members of your small group are armed. The nice thing about firearms is that they allow you to engage an attacker at range and also allow you to easily engage multiple assailants.
In more recent times groups of attackers (which the media has dubbed flash mobs without realize that term means something entirely different) have been known to attack individual targets without cause. If you find yourself the unfortunate target of such a group you’re best chances of walking away unscathed is to have a firearm on your person. Being attacked by 10 people is a frightening endeavor no matter how you look at it, but if you’re armed with a pistol that holds 10 rounds and keep a spare magazine in your pocket you’re chances of walking away alive are greatly increased.
Anti-gunners like to claim that we should depend on the police to protect our lives. They should have a conversation with somebody who was active in the civil rights movement and targeted by the Klan sometime so they can learn how unreliable police “protection” really is.