Chip Roy: Democrat South’s Disarmament of Black Citizens Shows Why We Must Be Armed

During the House Judiciary Committee’s Wednesday markup, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) noted that the Democrat South’s post-Civil War gun control for former slaves and free black citizens shows why we must be armed.

Roy began by talking about how his family enjoys shooting firearms on his property in Texas, and noted semiautomatics are firearms “you can use to defend yourself against home invaders, but also, let’s be clear, against tyranny.”

He went further, noting that one of his Democrat colleagues spoke only of Second Amendment rights “in the context of hunting,” adding, “As if my rights are reduced in the Constitution to a .410 or a single shot or a lever action .22. As if that was what was put forth as how we’re supposed to be defending ourselves.”

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) interrupted during Roy’s comments, noting the comment about using semiautomatics to fight “against tyranny.”

Nadler asked, “You mean you’d use it against American troops?”

Roy responded, “The very existence of the Second Amendment is designed purposefully to empower the people to resist the force of tyranny used against them to step over their natural rights given to them by God.”

Roy then noted that the Democrat South’s historic efforts to keep slaves and recently-freed slaves disarmed serves a perfect proof of why our Founding Fathers wanted Americans to be armed:

Let’s rewind the clock a little bit, as I know at least several justices have written in Supreme Court opinions…about what life looked like in the 19th century. And what the government was doing to remove the ability of…freed blacks or whites who even stood up in defense of blacks or against slavery, and the efforts by the South and the efforts by the strong arm of government to remove their ability to have firearms.

On August 23, 2017, Breitbart News noted how defeated Confederate Democrats used the tactic of gun control to keep blacks unarmed in the immediate post-Civil War South, and used gun control for similar ends in the 20th century.

David Kopel and Joseph Greenlee used an op-ed in the Hill to explain: “As the Special Report of the Paris Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867 found, freedmen in some southern states ‘were forbidden to own or bear firearms, and thus were rendered defenseless against assault.’ Thus, white supremacists could continue to control freedmen through threat of violence.”

Kopel and Greenlee noted:

Guns have historically protected Americans from white supremacists, just as gun control has historically protected white supremacists from the Americans they terrorize. One month after the Confederate surrender in 1865, Frederick Douglass urged federal action to stop state and local infringement of the right to arms. Until this was accomplished, Douglass argued, “the work of the abolitionists is not finished.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.