Meet Colion Noir

 Colion Noir is one of the gun video commentators that I enjoy. I'd seen a few of his videos before he became involved with the NRA. He thinks my gun is ugly, but there you go! (I knew this would be a good interview because Glen Beck seems to see his job as facilitating communication with the interviewee instead of some dressed up version of combat that he's got to win.)

The LA Times had an article about Noir today that was pretty good. It talks a bit about the accusations that he's a token or "Uncle Tom" and that blacks were pro-gun control. This portion of the LA Times article stuck out at me:

The NRA does not release membership demographics, but according to a Pew Research Center survey, many gun owners in America are white — 31% of whites polled this year said they owned guns, compared with 15% of blacks and 11% of Latinos.

Polls being polls I wondered how much non-reporting happened. I also wondered if those percentages were of all blacks and all Latinos or if the poll had corrected for percentages of those blacks and Latinos living in cities with strict gun control. Now, to me of course, I look at gun ownership in the black community as a civil rights issue and suspect that much of the urban gun bans are actually about disarming blacks. Noir says the same:

"The same government who at one point hosed us down with water, attacked us with dogs and wouldn't allow us to eat at their restaurants told us we couldn't own guns when bumbling fools with sheets on their heads were riding around burning crosses on our lawns and murdering us," Noir says in the video as "Washington elitism" flashes across the screen. It was not a misreading of history, according to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."

But Noir also says in the interview with Glen Beck and also the LA Times article mentions that blacks are likely to be pro-gun control because they associate weapons with the thug culture. If so, I don't care if Colion Noir is a "token" or anything else. He's giving voice to an alternative view of young black men with guns and that's a good thing. The NRA also has a new spokesperson who's a pretty young blond lady. I don't care if she's a token either. The point is that guns aren't about being an old white guy and that the 2nd Amendment is not an old white guy amendment and the Constitution itself is not an old white guy document. 

Also, grats to Colion Noir... he just passed the bar so... law blogging!