Good read.
The people who’d witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the “baddest motherfucker in the world.” Newton’s message was clear: “The gun is where it’s at and about and in.”
-I would have liked to have witnessed that.
This is really interesting. Especially: Remove the overt reference to race, and you have a sentence that could proceed from an NRA militant today. Seriously, it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that the NRA had people legally walk into a state assembly with weapons just like the Black Panthers did. Although, I imagine a lot of states now how laws making public places like that a gun free zone. Also, I remember a professor I had talking about the difference between US and European gun culture. He argued that the difference is historical accident based on how each land was settled. In Europe local lords took weapons away from peasants in order to quell any peasant uprising and establish control. In the US settlers had to use guns to take control of land from the natives, establishing an important relationship with weapons and protection.ts early success was gained precisely from its ostentatious compliance with law. As one former Panther would later write, "The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them."