Players are prepared to resist violent criminal assaults but NFL management is sacrificing to idols of political correctness. When I reviewed much of the information about the NFL’s position on players exercising their Second Amendment right of self defense, I was reminded of the Deacons for the Defense. Most people do not realize that there was a branch of the Civil Rights movement that bore arms in order to resist the night riders that were prepared to kill civil rights workers. Not just the NFL management, but the Democratic Party has had a long history of racism that has been closely linked with the history of gun control.

“That Every Man be Armed” by Stephen P. Halbrook, deals with the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment and provides a startling account of the newly freed black Americans and how the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in order to stop Southern militiamen that were actively attempting to disarm blacks who tried to protect their homes and families from lynchings. Many of the blacks returned from fighting (on both sides of the Civil War- some for the North and some for the South). The homes of black Freedmen were searched by white night riders in order to discover weapons.

White men were the only citizens allowed to have firearms under the newly passed Jim Crow laws and failure to submit to the authorities’ unlawful searches and seizures often lead to lynchings in which innocent black men, women and children were literally skinned alive and mutilated.

When the Fourteenth Amendment was debated, the Southern Democrats indignantly denounced the language of the proposed Amendment, declaring that due process protection would include the right of Negroes to be armed the same as white citizens had the right to be armed pursuant to the U. S. Constitution. At that time, during the 1870s, the Northern advocates of civil rights for blacks (mostly Republicans) vehemently asserted that the Southerners were exactly right- due process for black citizens included the right to keep and bear arms just like it did for whites!

This legislative history should be discussed again when the Supreme Court hears DC v Heller. The Court will be dealing with the issue of whether the Second Amendment is an individual right. The Congressional debates leading up to ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment show that both sides acknowledged that the Second Amendment was an individual right that adhered to all citizens. Most Constitutional scholars, the U.S. Department of Justice and most state legislatures are recognizing the importance of armed citizen empowerment related to deployment of deadly force in personal protection and for protection of families and homes.

The City of Washington DC is administered under Congressional authority and therefore the issue of whether the Second Amendment applies to the states will be a very live issue. The Parker court stated very clearly that the Second Amendment does not restrict regulation of firearms by the states but how far can regulation go without constituting a de facto prohibition? That is the issue that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon decide in connection with the District of Columbia. It should be noted that the cities like Washington DC and Chicago that have great numbers of poor blacks are also the cities where gun control has the greatest stranglehold.

Many cities have virtually outlawed possession of pistols and other firearms; in Washington DC weapons have to be kept unloaded, disassembled and locked with a trigger lock. The City’s fiat thereby makes any such weapon effectively useless in a community that has one of the highest crime rates in the U.S. The law prohibits transporting a firearm in any location and the City’s attorneys apparently did not dispute the allegation that moving a firearm from one room to the other in your own home constitutes a crime under DC’s draconian regime.

New York City and Chicago area may be good places to look for a test of whether the Second Amendment applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. The author of “That Every Man Be Armed” provides a persuasive brief hammering home that the right to keep and bear arms may be one of the most fundamental protections- a Constitutional protection that is intrinsically rooted in a well ordered society. The ability to defend our lives, our families and, at certain times, our property goes to the very essence of what law is all about. Mr. Halbrook is a Constitutional lawyer and an able firearms advocate.

Halbrook has chapters discussing Constitutional theory as it has developed at various times in classical Greece and Rome, English common law, colonial America and up through fairly recent times. It is encouraging to see that many of the classical world’s philosophers and political theorists come down squarely in favor of the principle that free citizens bear arms. Not to keep and bear arms is historically an earmark of a slave in almost every Western society.

Armed citizens are the institution that the Founding Fathers proclaimed to be the most practical line of defense against foreign invaders and domestic tyrants.

I first heard about the Deacons for the Defense when Condoleza Rice was telling Larry King about her father, a theologian, who gathered with other churchmen in their homes armed with shotguns in order to resist the night riders in Montgomery, Alabama. She reasoned that, if there had been gun registration, Sheriff Bull Connors would have made sure to disarm the Deacons so that the Ku Klux Klan could do its evil work. By the way, Forest Whitaker starred in the movie.

Now the NFL has become like a new breed of plantation owner, attempting to intimidate the players from exercising their Constitutional right to defend themselves against violence.

Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was murdered when he confronted armed intruders with a machete. His home was located in a gated community in Miami.

The intruder(s) shot him.

Would the outcome have been different if Taylor had a gun instead of a machete?

The NFL has attempted to discourage players from arming themselves. This is a public relations campaign and has very little to do with the safety of the players.

“The leagues would rather the players put themselves at risk than have the players protect themselves with guns.”

Paul Tagliabue instituted an official league gun policy back in 1994 that discourages possession of legal weapons in the players’ own homes! “Any weapon, particularly a firearm, is dangerous,” the policy states, “especially so when it is in a vehicle or within reach of children and others not properly trained in its use.”

Former Chicago Bears tackle Tank Johnson was banned from the league for part of a season after he got in trouble with Chicago law enforcers for possessing a firearm illegally in his home. “It is not enough to simply avoid being found guilty of a crime. Instead, as an employee of the NFL or a member club, you are held to a high standard and expected to conduct yourself in a way that is responsible, (and) promotes the values upon which the league is based….”

