When the first Africans were taken from Nigeria to Portugal in 1434 to Lagos, it was not voluntary. They probably did not know that tens of millions would follow to the Americas and Caribbeans. They knew that their lives were changed forever and but did not know that guns were created in China several centuries earlier and had arrived to terrorize Black people in Africa and its diaspora for the next six centuries.
Throughout most of the 16 through 19th century, guns were provided to chiefs and kings to raid their ethnic neighbors in exchange for human beings who never knew their destiny in the new lands. They told leaders w that guns would provide a new level of security that they had never had before. Today, most white people in the United States hold this to be true as part of the 2nd Amendment, and even some black people still believe this.
However, the present nor does history support this position. While there have been wars throughout time, at no time has the level of killing at the individual level been so great in the United States. Whether it is malls, concerts, or school shootings, the number of people dying from gun violence is increasing within black or brown neighborhoods.
Guns supporting the enslavement or extinction of humans for last six centuries
The power of killing or injuring a person from a distance probably seemed fascinating to individuals several centuries ago. Still, the extinction of indigenous people in the Caribbean and Americas can only be seen as tragic. The enslavement of millions of Africans who remain displaced and remain in the lowest caste in so-called developed countries is also tragic.
In the United States, the 2nd Amendment is the white man’s power because, at the end of the day, the gun is the foundation of this country, even if millions have died. You can go into Walmart and gunshops throughout the country and grab what you perceive as power without realizing the pain and tears in doing so.
For the US black community, guns have taken away our beloved leaders such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Fred Hampton, and countless others who are not known. Guns, which are individual weapons of mass destruction, enslaved us and kept us enslaved at the hands of unjust slave owners, militia, and normal so-called white citizens in the United States until the end of the Civil War. During Jim Crow, the gun was used to snatch black men and women from their homes during daylight and nighttime hours when they were unjustly accused of crimes. Often hanging from trees without trial, the bodies of the beloved were filled with bullets from white gun owners. In some cases, the guns were used to enforce large-scale white violence against black cities such as Wilmington, North Carolina, or Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Today, in cities across America, people die from gun violence through intention or accident. Black youth who want a future must struggle in the presence of gun violence, feeling but not fully understanding the centuries of gun violence against them and their ancestors. They hear the ridiculous debates about gun rights but not about human rights or how guns have degraded black lives for the last six centuries. They lose their friends and suffer emotionally with countless mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The present situation reminded me of the enslavement period when fear and loss of loved ones from slave raids were on every village’s mind in West and Southern Africa.
People always say that I should be safe when I travel to Africa. However, little do they know that I feel safer in Africa than any place in the United States because gun ownership is minimal because of colonialism. The army and police hold all of the guns, making them a source of worry, but I don’t have to think about someone pulling a gun on you, walking into a school, concert, or store shooting everyone up.
This morning, I read that they stopped the National’s baseball game because of gunshots.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/07/17/nationals-park-
The people in the stands, baseball players, and everyone took cover, and yet the main reflection from such an event is a delayed baseball game until the next day.
Yet the situation is so serious, with gun violence and homicides currently erupting in many cities and neighborhoods as the pandemic winds down. There is police gun violence and individual gun violence. The COVID-19 virus took the breath from many loved ones in the black community and, along with bullets from guns, leaves visible or invisible scars every day. Only when you are in a position of superiority can you lose valuable lives and not feel that they are valuable. When black teenagers die from gun violence, the future is compromised as the young have become ancestors before their time. Their promise for a better day is dissipated into vapor, and hopelessness gains power.
We need to wake up from the fantasy of the Avengers and other movies that suggest that aliens want to destroy and kill humans. Let’s get it right: we are killing each other. The aliens look alike, and the weapons are centuries-old, not futuristic, and have taken the lives of too many.
We don’t need Guns
We need peace…
We need to remember who we are…
We need to remember our purpose …..
We need to heal ourselves from 500 years of generational trauma !!