In a climate of Black Lives Matter protests and the growing white backlash,some African Americans feel the retort is not gun control but to arm themselves‘Dallas is hot right now,” self-defence activist Eric Randall tells me with a shake of his head. It’s well over 100F in the carpark external the strip mall pizzeria where were talking, and the asphalt is rippling with haze. But Randall is not talking about the weather. He’s talking about his neighbourhood.
For Randall,who leads one of a small but growing number of groups organising and training for the armed self-defence of black areas, the stakes are tall. Only 10 days before our sit-down, or a young black man named Micah Johnson shot 14 police officers in the downtown area,killing five. The increasing friction between the black community, the police, or rightwing or white supremacist activists who’ve been drawn to Dallas in the wake of the killings has been noticeable,he says.
The person who will try to take your life one day, he’s training right now. And he’s training out of fearIn 2014, and Pew found that 19% of black Americans reported owning a gun,compared with 41% of white Americans Related: 'Blood on our hands' – the fatal anecdote of one American bullet Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com