NBA Commissioner David Stern stated, “It’s a pretty, I think, widely accepted statistic that if you carry a gun, your chances of being shot by one increase dramatically. We think this is an alarming subject. Although you’ll read players saying how they feel safer with guns, in fact those guns actually make them less safe. . . .”

Washington, D.C., home to Sean Taylor’s Redskins, is currently facing a legal challenge to its virtual ban on handguns. For decades the city has had one of the toughest gun-control policies in the country. It has also consistently had one of the highest murder rates. According to Chris Sprow,the editor-in-chief of Chicago Sports Weekly:

Pro athletes are targets. They are young, wealthy, famous, and many opt not to abandon the communities where they grew up. They face a different threat and a different reality than halls traversed by the likes of Stern and Goodell. Last summer in Chicago, two high-profile NBA players were robbed at gunpoint in their own homes. Antoine Walker was confronted in his garage, bound with duct tape, and robbed of thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry, as well as his Mercedes. This was in his multi-million dollar Gold Coast home, located in a wealthy, downtown Chicago neighborhood. Weeks later, Eddy Curry was robbed in similar manner at his palatial estate in Burr Ridge, a suburb outside the city.

Police later determined both players had been targetted because of their status as professional athletes. Locally, the Chicago Bulls were forced to issue a statement, warning their own players to take new measures to insure their own security.

Why do the players need to be warned to prepare for violent attacks?

“Professional athletes, most of us came from the streets. We feel like we know the streets and can pretty much protect ourselves. But now we’re in a position where we’re being targeted, and the stakes are just too high.”

Atlanta forward Shelden Williams was recently carjacked at gunpoint.

Is it wise to put the safety of players at risk just to enhance the NFL image?

Since the aftermath of the Civil War, “gun control” has simply been a proxy argument for some as a method for keeping blacks unarmed. Arms roundups of freedmen were common in the South in the years following the liberation of slaves, and the result was more control for white landowners, and the lurking and pervasive Ku Klux Klan, who used their mobility to terrorize freed blacks. In many ways still today the gun is as much a measure of protection as it is a symbol of the ability to protect— to self govern, if need be.

In February 1994, a black Democrat State Senator from Chicago, Rickey Hendon had his unregistered handgun stolen from his home. “I have a right to protect myself,” he told the Sun-Times. Blacks tend to live in higher crime areas; lack the resources for private security, alarm systems, and other measures; and aren’t particularly trusting of or willing to rely upon the police to protect them. When the City of Chicago began restricting handgun possession in 1983, some of the loudest objections came from black politicians, who said the ban discriminated against black Chicagoans who needed to be armed to protect themselves.

Wealthy athletes are targets for violent crime.

Mr. Sprow’s recommendation that teams focus on teaching young players how to own, maintain, and use guns responsibly makes a great deal of sense! (Chris Sprow is the editor-in-chief of Chicago Sports Weekly, and has contributed to a number of other publications, including the New York Times and ESPN the Magazine.)

John R. Lott Jr. in his incisive article entitled Athletes and Guns lists some of the reasons that fifty percent of NFL players justifiably arm themselves to fend off deadly assaults.

Their wealth and high profiles make them targets for violent criminals.

Early in the morning on Jan. 21, Corey Fuller, the 5-foot, 10-inch, 210-pound defensive back for the Baltimore Ravens, was confronted by two armed robbers outside his Tallahassee house. One robber chased Fuller into his house where his wife and children were sleeping, but Fuller was able to grab a gun and fire at the attackers, who then ran away.

In late October, T.J. Slaughter, a 6-foot, 233-pound linebacker, was arrested for allegedly pointing a gun at motorists who pulled up next to him on the highway. Slaughter denied that he had pointed the gun at the motorists and claimed that they had threatened him. According to Slaughter, he told the men to move away from his car. No charges were filed, but the Jacksonville Jaguars still cut Slaughter the next day. Jacksonville claimed Slaughter was performing poorly.

Greg Anthony, a 6-foot, 176-pound guard for 12 years in the NBA, carried a registered gun during part of his career. He said, “More and more people approach you, and you just never know what somebody is capable of doing …”

Mr. Lott goes on to state:

Recent media stories – from the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune – have run extremely negative stories on professional players owning guns. The Tribune described players owning guns as a “problem [that] persists.” Ironically, within days of the December New York Times piece, it was revealed that the New York Times lets its reporters carry guns in Iraq.

– Yancy Thigpen of the Tennessee Titans (height: 6-1, weight: 203 lbs.) has faced three armed robberies since joining the NFL eight years ago. The last one left him and his fiancée tied up inside his house with their 2-month old daughter locked in a closet. An earlier robbery involved a carjacking.

– Will Allen of the New York Giants (height: 5-10, weight: 195 lbs.) was assaulted, doused with gasoline and robbed by an assailant when he returned to his house one evening in 2001.

According to John Lott, such misguided advice simply makes players and their families more vulnerable and does not square with the U.S. Department of Justice’s findings. The Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey has shown that not being armed is statistically the strategy most likely to result in victimization.

Aggressiveness is always a better strategy than the passive approach that is often recommended in much of the officially sanctioned literature on how to deal with assaults.

One player, T.J. Slaughter said. “I believe legally owning a gun is the right thing to do. It offers me protection. I think one day it could save my life.”

See NFL Athletes; Guns & Second Amendment.