‘Black Guns Matter’ Founder: NRA Stood with Blacks When Democrats Attacked in 1960s

Maj Toure, founder of Black Guns Matter, points out that the National Rifle Association (NRA) stood with blacks during the 1960s when Democrat-comprised groups like the Ku Klux Klan were terrorizing and attacking them.

While speaking to Ebony magazine about his “Black Guns Matter” group, Toure explains that the NRA stood with the “Deacons for Defense,” a group of black men who armed themselves in the 1960s to fight off white terror in the Democrat-controlled south.

Ebony asked him about the NRA and whether the NRA has a responsibility to stand up for the black community. Toure responded first by stressing his belief that the black community has to take care of itself and stop “passing the buck.” But he also stressed that the NRA stood with the black community in the racially turbulent 1960s–a time when few others did.

Toure said:

I think the NRA isn’t responsible to jump up. They are a civil liberties organization. They’re not there to do the work we, as a community, aren’t doing. They’re there as a resource for people to use to understand and exercise and learn. They’re not lawyers, per se. We can’t keep passing the buck. As far as I understand, the organization [is] only beholding [sic] to [its] members and if you’re not a member, there’s a different question there.

He then addressed the claim that the NRA should get involved whenever questions of justice are raised by a video of a black man and a white police officer, saying: