The Daily Egyptian - The Guns That Unite and Divide Us

THE

Daily Egyptian SERVING THE SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SINCE 1916.

DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM MAY 12, 2021 VOL. 104, ISSUE 17

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Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Contact Us Email: editor@dailyegyptian.com The Daily Egyptian Editorial Board: Faculty Managing Editor: Julia Rendleman julia@juliarendleman.com Editor-in-Chief: Kallie Cox kcox@dailyegyptian.com Design Chief: Chloe Schobert cschobert@dailyegyptian.com

Foreword from the Editor Kallie Cox | @Kallie.e.cox

This Special Edition of the Daily Egyptian takes a look inside American gun culture at the guns that unite and divide us. The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This

has been used by many to argue that any form of gun control is unconstitutional. However given the amount of mass shootings, school shootings, and murders in our country, some control is necessary and gun violence is another pandemic Americans are facing. Another side of this, is that gun control has historically been used to oppress minorities,

including people of color, women and those in the LGBTQ+ community. In this edition we examine some of the regulations that are being proposed, take a look inside of gun culture at the largest gun show in the world, and we examine the benefits and downfalls of guns on the left and right sides of the political spectrum.

Photo Editor: Leah Sutton lsutton@dailyegyptian.com Student Advertising Chief: Hannah Combs hcombs@dailyegyptian.com Business Office: Arunima Bhattacharya 618-536-3305 Contributors: George Wiebe Jason Flynn Monica Sharma Subash Kharel Dustin Clark Sophie Whitten Jared Treece Oreoluwa Ojewuyi Cover: Photo - Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks Design - Chloe Schobert | @chlo_scho_art

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The Liberty Reloading sign sits beside a second amendment flag at the Wanenmacher’s Arms Show April 10, 2021 in Tulsa, Okla. The company sells rifle casings and uses once-fired brass from indoor shooting ranges to recycle it to new shell casings. Subash Kharel | pics.leaks

Biden administration announces executive actions on gun control George Wiebe | gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Six executive actions were announced April 7 targeting gun violence following the mass shootings in Boulder, Colo. and Atlanta, Ga. President Joe Biden described the recent acts of violence as an “epidemic” and “embarrassment” to the country.

Executive actions, often confused with executive orders, do not carry the weight of the law, but are instead informal proposals, or a call to action on the part of Congress.

The actions proposed include: A proposed ruling by the Justice Department to “help stop the proliferation of ‘ghost guns’” which are self built/assembled firearms that lack commercial serial numbers.

A proposed rule by the Justice Department to “make clear when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle,”. These braces are used to increase the accuracy of a firearm, and notably was used by the shooter in Boulder, Colo. last March.

A model for “red flag” laws published by the Justice Department, which would allow families or law enforcement to petition for a court ordered restriction on “people in crisis” to access firearms.

Investment in “evidence-based community violence interventions,” a strategy that pritoritizes the prevention of gun violence through targeted interventions, treating the issue as a public health crisis rather than a criminal one.

An annual report on firearms trafficking by the Justice Department as a means of supplying state and

local policy makers with “information they need to help address firearms trafficking today.”

Finally, the nomination of David Chipman to serve as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, where Chipman has served as a special agent for 25 years.

Since the announcement of the executive actions, observers on both sides of the gun control debate have criticized the Biden administration.

Some Republicans believe this to be an overreach by the President aimed at infringing on their second amendment rights.

“I am deeply troubled with Joe Biden’s decision yesterday to pick David Chipman to lead the ATF,” Congresswoman Mary Miller (R. Ill-15) said in a press release. “The ATF has tremendous power and authority, and we all should be very concerned about how Chipman intends to use that power.”

Meanwhile, gun control activists have expressed concern that executive actions are not a strong enough response.

In 2016, former President Barack Obama issued 23 executive actions on gun violence, which did nothing to lower firearm related deaths. In 2016, more than 33,000 firearm related deaths occurred and in 2019, that number was nearly 40,000.

“He needs to move forward with legislative changes today, now, because what’s at stake is real human life,” Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said.

Staff reporter George Wiebe can be reached at gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

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Demand overtakes supply: Ammo shortages across the country

Ammunition for sale at Mateo Cabeda’s booth at the Wanenmacher’s Arms show in Tulsa Okla. April 10 & 11 2021. Kallie Cox | @kallie.e.cox

george Wiebe | gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, gun and ammo sales have skyrocketed and nearly 8.5 million people bought their first firearm in 2020, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

“The biggest increase of any demographic category was among African Americans, who bought guns at a rate of 58% greater than in 2019,” Joe Bartozzi, reporter for the NSSF, said.

Previous spikes in gun sales have occurred following the Sandy Hook, San Bernardino and Parkland shootings, according to an economics study at Brookings, but no single bump in sales has compared to 2020.

“I’m tired of hearing about us not trying to service the demand we’re experiencing,” Jason Vanderbrink, president of Federal Ammunition, said in a video addressing the complaints customers had been experiencing.

Across the U.S. ammunition manufacturing has kept up an average pace but could not account for the rise in sales Vanderbrink claims.

If you have been to a gun show in the last year the shortage might not be as apparent; Tulsa Oklahoma houses one of the world’s largest gun shows, the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show, where dozens of vendors sell nothing but ammo, the catch, most of it is resold.

“Most of this has been bought for personal use over years and years [...] really don’t need the ammo sitting around,” Scott Shell, a vendor at the Wanenmacher’s show, said.

Some resell online through websites like gunbroker.com; others use social media like MeWe, an alternative to Facebook and Twitter that advertises less censorship than its more mainstream competitors to sell locally.

Many customers still wait for nearby gun shows to open up and hope new shipments come in.

“It used to be if you needed a firearm and ammunition, it would be ready for pickup in

72 hours [...] now I have a hard time getting much of anything,” David Myers, manager of Carbondale’s Five Rings Armory, said.

Stores like the Southside Guns and Ammo in St Louis regularly had empty shelves in stark contrast to the resellers’ market online and at shows like the Belleville Gun & Knife Show and Quad Cities Gun Show.

The insecurity and panic caused by the pandemic is largely to blame, the situation itself is similar to other high demand products that saw supply falling short.

Toilet paper and hand sanitizer were some of the earliest products bought in bulk with many attempting to resell on Amazon and Facebook marketplace.

Unlike toilet paper, hand sanitizer and food products, there is essentially no legal repercussion for price gouging ammo.

Scalping has led to ammo prices skyrocketing, with the most common box of ammunition, the 9mm, nearly doubling since June, 2020.

MeWe has contributed to the increase in ammo scalpers, providing an outlet to sell off bulk carts of ammunition.

MeWe, like Facebook allows users to join groups, and directly message participants, it is here firearms and ammunition are sold locally or through the mail.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed, this March, H.R.8 also known as the “Bipartisan Background Checks Act,” the goal of which is to close the online and gun show loopholes for firearm sales.

In a market that consists of over 40% of Americans, having a supply drought can cost billions in lost revenue.

“I think a lot of smaller gun stores that don’t have a lot of supplemental income are going to struggle in the long term,” Myers said.

Staff reporter George Wiebe can be reached at gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Missouri senator introduces “minutemen” bill george Wiebe | gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Following the mass shootings in Boulder, Colo. and Atlanta, Ga. last month, national attention focused once again around new gun legislation.

In response, Missouri state representatives proposed sweeping legislation to oppose moves by the federal government to expand gun control laws.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act passed through the Missouri House of Representatives in February.

“This isn’t a new bill. In 2013-2014 [...] they passed it through the House and Senate, [and it] went to the governor, that was Democrat [Jay] Nixon, [and he] vetoed the bill. We missed the override by one vote,” Jered Taylor (R), of the Missouri House of Representatives said.

The proposed act declares that any law passed by the federal government which infringe on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens, “must be invalid in this state.”

Under the act, state police departments could be sued for a minimum of $50,000 for enforcing those federal laws.

“The best way to get the department’s attention and to make sure that they follow this law to protect our citizens’ Second Amendment rights, is to hit them in the pocketbook,” Taylor said.

A more controversial piece of legislature, proposed by Bill White (R) of the Missouri State Senate, is S.B. 528, the bill would establish the “Missouri Minutemen.”

On paper, the “Minutemen” are not a state militia but a force that could be called upon by the Governor to react during a “state of emergency.”

The bill requires all volunteers to “secure firearms, firearm accessories, ammunition, uniforms, equipment, and supplies necessary to perform any duties as assigned by the governor.”

The reality of the bill is more complicated however. Firearms and equipment would not be taxable, but it would become property of the state of Missouri.

“While you are minutemen, your firearms will, for sovereignty and jurisdiction purposes, be considered to be state property,” White said.

White argues that this would remove regulation and taxation by the U.S. government.

Missouri already has two volunteer forces, the Missouri National Guard, and the Missouri Defence force.

“The best way to get the department’s attention and to make sure that they follow this law to protect our citizens’ Second Amendment rights, is to hit them in the pocketbook.”

- Jered Taylor Missouri House of Representatives (R)

The bill has not been voted on by the state House or Senate, and was likely a reaction to recent legislation going through Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed two Bills in 2021 aimed at reforming background checks.

H.R.8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, would prohibit the transfer of firearms between private parties without first having a licenced dealer/manufacturer performing background checks.

“I firmly believe in the right to keep and bear arms, legally. I’m also a strong advocate for conceal carry, and have permits myself to do so. But we have a violence problem in this country and it cannot be ignored,” Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said, following his support for H.R.8.

H.R.1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act, was written

by James Clyburn (D-S.C.) who called it “an important step Congress must take to address the epidemic of gun violence in this country.”

Staff reporter George Wiebe can be reached at gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

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Wednesday, May 12, 2021

The Revolving door of gun control Oreoluwa Ojewuyi | @odojewuyi

Gun violence has exploded in Carbondale throughout the years. As the violence spreads from the north-east side to the rest of the city community members have come together to locate the source of the issue and take action.

Ginger Rye Sanders was recently elected to the Carbondale City Council. Sanders said gun violence is not just a national issue but that the Carbondale community has been especially affected by it.

“I was born and raised in Carbondale. When I moved away and came back and when I found out that this was the fourth most dangerous town in Illinois. There are 49 crimes to every 1000 people in Carbondale,” Sanders said. “There’s a lot of gun violence.”

Sanders said gun violence is concentrated in the northeast side of Carbondale.

“It’s a lot of shooting that goes on in Carbondale that’s not even reported to the police department. I live here, I lay in my bed and I hear gunshots,” Sanders said. “The city’s gonna have to come together with the neighbors, and we’re gonna have to try to come up with a plan.”

Jay’Quan Campbell disarmed a fellow Carbondale Community High School Student on the bus alongside his younger brother Xe’Quan. Campbell lost his brother Xe’Quan to a separate incident of gun violence shortly after.

Campbell said gun violence was a large part of his life growing up.

“We grew up on the east side of Carbondale.

Growing up where we grew up, gun violence has always been a thing, but it never really targeted me and my brother until we got older. It was just something that we knew happened around us that we were acclimated to, to a certain extent, until it happened directly to us,” Campbell said.

Campbell said he and his brother were aware that gun violence happened but did not expect it to directly impact their family like it did.

“After everything that happened it made me realize gun control is so lax here. We need to

figure out a way to control it and regulate it better than we are now,” Campbell said.

Sanders said accountability is the first step to stop the gun violence occurring in Carbondale.

“I believe that there are a lot of young people that have managed to buy or to get access to a gun, and that’s troubling to me. How in the world does a 16-year-old have guns,” Sanders said. “When we start dealing with making people accountable we’re going to eradicate a lot of these problems that we have out in the streets.”

Sanders said many young people turn to gun violence as a way of expressing themselves.

“They pull guns out when they’re mad, they

the problem,” Sanders said.

Sanders said we can begin to change the mindset around gun culture through education.

“I do believe that education will help those who want to be educated. People need to make informed decisions and have a strong knowledge base on guns - knowing how to handle a gun, knowing how to clean a gun and, knowing how to be a good steward over it,” Sanders said.

Sanders said a strong sense of community and more mentorship would be beneficial for young adults who might be involved or subject to gun violence in the Carbondale area.

“People move in [town] and we don’t get to

“I was born and raised in Carbondale. When I moved away and came back and when I found out that this was the fourth most dangerous town in Illinois. There are 49 crimes to every 1000 people in Carbondale.”

- Ginger Rye Sanders Carbondale City Council

pull guns out when one of their family members gets into conflict with another family member,” Sanders said. “They don’t know anything about conflict resolution. This is how the younger generation deals with problems and is so sad that we have come to this in America, and in Carbondale.”

Campbell said gun culture is a way of survival for many.

“Everybody around here has to survive and everybody has that risk of fatality. Where we live on the east side it is poverty stricken. You have to have one to survive because everyone else has one and you need to protect yourself,” Campbell said.

Sanders said mindset has a lot to do with how we handle the issue of gun violence in the Carbondale area.

“We need to look right inside ourselves right here. When we become quiet, we become part of

know them and they don’t really want to become part of the community. Then for the children they are missing those positive images that we should have in our community,” Sanders said.

Nancy Maxwell is one of the founders of Carbondale United which is an organization aimed at stopping the violence and providing justice to victims of violence in the area. Maxwell agrees that there needs to be more focus on community development in order to curb the rate of gun violence in Carbondale. Last December Maxwell planned an event to speak with the Carbondale youth.

“We planned with basketball and football players from the NBA and NFL to come to a virtual summit and talk to the youth. We also did a survey to see what the community needed. For some it was employment and others a community center,” Sanders said. “I feel like if the community

is able to raise money for a dog park, they should be able to raise money for a community center.”

There should be more positive images that young people can look up to, Sanders said.

“There should be young people that go to work, union workers, plumbers, electricians and even the image of a black policeman or people in the military. Somebody that looks like them would be a great example,” Sanders said.

Maxwell said the Carbondale Police Department is encouraging minority communities to apply for positions.

“They have a program that offers an apprenticeship period where people can try it out. At the end of the period they will basically be ready to go to the academy. A lot of people say diversifying the force will help the community,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell said she doesn’t necessarily know if a diverse police force will help stop gun violence.

“Lately, all we’ve been seeing is the white officers not trying with a black person, I’ve definitely seen them try with white people. I imagine that an officer that looks like me would actually understand how to help me,” Maxwell said.

There have been national efforts in the last five years to address the issues of gun violence occurring the United States. There has been lobbying and funding to aid gun control and gun rights groups.

Campbell said he believes events and programs to stop the violence only help in the moment and after events of gun violence occur the discourse and action disappears.

“It’s not actively stopping people from doing the things that they’re doing now. What we need to do is to inform, reform and regulate the amount of guns in this country,” Campbell said.

Staff Reporter Oreoluwa Ojewuyi can be reached at oojewuyi@dailyegyptian.com or on twitter @odojewuyi.

Dustin Clark | @dustinclark.oof

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

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Illinois gun legislation is one of the strictest in the nation, but what is its impact on crime rates?

Dustin Clark | @dustinclark.oof george Wiebe | gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

New federal gun control legislation has made its way to the forefront of national attention, but hiding behind it are the state lawmakers pushing for and against the new wave of firearm regulations.

Illinois is unique in its attempts to curb gun violence, requiring registration for a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card and a Concealed Carry License (CCL) and the city of Chicago has become infamous for gun related deaths, yet the state of Illinois has the 35th highest firearm mortality rates in the country, according to the CDC. If the mortality rate is so low why does the state have such high firearm related arrest rates?

According to Loyola’s Center for Criminal Justice Research (CCJR), 72% of gun crime arrests between 2009 and 2019 were for illegal possession of a firearm.

“Police have a difficult time, particularly in Chicago, solving violent crimes with a gun” David Olson, professor at Loyola University and Codirector of the Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice said.

“So if we can’t catch them for the violent crime, if we cast a wide enough net, and arrest enough people who really only have guns, chances are some of those people might be the ones driving the violence,” Olson said.

Olson went on to describe a system that is biased towards a certain demographic, young Black men; according to the CCJR study over 50% of people arrested for gun crimes are Black.

“Carrying a gun around for self protection isn’t seen as something where you increase the risk of violence or lethality,” Olson said “but translate that behavior to an urban area with minority populations, and the public oftentimes has a

different perception.”

“People think that most gun violence is murders, it’s not,” Olson said, describing the number of suicides committed with a gun, “and as people learn more about that they’re like, okay, maybe the gun problem is different than I thought it was.”

One of Illinois’s solutions to this problem is a restructuring of the FOID card system.

The state recorded a massive backlog of FOID card registrations throughout 2020 culminating in two responses; “Fix the FOID Act” a bill largely

supported by state Democrats that would auto renew FOID cards with the registration of an individual’s fingerprints, and the “Firearm Owners ID Act - Repeal,” introduced by Rep. Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport), which would do away with the FOID system entirely.

Meanwhile midwestern neighbors like Missouri and Iowa have proposed legislation lightening firearm legislation.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law a bill allowing permitless handgun ownership, while a

Missouri bill the “Second Amendment Preservation Act” is making its way through the state congress.

On the other side of the state, Chicago is attempting to sue an Indiana gun store, claiming its weapons make their way into criminal hands.

“We are surrounded by states and cities that have a much, more lax gun control environment,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

Staff reporter George Wiebe can be reached at gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Dustin Clark | @dustinclark.oof

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Wednesday, May 12 2021

The state of Illinois’ gun advocacy networks Kallie Cox | @Kallie.e.cox

National and state gun lobbying and advocacy have taken on a different dynamic in the age of social media and “fake news.” Now with the click of a button, advocacy groups are able to send out petitions and messages that outrage thousands a day.

A few of the groups who have become active in Illinois’ gun lobby and advocacy scene and who utilize these online platforms include the Illinois State Rifle Association, Gun Save Life and Illinois Gun Owners Together. They work together but maintain separate identities with one main goal in mind- protect the Second Amendment.

Illinois State Rifle Association-ISRA The Illinois State Rifle Association was founded in 1903 and was originally affiliated with the United States Army, according to Executive Director Richard A. Pearson. Since then, the group’s membership has grown and it now has approximately 29,000 members throughout the state.

“Our mission was to train, and still is our mission, was to train civilians before they go into military service in marksmanship skills because it takes a long time to learn those and so the more training you get the better off you are,” Melnick said.“We offer classes in about everything, it would have to pertain to shooting, and also range safety.”

Now in addition to training and the 400 various events the ISRA holds each year, they also engage in political activism and have five lobbyists in Springfield.

“Our job is to protect the second amendment rights of law abiding citizens and so a lot of the laws that are proposed claim to be directed at the criminals but it actually affects law abiding gun owners and criminals pretty much don’t care,” Pearson said. “I guess that’s what makes them criminals.”

In addition to the five lobbyists, the ISRA encourages its members to take an active role in advocating for the Second Amendment by contacting their legislators and filing witness slips.

“We advocate for legislation of course you have to talk to legislators individually about that. Sometimes in groups,” Pearson said. “You know we want to make sure that the law abiding person can practice their second amendment rights without a lot of interference and we also want to make sure that the criminal element isn’t able to do that so we know criminals affect all of us, affect our rights and when people pass legislation they, intentioned or not intentioned, they actually target the law abiding gun owners and not the criminals most of the time.”

To keep members up to date on what is happening with Second Amendment Legislation and with the organization, the ISRA publishes a quarterly journal known as the Illinois Shooter.

It has over 30,000 current subscribers and its Winter edition’s front page ran three featured stories: It’s main was “Michigan Senate’s Election Fraud Hearing” Side bar: “Media Spikes Stories Helpful to Trump: Skews Election” and below the fold: “Justice Alito Warns of Threats to Our Rights.”

In between these editions it sends members a weekly newsletter to their emails with updates. Members can also view action alerts on the ISRA’s website letting them know when legislative action is being taken and prompting them to sign witness slips or take action.

ISRA also partners with the National Rifle Association, Illinois Department of National Resources, the Second Amendment Foundation and other Second Amendment organizations within the state.

Gun Save Life-GSL GSL was founded roughly twenty years ago and has grown to be one of the largest gun advocacy groups in the state.

The group’s mission statement is “We defend your right to defend yourself.”

While it maintains a separate identity, the group often works with and sponsors the NRA, ISRA, the NRA’s institute for legislative action, friends of the NRA, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, The Well Armed Woman, Project Appleseed and others throughout the state.

John Boch, the executive director of GSL, said the organization originally started as the Champaign County Rifle Association, but now it meets in six cities across the state and has members all over.

The organization hosts meetings, social gatherings and is politically active within the state.

“We don’t have specific programs, you know everyone is welcome at our meetings and we encourage women and minorities and so forth to come everybody from trans individuals to people of color to women to just about you name it you know, different religious persuasions and so forth you know we have a broad tent for everyone who supports the right to keep and bear arms and the right of self defense,” Boch said. “We don’t care who you sleep with or who you worship or what you do for a living. We welcome everybody that supports our right to defend ourselves, protect our families.”

One thing GSL has become known for in the state is its participation at local gun buyback events where members take broken down guns and sell them for cash to fund youth shooting events.

Boch is also the editor emeritus of Gun News, the organization’s monthly publication that keeps readers up to date on political issues that deal with the Second Amendment and the organization itself. Currently Boch said they distribute roughly 17,000 copies each month across the state.

Some of the stories in their recent editions included: “A dark time in American history” a two page story essentially defending the capitol insurrection, denying it was an insurrection, and comparing those on the left who called it an insurrection and punished the rioters to “nazis” and fascists from 1933 Germany. A story next to this saying antifa orchestrated the attack. A one page story with images and the headline “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Got shovel?

Strategies to avoid the loss of your guns” along with detailed instructions on how to bury your guns in safe containers made of diy materials or piping. At the bottom of the page there is a graphic with two rifles and the caption says “when democracy turns to tyranny... the armed citizen still gets to vote.”

Illinois Gun Owners Together-IGOT IGOT is a group of gun enthusiasts who participate in social activities, training, outreach and political advocacy.

According to the groups website, it’s membership exceeded 8,500 in 2020.

Marcus Melnick, an administrator for the group, said membership exploded around three years ago and in the past, before being shut down by Facebook, the group had over 10,000 members.

Melnick said the group focuses on social gatherings where they host shooting events and advocacy and outreach work.

“Originally we were just a bunch of people who were interested in firearms who would just, it was kind of a social network. And it grew from that,” Melnick said.

While the group isn’t an official and registered lobbying organization, they do advocate for pro-second amendment legislation and participate in rallies and town halls including the annual IGOLD, or Illinois Gun Owner Lobby Day. The group was originally founded by Carl Arriaza who was recently doxxed and called a “temperamental and reactionary gun nut” by Anne Frank’s Army, a leftist group.

Anne Frank’s Army took an in-depth look at the social media postings of IGOT and said: “Illinois Gun Owners Together (IGOT) is a gun owners rights club with a presence on Facebook, whose members-only group is a hotbed of far-right and fascist militia thought and activity. The group is founded and led by Carl Arriaza, who is a temperamental and reactionary gun nut who uses his platform to recruit people for antagonistic operations against protest movements in the Chicago area. Other members have been using IGOT as a recruiting ground for local militias, including Patriot Front Illinois, the We The People (WTP) III% Militia, and also the Proud Boys.”

Melnick said this isn’t true and the group has rules against posting offensive content.

“We monitor what’s posted, if something is inappropriate whether it’s anti-African American, anti-semetic, anti-LGBTQ we get rid of the post. We delete it, there are consequences for

the member,” Melnick said.

However the group doesn’t seem to follow these standards of conduct on their MeWe group page, where members and administrators post transphobic, COVID-19 denying and anti-Black Lives Matter posts on the regular.

Some of these posts include: A photo of Kyle Rittenhouse, a teen from Illinois who is charged with killing two protesters in Wisconsin last summer, with his gun with a depiction of Jesus over his shoulder whispering in his ear “You see that man over there? He’s a pedo. That guy over there, he beats his girl.

This other kid is not a medic he’s a burglar.” Captioned by an administrator named “Panda Man” to say “Kyle is a god Damm hero.”

Another post by Mary Jene Howe with a photo of a statue with a woman on her knees who appears to be giving a man a blow job with the caption “They made a statue to honor Kamala Harris.”

And another Captioned “Why does anybody need 30 rounds?” With a photo of 30 masked individuals who seem to be peaceful protesters.

IGOT, ISRA and GSL all participate in IGOLD, the Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day. This event is held every year in Springfield and thousands of gun owners who are members of various organizations come together to rally in favor of the Second Amendment.

Lobby groups and 501c4 organizations like the NRA are able to funnel dark money into campaigns and super PACs. According to Brendan Quinn, who works with the Center for Responsive Politics, these groups are able to spend mass amounts of money either on political expenditures themselves, advocating for a candidate, or giving money to super PACs and they don’t have to disclose their donors so long as they don’t spend more than half of their funding on political advocacy.

Dark money plays a large role in election cycles in the U.S. and Quinn described it as a mysterious process.

“Dark money is money that is spent with the intent of influencing a voter where the source of that money is unknown,” Quinn said. “Dark meaning mysterious, we don’t know where the original source of that money comes from. So 501c4 groups like the NRA, they don’t have to disclose who their donors are.”

In the 2020 election cycle gun rights groups spent $10,205,036 on lobbying efforts compared to $12,166,438 in 2019, according to Open Secrets.

$ $ $ Editor-in-Chief Kallie Cox can be reached at kcox@ dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @KallieECox.

Chloe Schobert | @chlo_scho_art

Wednesday, May 12 2021

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Illinois gun media flourish with stories downplaying the Jan. 6 insurrection and claiming election fraud Kallie Cox | @Kallie.e.cox From new chat sites, to Facebook knock-offs, to print and radio, right-wing organizers are finding new methods and reverting to some old ways, to drum up political support after the Jan. 6 insurrection that led to many being banned from social media Common messages in the media are that Trump supporters weren’t responsible for the insurrection and that the presidential election was stolen from Trump, even though that is false. One magazine prints tips for armed citizens burying guns.

The Illinois Shooter and Gun News are two of the larger pro2nd Amendment newspapers in Illinois.

The Illinois Shooter is the Quarterly Journal of the Illinois State Rifle Association. It contains political content and the organization has lobbyists in Springfield.

It has over 30,000 current subscribers and its Winter edition’s front page ran three featured stories: Its main was “Michigan Senate’s Election Fraud Hearing” Side bar: “Media Spikes Stories Helpful to Trump: Skews Election” and below the fold: “Justice Alito Warns of Threats to Our Rights.”

The editor of the publication, Richard Vaughan, also runs Publishing Management Associations Inc. which specializes in Christian and conservative magazines and speciality publications.

He said in an interview this past year he has seen an uptick in subscribers to the Illinois Shooter and his other publications and he attributes the increase to censorship on social media. He says there will be a print Renaissance because of it.

“I think magazines are going to have a kind of a Renaissance because people realize that it’s hard to cancel a publication because they are all owned by different companies and they’re, you know, the post office has to send it out,” Vaughan said.”So it has a bit of freedom that you don’t have when you’re under a platform like Facebook, Google, you know all the others that involve censorship.”

The Shooter/ISRA also runs a weekly email newsletter and legislation alerts.

Gun News is another 2nd Amendment and right wing print publication in Illinois. It is published monthly by “Guns Save Life,” a lobby group founded 20 years ago in the state and separate but associated with the NRA and ISRA. It is sent to each member and distributed to businesses in Springfield, Decatur, Rantoul, Bloomington, Chicago and the Pontiac/Dwight region. It is also inside the Capitol in Springfield. It has been in publication since 1999 and the editions are typically 24 pages.

Some of the stories in their recent editions included: “The good American” a column denying the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a full insurrection and comparing those who called it an insurrection to “Nazis” and fascists from 1933 Germany.

Another story ran next to it titled “Rep. Mo Brooks says ‘Evidence Growing’ Antifa ‘orchestrated assault on Capitol.” Another story was headlined, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Got shovel? Strategies to avoid the loss of your guns.” It had detailed instructions on how to bury guns in safe containers made of do-ityourself materials or piping. At the bottom of the page is a graphic with two rifles and the caption says “when democracy turns to tyranny... the armed citizen still gets to vote.”

John Boch, Executive Director of Guns Save Life and Editor Emeritus of Gun News, said they distribute about 17,000 copies each month and the distribution network is 100% volunteer.

When asked how he finds a balance between publishing political issues and topics relating to gun interest, Boch said he tries to shy away from politics outside of gun rights and the right to self-defense.

Boch said he doesn’t necessarily believe people are returning to print in general, but he thinks Gun News has a unique, niche market that is appealing to the gun owner demographic.

“Without that I think we would be like your local newspaper that’s shedding readers faster than a German Shepherd sheds hair.

But we have had, I suppose in a sense, that upswing in political content simply because there’s more going on politically,” Boch said. “Back when Donald Trump was president, gun control was going nowhere. Back before last fall’s election we had a narrow majority in the Illinois House and Senate that blocked gun

control legislation and as such there was really nothing notable or very little newsworthy. When it came to politics there was less politics on the table.”

Boch said the media is doing a “pretty good job of shooting itself in the foot.”

“The media are Democratic by line, Democratic operatives with bylines in today’s world. And as a result Americans are tuning out from media,” Boch said. “In large part the collapse in readership and viewership of print and video publication, news related to the expression get woke go broke, there’s more than a little truth to that if you watch and see what happens to the world of media out there.”

Aside from traditional forms of media such as print, those on the right are also turning to alternative forms of social media in the wake of Jan. 6 where many, including Trump, were purged from mainstream networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Some of these sites include MeWe, Telegram, Gab and Parler. These are popular among the right because of the lack of censorship and the encrypted chat features they offer.

MeWe is an alternative form of social media that looks similar to Facebook and operates like a blend between Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. After the social media purges took place in January on Facebook and Twitter, many rightwing groups moved to MeWe where founder Mark Weinstein says he won’t censor posts

“I think magazines are going to have a kind of a renaissance because people realize that it’s hard to cancel a publication because they are all owned by different companies and they’re you know the post office has to send it out.

So it has a bit of freedom that you don’t have when you’re under a platform like Facebook, Google, you know all the others that involve censorship.”

- Richard Vaughan Illinois Shooter Editor

and values privacy.

Posters on MeWe spread false information/conspiracy theories.

Some of these include posts saying masks don’t work, others say the election was stolen and others involve hateful rhetoric towards the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of these groups where members of the right wing and Trump supporters congregate, includes IGOT-Illinois Gun Owners Together, who moved to the platform after their Facebook pages were shut down multiple times.

Some of the posts from their group include: A photo of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is charged with killing two protesters in Wisconsin last summer, with his gun and a depiction of Jesus over his shoulder whispering in his ear “You see that man over there? He’s a pedo. That guy over there, he beats his girl. This other kid is not a medic he’s a burglar.” The post was captioned by an administrator named “Panda Man” and said “Kyle is a god Damm hero.”

Another post by Mary Jene Howe with a photo of a statue with a woman on her knees who appears to be having sex, with the caption “They made a statue to honor Kamala Harris.”

And another captioned “Why does anybody need 30 rounds?” With a photo of 30 masked individuals who seem to be peaceful protesters.

Some on MeWe use the platform to buy and sell guns in much the same way as one would sell a couch on Facebook Marketplace. Southern Illinois Firearms Enthusiasts a group with 491 members who can buy, sell or trade firearms, accessories or

ammunition by making a post or using the site’s chat feature. This group also occasionally post’s information about gun legislation.

One of the more recent posts to the site reads “WTS-VP9 Tactical, tru dot night sites, 2 - 15 round mags, grip inserts to adjust for the perfect fit. Lighlty used, safe queen since I always reach for my VP9 set up for 3 gun instead of the tactical. $600.

This one isn’t optic ready. Located in Pekin/Peoria.”

MeWe is one of the fastest growing social networking sites for the right and it gained 2.5 million users in the week that followed Jan. 6, according to USA Today.

Telegram is a text/chat site similar to WhatsApp, rightwing groups praise its privacy because it lacks monitoring and it provides encrypted chat features that make it difficult to track and monitor.

Free Illinois has 512 members but more join every couple days. Many users share alternative news and spread conspiracy theories. Every third or fourth message is a petition, or someone collecting signatures about legislation.

Right-wing social media sites show there is a return to radio, including HAM radio and Radio Redoubt groups creating a safe haven in the West.

The FCC warned in a statement following the insurrection that ameteur radios may be used as an alternative to social media for organizing.

A member of Illinois Gun Owners Together - a group active on MeWe - told this reporter that they use these radios to communicate during demonstrations in the event that their cell phones don’t work. The group has an IGOT Radio Operators group where they learn to use HAM radios for these situations and survival situations.

Right-wing social media also contains frequent references to AmRRON, which stands for The American Redoubt Radio Operators Network. The Redoubt movement is an antigovernment movement rooted in Christianity that claims Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon as the “Redoubt” region. The movement was popularized and the term coined by James Wesley Rawles, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The movement has found a home among survivalists, fundamental Christians, those preparing for the Apocalypse and those in the alt-right. Now supporters are establishing a radio network to communicate with one another and broadcast news.

This is encrypted.

Editor-in-chief Kallie Cox can be reached by email at kcox@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter @KallieECox.

Chloe Schobert | @chlo_scho_art

Page 8

Wednesday, May 12 2021

A look inside the wor

Coverage by Sophie Whitten, Monica Sharma, Subash Kharel, and Kallie C Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

On April 10 and 11, Tulsa, Okla. hosted the world’s largest gun show and with over 4,000 tables, the Wanemacher’s Tulsa Arms Show accommodated around 40,000 people from across the world.

The show was started over sixty years ago by the Indian Territory Gun Collectors Association as a way to display and trade their collections of modern and antique weapons.

Around fifty years ago, the current president of the show, Joe Wanemacher, was elected as the overseer of the gun show and has run it ever since.

“He missed one of the meetings and the meeting that he missed, they opted to make him in charge of having to put the show on. And this was humorous because nobody wanted to do it because it was a difficult, unthankful task, but he came back and he did it [...] He was actually a petroleum engineer and gun collecting is just a love of his, and so, anyway, his love turned into his job,” Wanemacher’s daughter-in-law, Bunny Wanemacher, said.

At the show, there is a wide variety of arms and collectables from antique and modern guns, knives, war memorabilia and accessories and people come from all over the world to see, buy, sell and trade arms.

The event is two days long and there are two levels in the show packed with tables to stop by. The majority of sellers are located in the tables or booths, however, there are also private sellers that can be spotted walking through the show with their weapons for sale. They had their information pinned or taped to their shirts with the type of weapon and price, advertising their sale.

There were handmade items such as knives, guns and cannons that demonstrate craftsmanship or build-your-own items that come at a percentage of average costs. Scattered among the weapons for sale, were also booths of t-shirts with political cartoons or messages on them, jewelry stands with hand crafted accessories, and tables of artwork from across the country. There are also tables with antique coins or animal furs and skins.

“It is a family run business and we do pride ourselves on education and family and doing things right [...] as people say, ‘If you can’t find it at Wanemacher’s you probably can’t find it,’” Bunny Wanemacher said.

Eli, one of the sellers of Advanced Combat, explains the production of guns at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show on April 10 and 11, 2021, at Expo Square in Tulsa, Okla. “I was not aware of all these products when I entered here. I slowly learned about the manufacture of these products through YouTube videos and other sources,it looks like plastic but these are made up of metals and colored with different colors,” Eli said. Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks

Staff Photographer Sophie Whitten can be reached at Swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @swittenphotography.

A man sits behind a sign advertising free Mountain Dew with the purchase of a firearm at the Wanenmacher’s Arms Show April 10, 2021 in Tulsa, Okla. Subash Kharel | pics.leaks

Sawyer, who would only provide his first name, poses for a portrait while demonstrating how to hold a pistol using the adapted stock he created to provide stability at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show on April 10 and 11, 2021, in Tulsa, Okla. Kallie Cox | @KallieECox See “Wanenmacher’s Gun Show portraits” - Page 14

Wednesday, May 12 2021

Page 9

rld’s largest gun show

Cox. Visit dailyegyptian.com or check out our app for more coverage.

An aerial view taken from the world’s largest gun show, the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show. The show was a two day event and took place on April 10 and 11 at Expo Square in Tulsa, Okla. Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks

A vendor sells a “Biden Stimulus Package” at the Wanenmacher’s Arms Show April 10 & 11 2021 in Tulsa, Okla. Kallie Cox | @Kalle.e.Cox

A group of sellers sit in their booth at the Wanenmacher’s Arms Show April 11, 2021 in Tulsa, Okla. “My first visit to the gun show was somewhere in the 1960s and my first in Oklahoma was in 1989,” one said. They said the history that weapons carry lured them to trading the guns. Subash Kharel | pics.leaks

Page 10

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Black guns matter

Oreoluwa Ojewuyi | @odojewuyi

I have avoided and abhorred guns for the majority of my life but on the weekend of April 10th to 11th I stepped into the heart of American gun culture at the Wanenmacher’s Gun Show in Tulsa Oklahoma, which is regarded as the largest gun show in the world.

I spent the majority of my childhood in small town America. I went to predominantly white schools before high school where I learned quickly that it was easier to mold myself into a palatable Black person rather than stand 100% in my identity.

It took years of re-education to break down the false identity I had created for myself throughout my developing years.

Growing up in a predominantly white environment for so long conditioned me to prioritize the comfortability of white people over my own. Whether it be never employing African American Vernacular English-AAVE or pidgin English in my conversation, or simply not wearing certain pieces of clothing to avoid the perception of being “too” Black or too “African.”

At the gun show I reverted to my palatable persona that I abandoned years ago so as to not alert the white people who were clearly uncomfortable with my presence and my appearance.

Worried my braids would be perceived as too ethnic, I removed the gold jewelery I had placed in my hair and placed my box braids in a low ponytail. Worried my clothes would be too “ethnic” I borrowed clothing from my Editor-in-Chief.

In my family I had no contact with guns or weapons of any kind except for a basic kitchen knife. My parents didn’t even allow my siblings and I to play with toy guns or weapons of any kind.

After years of police brutality against the Black community my view on guns shifted. Instead of seeing them as an enemy I began to see them as one of my only means of protection in a world where people view my skin tone as a threat.

In a community where misogyny runs rampant I began to see gun ownership as a way to protect myself as a woman.

After speaking to some of my journalism professors about what to expect at this event they reassured me that there would be a substantial amount of people present that looked like me. For that reason I went to the gun show with an open mind and naively expected to be well received by the attendees.

My gun show “disguise”was not enough to suppress the burning stares I felt during two days at the event On the morning of the gun show as we made our way towards the line we passed hundreds of cars from around the countryeverywhere from Texas and California to Missouri and Illinois their bumpers adorned with “Back the Blue,” “MAGA,” and “Come and Take It” stickers as we rolled by. There was even a black bus with the Oath Keepers skull on the front of it.

As attendees exited their cars I was shocked to see them toting at least 4 guns on their shoulders and strapped to holsters on their hips.

As we exited the van and walked toward the line my heart beat quickly in my chest. The stares I received began almost immediately.

Everyone I passed did a double take. They looked at me with a mixture of disbelief, suspicion.

One man in particular made it clear to me with his prolonged look of disgust that I was not welcome by him. It was a sensory overload for someone like me who had never been to a gun show let alone seen a gun in real life. I tried to hide the shock and disbelief on my face as thousands of guns sat on booths all over the event center.

Once we were inside my presence was made even clearer to me the gazes and stares continued. Looks of confusion followed. We took a walk around the grounds to warm up to the surroundings.

Although walking around only made me more aware of my presence, especially the color of my skin.

We passed booth after booth covered in Nazi paraphernalia, confederate flags, back the blue propaganda and Trump merchandise.

Before coming to the show I made sure to leave all my preconceptions about gun owners behind. I did not expect the show to be nearly as politicized as it actually was. The conservative values of most of the gun owners was made abundantly clear by rows of “Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats” t-shirts and the “If you voted for Biden Fuck You” t-shirts.

We approached a table where I held my first gun. As I held a pink camouflage hunting gun I expressed excitement although on the inside I was incredibly uncomfortable.

I didn’t even know how to hold the gun properly, and the fact that I was a novice was made abundantly clear by my body language holding the gun.

I explained to many vendors throughout the day that I wanted a gun for protection as a woman. I never mentioned the fact that I felt I needed protection as Black person as well.

I finally saw the first Black person of the day walking around with his friend. I had never been more excited to see someone else

Everyone I passed did a double take.

They looked at me with a mixture of disbelief, suspicion.

Jamarian Thomas (right) poses for a portrait with his friends at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show on April 10 and 11, 2021, in Tulsa, Okla. “I think the biggest misconception is that guns kill people but people kill people,” Thomas said. Kallie Cox | Kallie.e.Cox

who looked like me. When I approached them to speak to them they agreed with my sentiments that there were few, less than 1% of any other race than white at this show.

The Black young man explained to me that guns and black people are usually thought of in the context of gang violence in this atmosphere. To mention you want a gun because you don’t feel safe because you are Black would not be met with any understanding because to the large majority of the people there I was already a threat.

To others I was not perceived as a threat as long as I prescribed to their conservative values and views on gun ownership.

This was confirmed when I saw remakes of the Black Lives Matter slogan transformed onto t-shirts and buttons. It was okay to validate that Black gun ownership mattered, but to say our lives were worth value was a step too far.

Though there was not a single piece of merchandise that embraced the original Black Lives Matter slogan there was a table selling pins that read“White Lives Matter.”

As I found a couple more Black people during my two days at the events they all expressed to me that there was a misconception that Black gun owners were all “thugs” they sympathized with my feeling that the people at the show were suspicious of me due to my appearance.

I had my own growing suspicions of them as well. As we continued our journey through the gun show I noticed not only did people proudly carry multiple guns on their person but that they also used their guns and bodies to advertise guns they wanted to sell.

Attendees stuck paper on their backs or flags down the mussels of their guns advertising their weapons.

I am wondering how these guns would be purchased legally.

Tables all around were plastered with “Cash Only” signs which made my suspicions grow even larger. There were antique gun collections, hunting guns, and defense guns, knives, pepper spray and other weapons of survival and otherwise. I did not see anyone asking for ids or background checks being processed.

I was even more suspicious of the intent of vendors who sold paraphernalia with a strong racist history. Entire booths were dedicated to Confederate and Nazi Flags. I felt uneasy, uncomfortable and like any wrong move I made would be noticed by the hundreds of gun toting attendees around me.

There was no amount of camo green, or plain clothing that would make me blend in this environment. I had not felt the emotional exhaustion it takes from the labor of denying your true identity since I graduated middle school. I was transported back to a younger version of myself and the weight of feeling like an impostor was heavy.

The gun show made my feelings about gun ownership more complex. I left with more questions about gun ownership than I came with. What if the very gun I hope to own to protect me will be used as a reason to justify my death? What if owning a gun as a black person puts a greater target on my back?

Staff Reporter Oreoluwa Ojewuyi can be reached at oojewuyi@ dailyegyptian.com or on twitter @odojewuyi.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Page 11

For Black Americans, gun culture linked to history of resistance against white terror

Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

Black American’s historic relationship with guns is a complicated one.

For most of U.S. history gun ownership was tied directly to colonial expansion as settlers from Europe made guns a keystone of the violent removal of native Americans.

European settlers made laws mandating gun ownership well before the Revolutionary War or the drafting of the Constitution according to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an ethnic studies professor at California State University, Hayward.

“Male colonial settlers had long formed militias for the purpose of raiding and razing Indigenous communities and seizing their lands and resources, and the Native communities fought back. Virginia, the first colony, forbade any man to travel unless he was ‘well armed.’ A few years later, another law required men to take arms to work and to attend church or be fined,” Dunbar-Ortiz said in her book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.

As land was cleared of its Native population the settlers imported slaves from Africa to provide labor, and formed armed patrols to police the enslaved population.

Fearing uprisings of enslaved Black people many states passed laws that barred even freed Black people from having guns.

“Especially after Nat Turner’s rebellion in North Carolina and Virginia there was states, especially North Carolina, Virginia, but other southern states began taking away more and more rights from free Black people,” teacher and historian Darrel Dexter said. “They couldn’t be educated whereas before they were. They couldn’t even in some states carry or own firearms anymore which was almost necessary for hunting and things like that.”

While the history of Black resistance in the US extends back to the first slave ships and includes moments of armed insurrection, Black armed defense movements have their roots in the civil war and reconstruction when newly emancipated Black people have to use guns in their own defense.

The Black militia tradition solidifies during Reconstruction After the Civil War a group of Republicans, labeled Radical Republicans, sought to formalize the civil rights of slaves newly emancipated during the war.

After the massacres of Black people at the hands of former white slave masters, the Radical Republicans insisted on enforcing congressional legislation through a military occupation of the south.

The south was divided into five military districts until new state constitutions were drafted which guaranteed all men the right to vote and ratified the fourteenth amendment to the US constitution.

As a result, Black men made up a massive contingent of voters.

“There’s what we call the Black belt, that stretch of 290 counties that goes from Virginia to Texas in which Black people are the majority and 180 of them that are somewhere between 30 and 49 percent,” said Sundiata Cha-Jua, a professor of African American studies at the University of Illinois. “You would be looking at a significant section of the south in which

Portrait of Marcus Garvey is courtesy of elycefeliz via Flickr

Black people would control governments, and in the rest of the south, because they represent a significant minority, would have great influence on shaping governments” As the former slave owners fought every change and new institution, organizations like The Union League of America, which set up nationwide chapters to support the war effort, formed defensive units in order to defend Republican candidates and voters from violence and intimidation.

“Whether it was Black or white Republicans, they had to be able to defend them from attack,” Cha-Jua said. “The former slaveholders, they sought to ensure that people will not be able to exercise their power.”

The southern Democrats devised the Mississippi Plan, or Shotgun Policy, to form paramilitary groups to terrorize Black people across the south.

“They will simply begin to kill Black elected officials, Blacks running for office, white Republicans, and they launch a series of racial pogroms,” Cha-Jua said. “They simply overthrow the Republican governments.”

A particularly heinous example was a massacre of Black churchgoers in Colfax, Louisiana in 1873.

“They set the church on fire and they shoot people as they come out,” Cha-Jua said. “They massacred about 100 folk.”

Of the nearly one hundred white people known to be involved in the massacre only

nine were ever charged with a crime, and all of those were acquitted or overturned on appeals to the Supreme Court.

“In the wake of that kind of terror, right, Black people have to arm themselves,” Cha-Jua said.

Folks like Charles Caldwell and George Washington Albright in Mississippi, who led state militias made up Black freedmen, pushed back against encroaching former slavers.

“We drilled frequently – and how the rich folks hated to see us, armed and ready to defend ourselves and our elected government,” Albright said according to a 1937 interview in the Daily Worker.

The effort was hamstrung by court cases and politicking that left the state militia unresourced and largely defenseless to the marauding southern Democrats.

Caldwell was assassinated in 1876, and by 1877 the country gave up on reconstruction with the Hayes-Tilden compromise.

Similar militias were formed across the south and some, like the McClellan Guard, Brown’s Zouaves, and Tennessee Rifles in Memphis, Tenn. successfully maintained a level of community safety into the 1890s according to historian Roger Johnson.

“Ida B. Wells took Booker T. Washington’s phrase ‘self-help,’ and she coined the phrase armed self-help,” Cha-Jua said. “That phrase characterizes the way in which Black people

responded throughout the first historical periods.”

Their disbanding left the Memphis Black community open to lynchings and other terrorism sweeping the rest of the south.

The Second Nadir “The City of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about lynching now, as we are outnumbered and without arms,” Wells said. “There is therefore only one thing left that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives nor our property.”

Continuing terrorism in the south combined with economic opportunity in other parts of the country led to an exodus from the region.

“The rich people gained control of Mississippi with the help of the Klan,” Albright said. “Unfortunately they got many of the poor whites on their side.”

Albright moved west with his family to Kansas and eventually California.

Wells also moved west, though did so with thousands of other people from Memphis.

“In 1892 in Memphis, after three Black men who own a cooperative grocery were lynched, Ida B. Wells called for an exodus, and 6000 Black folks left the city of Memphis,” Cha-Jua said.

She would eventually end up in Chicago, Ill. “I think migration, mass migration, is one of the things that falls along a continuum of resistance,” Cha-Jua said. “That flight I would equate to the same type of self-emancipation that happens during enslavement.”

Cha-Jua calls the period between the end of the short-lived reconstruction and around 1935 “the second nadir” or the next low point in the American history of race relations.

Black people that fled the south were often greeted with animosity in the places they chose to settle, and Illinois was particularly unfriendly for a “free state.”

It took til 1848 for Illinois to make a constitutional ban on slavery, and “Black Codes” officially barred free Black people from entering the state.

Those rules were only overturned by the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution.

When Black people fled the south they often gravitated toward rural areas where they’d be able to find work.

“They go to rural areas because that’s the kind of work that they’re used to,” Cha-Jua said.

They also gravitated to places where they could find family members through networks developed by the underground railroad and Union leagues.

“For mutual protection, often free Black people lived in communities, Black communities, which over time, by the 1900s, seemed to have disappeared,” Dexter said.

As Black people and non-Anglo European immigrants migrated they’d continue to encounter animosity from white communities, which would boil over into violence.

In the 1870s white coal miners attacked Black workers in O’Fallon and Braidwood, driving hundreds of people out of their camps.

Please see RESISTANCE | 12

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Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Resistance 11 continued from

Wealthy industrialists exploited negative migrant sentiment and negative racial sentiment to stir conflict among laborers and bust unions that were growing increasingly powerful.

In the 1880s miners shot and killed a Black man amid a strike in Rapid City, threatened workers outside Danville, and started brawls around Chicago stockyards.

“Beginning in the 1890s there’s a series of pogroms and lynchings in the small towns in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois,” Cha-Jua said.

Before Sam Bush was lynched in Decatur, Ill. in 1893 local community members confronted the sheriff and volunteered to protect Bush, but the sheriff convinced the volunteers he didn’t need the help. “[The sheriff] takes his ass to The World’s Fair in Chicago, which was ironically billed as the white City,” Cha-Jua said. “The guy’s lynched.”

The next year another Black man is accused of rape in Decatur, and this time the Black community rallied to deter another lynching.

“One hundred and ninety-nine Black men and one Black woman surround the central business district, including the courthouse and the jail, for three nights,” Cha-Jua said.

“They literally frisk any white person at night who attempts to come toward the jail. That’s what I mean by community-armed selfdefense.”

By the mid-1890s the mix of racial and labor animosity was reaching a fever pitch.

In Spring Valley, Ill. in 1895 an Italian immigrant worker reported being robbed by a group of Black men, leading to a days-long race riot with an unclear death toll.

The displaced Black families regrouped in the nearby town of Seatonville, Ill. and put out a call for assistance that started, “The time has come for us to take up arms in defense of our race. They are killing our people all over the country,” according to an article by Felix Armfield from 2000.

A combination of armed threat and political pressure from around the state led then-Governor Altgeld to mobilize, “Ten armed colored special policemen and fortyfive white[sic] patrolmen,” to escort the Black workers back to their homes.

In 1898 the Spanish-American war added yet another spark to the tinderbox, and racially charged labor battles broke out in Pana, Virden and Carterville, Ill. The collected incidents led Illinois legislators to ban companies from bringing in “squads” of workers from outside the state, and set the stage for conflicts after the turn of the century.

A new generation of veterans’ Similar to how Civil War veterans and reconstruction-era militiamen seeded armed resistance movements in the late 19th century, Black veterans of the Spanish American war would seed the resistance movements of the early 20th.

Soldiers joined fraternal organizations, like the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), National Afro American League (NAAL) and Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World (IBPOEW).

“If you’ve read anything on Black communities then you know that this tradition, this military tradition, that comes out of the Civil War for Black folk translates into these drill teams,” Cha-Jua said.

The drill teams practice marching and rifle sequences, and form the basis for protective units when conflicts arise.

“There’s ten chapters of the national Afro American League in the state of Illinois in the late 19th and early 20th century. The National Afro American League has armed self defense as one of its planks,” Cha-Jua said.

By the early 1900s these cliques have only

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

the barest affiliation, if any, with the militias of the reconstruction era and they’re not very well resourced, but a combination of war experience and drill experience made them malleable to community defense.

“In times of crisis when the community is being invaded by white terrorists intent on, you know, pillaging, raping, murdering and robbing they could immediately take form,” Cha-Jua said. “The structure existed through the fraternal networks.”

In 1903 there were two instances of group armed defense that sprang up in response to lynchings in Illinois.

In Thebes, Ill. a Black teenager found sleeping in a barn was hunted down and lynched by a white mob that afterward decided to attack a nearby camp of Black railroad workers.

“They go in and start shooting at the Black folks, at the Black bridge workers who are camped along the Mississippi,” Cha-Jua said.

“The Black folks fire back, you know, so there’s a shootout, and then at a certain point the Black people are overwhelmed, and they have to flee into the woods.”

In Belleville, Illinois a Black teacher named David Wyatt was lynched following an altercation with the white superintendent, and the nearby Black community quickly prepared for further violence.

“David Wyatt is from the all Black town of Brooklyn, Illinois,” Cha-Jua said. “The mayor of Brooklyn immediately purchased 12 shotguns, and then he deputizes a lot of people and they, of course, quarter off Brooklyn from White supremacists who they expect to come and attempt to attack the village.”

The attacks steadily pressed Black communities out of smaller towns, and in many counties the Black population completely disappeared.

“There was just simply, through at least the mid-1900s, kind of an unwelcoming attitude among many white residents,” Dexter said. “It was worth a shot, I guess, to move and try it in the cities.”

Cha-Jua describes these attacks as pogroms,

similar to expulsion of Jews from the Russian Empire around the same time.

“Black folks leave small towns in Illinois to go to Chicago or leave small towns in Indiana to go to Indianapolis or go to Cleveland,” ChaJua said. “Because of those racial pogroms in those small towns, right, they turn a number of those places into sundown towns, right, free of any Black population.”

The Black populations of cities swell as a result of the combination of people displaced from small towns and continued migration from the south which, again, elicits violent responses from white communities.

In 1908 a lynch mob of thousands attacked Black neighborhoods in Springfield, Ill. would send a shockwave through the country as “the land of Lincoln” became the site of terror. “[The mob was] repelled by these SpanishAmerican War veterans tied to the Illinois eighth,” Cha-Jua said.

Despite the defensive response, a reported 2000 Black people were displaced from the city, and further articles derided the refugees as they passed through outlying Illinois towns in search of new homes.

These pogroms would continue in the US for decades, notably occurring in Illinois in Anna in 1909, Chicago in the 1919 “Red Summer,” Elco in 1924, and Vienna in 1954, but decreased considerably after the 1930s.

An age of upheaval In the years following the violence in Springfield a number of soon-to-be national organizations formed to counter the glut of white terrorism in the US, and many titans of the civil rights movement emerged.

Likely the most written about US civil rights organization, the Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), formed in 1909.

Though the organization was started with input from many of Black academics, its early officers were mostly white, and W.E.B. Du Bois was the only Black person on the founding executive board.

Another organization, the Universal Negro

Improvement Association (UNIA) founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey, would have a shorter life, but would also be massively influential before its decline.

“Ideologically, Garvey is pretty backward, but programmatically he’s pretty advanced,” Cha-Jua said.

The Garvey movement, which had estimated millions of followers, included a newspaper, a clerical training university, a funeral fund, a nursing corps, soup kitchens, a church, and even an attempt at an international cruise ship line, all of which was funded by mass numbers of small member donations.

Garvey’s organization became one of the most influential in the country, and seeded the Black power movement that would flourish in the 60s and 70s.

World events would have a particularly profound impact going into and following the first World War, as national independence movements began to take hold around the world in places like Ireland, and Egypt, and the Russian revolution brought about a new international Socialist paradigm.

The whirlwind of national organizing, global upheaval and racial repression helped foment an increasingly militant Black civil rights movement in the US. Cyril Briggs, the founder of the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), joined the Communist Party after the Tulsa Massacre in 1921, and the party in turn provided funding for the ABB newspaper The Crusader according to historian Jacob Zumoff.

In 1923 a Black tenant farmer in Mississippi named Joe Pullen shot a white farmer in a debt dispute Georgia State University Professor Akinyele Umoja said in his book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.

A white mob retaliated against Pullen, leading to a protracted shootout leaving Pullen and nine members of the mob dead.

The Negro World newspaper published by the UNIA hailed Pullen and headlined he “Should Have a Monument.”

Briggs and Garvey were both surveilled by US intelligence agencies who were at times assisted by NAACP members according to Department of Justice documents.

Garvey’s organization, Briggs politics and legal work by the NAACP set part of a foundation for civil rights groups in the following decades.

By the 1930s the character of violent racial conflict in the US altered considerably as a result of the professionalization of police forces and an increase in state executions.

“The white citizenry can expect that anytime they have created a fear of some Black person, and they believe that that person should be killed ... they come to accept that they will be executed,” Cha-Jua said.

A combination of mass organizing, militant defense, legal battles, press publication and systemic changes decreased lynchings and invasions of white civilians into the Black community significantly.

In 1935, in the pressure cooker of the Great Depression, an Afro-Puerto Rican boy was alleged to have been beaten outside at a department store.

Thousands of residents, later believing the boy had been murdered by the police, flooded the streets, battled with police and destroyed stores.

“It’s an urban rebellion in which Black people respond to the agents of the state,” ChaJua said. “What happens in 1935, will become the dominant shape of that type of racial conflagration from the 60s forward.”

Staff reporter Jason Flynn can be reached at jflynn@dailyegyptian.com, by phone at 872222-7821 or on Twitter at @dejasonflynn.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Revolutionary groups foster political education through community service programs

Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

Community service programming that blends revolutionary political education is seeing a revival in cities all over the United States.

“You can’t be a revolutionary if you’re starving.

You can’t be a revolutionary if you don’t have any clothes on your back,” said Koba, the secretary of For The People - Chicago.

For The People is part of a political party called the Maoist Communist Party Organizing Committee (MCPOC), though it’s not a political party in the typical use of the term The MCPOC doesn’t run political candidates or propose legislation, and only exists to provide structure to chapters around the country.

For The People (FTP) has chapters in Carbondale, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Bloomington, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia and more.

The Chicago chapter began organizing community aid programs in the north side neighborhood of Albany Park in January 2020, beginning with an emergency food program in response to a reduction in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

“Every Sunday of the week, rain, snow or shine, we make sure to have a food distribution,” Koba said. “We serve about 60 families in that community every week with bags of canned food and fresh produce.”

Since last year FTP - Chicago has expanded their community program to include hot meals, clothing distributions, safe smoking kits to prevent overdoses and medical check-ups through a partnership with The Night Ministry.

The organization also operates a storefront that

“The most seminal innovation of Black Power, and what makes it different from the civil rights movement is not self defense, it’s institution building. It’s building Black controlled institutions.”

- Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua University of Illinois assistant professor of African American studies and History

they operated as a warming center over the winter.

Koba said FTP doesn’t start community programs just for the sake of being charitable, but also hopes to find new neighborhood leaders by involving community members in the assistance programs.

“When we start these ‘serve the people’ programs they’re to address a vital need of the community, and also to capture the imaginations of the masses,” Koba said.

Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, an assistant professor of African American studies and History at the University of Illinois, said there’s a long history of community assistance programs among revolutionary groups, especially in the Black community, like the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers.

“You have to have things that attract the people, and you have to try and meet their concrete needs,” Cha-Jua said. “That’s been a way in which these groups, one, recruit, but also try and lighten the burden on the community.”

Black Men Build (BMB), an organization focused on organizing Black men while

challenging traditional notions of class and masculinity, started about a year ago.

Tef Poe, a co-national field director for BMB living in St. Louis, said the group started in response to an open letter from women organizers calling for more active participation from men.

“A certain class of Black men have not found themselves at the table in political conversations or joining political organizations or feeling as if they’ve had a political voice,” Poe said. “They found homes in some very unhealthy spaces, and we wanted to envision what a healthy space for brothers would be.”

BMB has grown to include eight “hubs” in cities around the country.

Each hub hosted a national day of service in December 2020, which included a children’s coat drive in St. Louis, a bike assembly in Miami, distributing Personal Protective Equipment in Detroit and a healing circle in Houston.

Though they’ve done community service programs, political education is the main focus of BMB. “The reason some of these vanguard groups

Page 13 were so good for the public in the past is because they didn’t stray away from political education,” Poe said.

The group publishes a magazine called “Wartime,” aimed at reaching primarily Black men in ways that reflect their personal experience.

“I think we have to really consider remodeling political education, and thinking about things more concretely in terms of folks’ ability to digest information, where people are grabbing information from, how are people processing information [and] the type of lives that people live,” Poe said. “We’re all trying to figure out a way to steal some time back from capitalism.”

Koba and Poe both see past organizations, like the Black Panthers, United Front, the Young Lords and others, as an inspiration for their current work.

“I would be lying if I said we didn’t have high motivations and aspirations to eventually become our own millennial version of the Black Panthers,” Poe said. “But also I realize folks romanticize and crystallize groups in the 60s way too much.”

These numerous organizations are attractive, according to Cha-Jua, because of a distinction between a tradition of protests, where people challenge unfair treatment, and a tradition of organizing, where people build or take control of community institutions.

“The most seminal innovation of Black Power, and what makes it different from the civil rights movement is not self defense, it’s institution building,” Cha-Jua said. “It’s building Black controlled institutions.”

Poe and Koba both said their organizations aim to learn from past work and evolve.

“We want the resources of the community to be controlled by the community, and, [for] the community to be able to have full command over what happens within the space of the community,” Koba said.

Staff reporter Jason Flynn can be reached at jflynn@dailyegyptian.com, by phone at 872-2227821 or on Twitter at @dejasonflynn.

Women’s Shooting Club runs safety drills

Judy Rawls checks the target at the Women’s Shooting Club at Tombstone Shooting Range on April, 11, 2021.

The group gets together on the second Sunday of each month and have been together for six years. There are usually 8-10 women at each meeting and in the meetings they go through drills on what to do in different dangerous situations. “When you’re walking, you want to keep at least two arms lengths because thats how far someone can generate a lunge toward you. Those are the kinds of things we try to keep in mind when we try and keep the ladies [in the group] safe,” Rawls said. When asked about Biden’s new executive order on gun laws, Rawls said that “people who make gun laws should understand guns and I don’t think that a lot of people who are writing those laws right now understand the types of guns.” Leah Sutton | @leahsuttonphotography

Mel Foster places her pistol into her holster at the Women’s Shooting Club at the Tombstone Gun Range on April, 11, 2021. Before joining the group, Foster had taken a couple of home defense classes. Foster has been taking classes for several years and is a concealed carry license holder. Leah Sutton | @leahsuttonphotography

Page 14

Wednesday, May 12, 2021 Mateo Cabeda, 23, poses for a portrait at his table where he is selling ammunition at the Wanenmacher’s gun show in Tulsa Okla. Cabeda is Mexican-American and said his family grew up in Texas. “I think as far as history goes my grandparents were growing up in Mexico and they were technically the cowboy gangsters. My great grandfather died at a shoot out at a bar,” Cabeda said. Kallie Cox | Kallie.e.Cox

Jenn Leah Butler, All American Oklahoma Ms., poses for a portrait at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show on April 10 and 11, 2021, in Tulsa, Okla.

“I have a very healthy respect for firearms. They’re not something you play around with. That’s kind of how I was raised and that’s the same mentality that I have,” Butler said. Ore Ojewuyi | @odojewuyi

Megan Snyder, owner of the “Be Safe Girl,” talks about her products at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show on April 10 and 11, 2021, at Expo Square in Tulsa, Okla. “We focus on the safety of girls while we sell our products. We sell different products such as stun guns, knives, pepper spray, defense keychains, personal alarms, portable security, concealed carry accessories. It’s a pleasure to come here and sell these products,” Snyder said. Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks

Scott Chelle, an ammo collector, stands behind his booth at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show. The show was a two day event that took place on April 10 and 11 at Expo Square in Tulsa, Okla. “We have been holding ammo for a long time in the stores and now we got a chance to sell it in our booth today. We are very excited and getting good responses from the customers,” Chelle said. Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks

Brandon Kuschnereit and Hollie Andress stand behind their table of hand-crafted knives at the Wanenmacher’s Arms Show April 10, 2021 in Tulsa, Okla. Many booths participated in the show with products ranging from a small knife to military grade rifles. Subash Kharel | pics.leaks

Tim Prince, an antique and collectable arms dealer, stands behind his booth at the Wanenmacher’s Arms Show April 10, 2021 in Tulsa, Okla. He said his passion for antique firearms began when he was younger and he would visit battlefields with his family. “As a kid, my family’s idea of vacation was going to historic sites, battlefields, stuff like that, so I kind of grew up with a real love of history, particularly American military history from the eighteenth and nineteenth century and so that’s sort of what sparked my interest,” Prince said. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Page 15

‘More American:’ Minority communities and gun ownership Oreoluwa Ojewuyi | @odojewuyi

Protection, sex, race and more are all reasons that women and minority communities have crossed over into the world of guns. The growing diversity of American gun ownership defies the idea of the typical gun owner.

Marc Ford, 34, is a Black gun owner who attended the Wanenmacher Arms Show in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ford grew up around guns in North Carolina involuntarily before becoming a legal gun owner in his adulthood.

“I didn’t choose to grow up around guns but they were around me for good and bad reasons.

For that reason I was able to grow a liking for guns and use them in the right way,” Ford said.

Ford said there is a stereotype that Black gun owners are “thugs” or involved in gang violence.

“I think a very common misconception is if a Black person has a gun that they’re using it in the wrong way. I think that is false on a lot of levels,” Ford said. “We are very responsible people and we know how to use guns when needed or we just use them as fun.”

Although Ford said he believes there should be more policies set in place for gun control he doesn’t think guns should be “taken away.”

“The right to bear arms is very important. I mean you definitely want to be able to protect yourself, your family and your household. I think it’s needed. I don’t think we should have our guns taken away,” Ford said. “I think that there should be more strict laws put in place but I don’t think they should be taken away.”

According to a study done by Pew research 27% of women cited protection as the sole reason for their gun ownership compared to 8% of men citing that as the same reason for owning a gun. See more: How male and female gun owners in the U.S. compare.

The Wanenmacher’s gun show had multiple self defense booths geared towards women.

They sold and advertised self defense weapons including pink tasers, bedazzled knives, and even bra holsters.

Jenn Leah Butler, All American Oklahoma Ms, grew up learning the importance of gun safety with a strong emphasis on 2nd amendment rights in her military household.

“I actually started out at a young age with firearms because both of my parents were in the military. So they thought it was very important for me to understand gun safety. I always knew where my parents kept their weapons, I always knew that it was locked and I always knew never to touch them,” Butler said.

Butler said her parents taught her to have a healthy respect for firearms throughout her childhood.

“As an adult when I was old enough to purchase my own firearms and get a concealed carry permit as a woman, as a single woman, it was very important for me to make sure that I could stay protected,” Butler said.

Butler said events like the Wanenmacher Arms Show, are meant for responsible gun owners who respect the legal process of gun ownership and safety precautions.

“They’re going to fill out the applications when they want to purchase a firearm.

The second amendment is our rights and responsibility to make sure that weapons of any sort are safely and responsibly owned and used,” Butler said.

Butler said gun control causes gun grabs.

Gun grabs is the idea that gun owners will rush out and buy as many guns and ammo as possible in fear of getting their guns “taken away.”

“I was a journalist in my country and that was the main reason I came to the United States.

The government didn’t want my ideas on the radio so I ran to the United States.”

- Josselyn Obregon Gun owner

“We want people to feel comfortable being able to go to a place like this. Weapons dealers are regulated by the government. There’s all sorts of laws and standards they have to abide by so we want people to be able to safely go to a gun store or gun show and legally purchase guns, instead of them all being sold on the black market,” Butler said.

When she took a weapons safety and marksmanship course, it was largely full of women.

“As far as safety goes I would like to be able to see women be more comfortable and more capable of being able to see a firearm and know ‘okay I don’t want to touch that unless I absolutely have to,” Butler said. “I think the more educated we can make people, especially young women, that guns aren’t scary or bad but they do need to be handled with a certain amount of respect.”

Mateo Cabeda, 23, is Mexican-American and was an ammunition vendor at the arms show.

“Growing up we did a lot of hunting.

We owned a hunting range. We would do squirrel hunting when I was growing up. Then eventually deer hunting. Now it’s become a hobby of buying guns,” Cabeda said.

Cabeda said the Second Amendment gives power directly to the people.

“The second amendment really means drawing the line between the government and the people of having our rights to bear arms and not being controlled by the government,” Cabeda said.

He said that when the government has taken away guns from people specifically in Latin America it has resulted in negative outcomes for the population. Cebeda said guns in the underworld and black market is a “growing issue”.

“Every country that has [taken guns away] like Cuba or Venezuela guns just began to come in from every other country. There’s guns coming from China and the US from all different places. You might be able to take guns away from good people but bad people will always find a way to own guns,” Cabeda said.

Cabeda’s family in Mexico has had a long history with guns.

“I think as far as history goes my grandparents were growing up in Mexico and they were technically the cowboy gangsters.

My great grandfather died at a shoot out at a bar,” Cabeda said.

Josselyn Obregon immigrated from Guatemala to the United States before becoming naturalized as an American citizen 2 years ago. Obregon owns a company called SPD Mags with her husband.

“My husband and father in law came up with a new invention of loading magazines. It took four years to develop the idea of engineering, testing and making the models. We are making this new magazine that is one hundred percent made in the United States,” Obregon said.

Obregon said gun ownership is about

understanding that people have the right to be responsible for their person. She said carrying guns makes gun owners conscious of safety for themselves and others.

“From my experience living in Latin America, communist countries are in very bad shape now because the population doesn’t have guns. Guns are only for the military or criminals,” Obregon said.

Obregon grew up in Guatemala where legal gun ownership amongst the general population is uncommon. She said in the U.S the idea that everyone has the right to own guns has empowered her.

“I started becoming a gun owner when we came up with the gun magazine idea.

That’s when I realized the more training and education I have when using guns means I have more safety,” Obregon said.

She said gun control is wrong and limiting.

“There are countries like Guatemala, Cuba, Benzulas. If you don’t have guns you don’t have the power to defend yourself. When the government is big you have less power,” Obregon said.

Obregon worked as a journalist at Radio Mundo and for La Hora newspaper in Guatemala which contributed to her decision to immigrate.

Obregon emphasized the lack of First and Second amendment rights in Latin America.

“I was a journalist in my country and that was the main reason I came to the United States. The government didn’t want my ideas on the radio so I ran to the United States. They stopped free press and controlled your ideas.

That is my own experience,” Obregon said.

She said she loves America because of the guaranteed freedoms it gives to the population.

“I feel empowered, educated and more American owning a gun,” Obregon said.

Staff Reporter Oreoluwa Ojewuyi can be reached at oojewuyi@dailyegyptian.com or on twitter @ odojewuyi.

Page 16

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Left wing gun owners look for

Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

Editor’s Note: some of the names in this story have been changed because sources requested anonymity and feared legal retaliation At a gun range in the suburbs of Chicago Seth M. shows me an AR, or Armalite Rifle, that’s become infamous as a tool for mass shootings.

“There’s no reason why I can’t take this off and put it on a pistol AR,” Seth said, pointing to the butt of the rifle. “Well, there is a reason. It’s because it’s a felony.”

I don’t know if it’s this particular gun, but Seth said he has an unserialized, unregistered rifle that he machined the final parts for, which is currently legal.

“It’s enough of a gray area that people get really spooky when they’re talking about it,” Seth said in an earlier call. “As someone who leans pretty anarchist I think that getting more people able to manufacture their own firearms isn’t a bad thing.”

A very low percentage of gun owners identify as Democrats or liberals, just 15 and 20 percent respectively according to a Gallup poll from 2019, but for people farther left on the political spectrum like socialists, Marxists, anarchists and revolutionary separatists opinions on guns can get complicated.

Seth, Jack and Zane, who have all had their names changed, don’t think of gun ownership as an ordained right, but more of a practical choice in a country where so many people are armed and so many of the people armed belong to the political right.

“In Chicago, some of the weapons I own are considered illegal, right, because they’re, you know, assault-type weapons,” Jack said. “But I also believe in a healthy amount of detente.”

Jack, a 52 year-old who lives in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood, said he grew up in a gun-owning, fundamentalist Christian family, but over time, strayed from his family’s conservatism.

“The more I listen to the teachings of Jesus the more I realize, like, well, this is fucking bullshit,”Jack said. “If we’re given this new covenant why the fuck are we still dealing with all this Old Testament bullshit, number one.

Number two, where the fuck does it say don’t hang out with hookers and tr***ies and, you know and dope addicts? I mean, these are our people, right?”

Seth, a 27 year-old from Ohio living in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, described his family as very progressive, but never had guns in the house.

“Part of what brought me back into it, and made me really kind of embrace the hobby, but not the culture, is the thought that, like, in America the cat’s out of the bag,” Seth said. “We got a shitload of guns, and they’re not going

anywhere anytime soon.”

Jack and Seth are buddies who bond over motorcycles and guns and both do volunteer work around their neighborhoods.

Neither sees their work with volunteer groups as being connected to their gun ownership.

“Being, you know, armed is different than my desire for mutual aid,” Jack said.

Mutual aid is a form of community assistance where participants pool resources and labor to make up for any shortfalls individual participants might experience.

The group Seth helps received threats on Facebook in response to a “free market” event distributing free stuff to the community, but Seth decided against his concealed weapon.

“It wouldn’t necessarily put them at ease,” Seth said. “Unless it’s explicitly a part of your organizing values, you know, that tends to get avoided.”

Zane, who also lives in Chicago, grew up in Jewish family in western Pennsylvania that also kept guns out of the home.

“That’s not really a big thing in the Jewish culture,” Zane said.

“You don’t meet a lot of Jewish hunters which, you know, may be a stereotype, but that’s just how it was in my family.”

Zane took the plunge into gun ownership when he bought property in rural Pennsylvania, and the locals recommended he get a gun to fend off bears.

“Everybody carries guns in the middle of nowhere, and that’s, I think, universal.” Zane said. “It’s less of a gun culture and more of, like, everybody just has a gun as a tool.”

Zane said there are also a lot of militia members in the communities near his Pennsylvania property.

“Everybody tells you that they have a gun, and then they show you their gun upon meeting them, well into knowing them, you know, it’s not just the first time,” Zane said.

“That was a surprise for my wife and I coming from Chicago.”

John Holt, a 77 -year-old southern Illinois native and Vietnam veteran, said he’s owned guns since he was 14 or 15.

“I was an Explorer Scout which is semi-grown up Boy Scouts,” Holt said. “We had an indoor, small bore range that we shot rifles in.”

Holt said his family had leftleaning politics when he was a kid, and he leaned further left when enrolled in school at SIU after his tour in Vietnam.

“We had a Vietnam Veterans Against the War chapter here and that kind of stuff,” Holt said. “The suspicions that I had harbored while I was in the service and subjected to a fair amount of propaganda was pretty much all true.”

Events like the riot in

Seth M., whose name has been changed for the condition of anonymity, fires a handgun at a shooting range in the Chic

Seth M., whose name has been changed for the condition of anonymity, handled the magazine for a handgun at a shooting range in the Chicago, Ill. suburbs. Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

Carbondale in 1970, and the coordinated police shooting of a Black Panther Party office in Carbondale inflected his views on the dynamics of authority, race and class.

“I thought it was bullshit. I didn’t really like learning that that happened, but that’s one of the interesting things about Second Amendment people,” Holt said. “ Although they don’t say so openly they tend to be, you know, to view private gun ownership as being, you know, one of the privileges of white supremacy.”

Holt said addressing gun issues in the US would also require confronting core problems with police.

“It’s real hard for me to talk about

the Second Amendment without talking about the class struggle and unionization of police and the fact that municipalities tend to get the kind of policing they want,” Holt said. “There is a class warfare that is being carried out everyday by cops who sit in their house and watch TV and think they’re not part of the problem.”

At the gun range, Seth stands out from the other patrons with the sides and back of his head shaved, dressed in slim fit blue jeans, Romeo work boots and a camo hoodie with a sketch of the “all seeing eye” or Eye of Providence found on the dollar bill.

With a salt-and-pepper beard, gray sweater, boot-cut blue jeans and black sneakers Jack looks more

like the other suburban, white men chatting with the range staff about the display cases full of handguns as they wait for their reservation.

The staff takes my ID, and Jack and Seth’s FOID cards and directs us to the shooting galleries.

The rooms are sparse and undecorated, except for signs that read “FIVE STAR RANGE” and “IN AN EMERGENCY DIAL 911.”

Jack and Seth explain the range rules and go over the safety information, as that’s apparently not a part of the staff’s responsibility.

In one firing lane Seth laid out a shotgun, a Glock-style pistol and an AR. Jack laid out his own AR, which

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Page 17

‘a healthy amount of detente’

cago suburbs. Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

A spectator looks on as Jack B., whose name has been changed for the condition of anonymity, and Seth M. load guns at a shooting range in the Chicago, Ill. suburbs. Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

Signs read “FIVE STAR RANGE” and “IN AN EMERGENCY DIAL 911’ at a shooting range in the Chicago suburbs. Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

he points out is honey badger theme and has a “don’t give a shit” setting, a Glock-style pistol and an SKS, a rifle developed in the Soviet Union that was phased out after the development of the AK-47.

“It’s the CR-ADR dirtbike of rifles,” Jack said.

Though they’re extremely critical about the history and direction of the country, neither Jack, Seth nor Zane said they’re preparing for the armed overthrow of the government.

“Me having a gun is much more about, you know, being able to get to the country and provide food for my family,” Zane said.

John said he prefers to keep his guns and protests against the government separate.

“I have a much more Martin Luther King, put my fucking body in the way, strategy when it comes to that,” Jack said.

Seth said the government and military are just too powerful to confront in that way, though he’s

open to the possibility of making guns part of direct actions.

“CPD wants to fuck me over for any political reasons I’m screwed,” Seth said. “But you know that also doesn’t mean that I haven’t thought about, like, I have a few like minded friends in my neighborhood and if we showed up in front of, you know, an eviction with our rifles, and had enough people there filming it, you know, maybe that would work.”

Following the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D. C., which included many members of Oathkeeper and other right-wing militias, gun purchases shot up, as they often do after violent national events.

“I’m still friends with a bunch of right wing assholes, and they are completely fucking confounded, when I described people like Seth and myself going to the range and shooting,” Jack said. “It gives them pause. Oh, well, you mean that all lefties, aren’t, you know,

tree hugging, anti-gun, you know, pussies?”

Jack and Seth took part in the summer 2020 protests against police violence in Chicago, and despite confronting a variety of police forces and the national guard, the people they’re most worried about confrontations with are those conservative radicals.

“Obviously the state does not like us, but they’re probably not going to shoot us because that’s a really bad look,” Seth said. “Some of these guys playing dress up, you know […] that’s also a concern” Jack said he took his dirt bike out around the neighborhood to check on reports of break-ins and fires nearby on the second day of Chicago protests in response to the murder of George Floyd.

“There was a bus on fire in the parking lot at the Aldi at Kedzie and Chicago. Madison was just up for fucking grabs, right, and the cops are just like we’re gonna contain this, they’re going to take everything, and we’re not going to shoot anybody. It’s going to work great,” Jack said. “All that didn’t scare me. It was the fucking Boogaloo boys in the suburban with no license plate, you know, in camo with face masks and fuckin rifles.”

Jack turned his bike around, and on the way home told a cop what he’d seen to no effect.

“That’s June first,” Jack said.

Despite their enthusiasm for firearms all the men believed there should be legal restrictions to gun ownership.

“My tendency would be to say anybody who is actually temperamentally and mentally and morally capable of serving in the militia under good orderly

direction is in this class of people who have a right to keep and bear arms,” Holt said. “But fucking nut jobs don’t have that right, and the state has an obligation to make sure that the nut jobs don’t pretend to exercise that right.”

Zane and Jack said they’d even be open to a program to get rid of most of the guns in the country, as long as it was administered fairly and included disarming the police.

“If the word came down on high they were going to offer us our market rate, and they were going to chop our guns up I would probably go and turn mine in,” Jack said. “I would have to think about maybe burying them in the yard first, but, you know, I would probably turn them in.”

Though they don’t all necessarily agree on what rules should be in place, they all said current models in Illinois and the US aren’t helping people.

Seth said the current gun laws in Chicago are especially onerous for people of color because the system is administered by the Illinois State Police, who minority populations are to reticent interact with, requires a car to get out of the city for training and hundreds of dollars in fees to be legally permitted to carry a weapon around the city.

“It’s inherently racist,” Seth said.

“Once you actually get your CCL [Concealed Carry License], you’re essentially paying the state to fuck off and to leave you alone.”

They all said the system is set up to punish poor people of color in the city, instead of trying to improve public safety.

Sixty nine percent of people arrested in Illinois for illegal possession of a firearm from 2009

to 2019 were Black, though Black people make up less than a tenth of the state’s population according to a study by Loyola University.

Sixty one percent of arrests were in Cook County, according to the same study.

“Chicago’s gun laws are so ambiguous, and any ambiguous law is set up in a way so that they can pick and choose who they enforce it against,” Zane said. “If you overpolice a Black neighborhood they can be following along and doing the same exact shit that I’m doing with a gun, but a cop could decide that the way that they’re doing it is illegal.”

Jack said the city should be doing public outreach to bring people through the legal steps, instead of taking punitive measures.

“More people are armed than not in my neighborhood, but how they acquired that weapon is I think the question that government wants to know,” Jack said. “If there was a way to approach that, and bring them into the fold meaning make them legal gun owners I would be more for that.”

Jack said combining outreach with training and safety programming would go a long way to curbing gun violence and excess deaths.

“Most of these kids out here that are shooting guns, you know, they’ve never been taught anything,” Jack said. “I worked in housing for years [...] I replaced more windows on the second floor of the building than I ever did on the first floor.”

Staff reporter Jason Flynn can be reached at jflynn@dailyegyptian. com, by phone at 872-222-7821 or on Twitter at @dejasonflynn.

Page 18

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

People wait in line at the Gun Buy Back event on Friday, April 2, 2021 in Decatur, Ill. Jared Treece | @bisalo

Are gun buybacks a successful way to engage the community?

Kallie Cox | @KallieECox

On the afternoon of April 2nd, Decatur Illinois held their first ever gun buyback event. More than 100 people gathered at the Community Church of God to return their rifles, pistols and old magazines in exchange for cash and no questions asked. Police said they bought back $40,000 worth of weapons during the event.

This “day of peace” was funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and hosted by an alliance of Decatur churches, the NAACP, the city’s Department of Community Development and the Decatur Police Department. It was complete with music, snacks and even a clown named Sally.

It was held because community members, like Ronnie Franklin, are concerned about the recent spike in gun violence in Decatur and the central Illinois region as a whole.

Franklin is a community organizer who is part of Faith Coalition For the Common Good, a non-profit based in Springfield with a satellite office in Decatur. He said his organization came together with law enforcement to organize the buyback because peace has to start somewhere.

“This is the first phase of many things that will go on to help work towards bringing about that peace, bringing about that truth, that type of understanding that’s here,” Franklin said. “It has to start, people have to make a change, and the evidence of change comes with people being in a place of this nature.”

Franklin said gun control and change, starts in local communities like Decatur and it starts by communicating.

Thelma Sutton was another community member who showed up to support the buyback. She works with the Pain to Peace Black Advocacy Group which was originally formed as a group of mothers who lost someone due to gun violence. She showed up with a banner displaying over 80 faces

Sally the Clown hands out balloon animals on Friday, April 2, 2021 in Decatur, Ill. Jared Treece | @bisalo

“Criminals don’t participate in these, and we turn that rusted junk into perfectly good cash which we then use to fund the youth shooting programs to bring shooting to the next generation of young people.”

- John Boch Guns Save Life executive director

of young people who had been killed due to the violence since 2016 and that wasn’t even all of them she said.

“I hope this event brings back, gets a lot of guns off the street.

Illegal, legal, because even legal guns somehow get in the hands of those who are not supposed to have them so pretty much hoping it will bring the community together and speak out more for the victims,” Sutton said.

Sutton said there should be more laws regarding gun control and stricter penalties for those who kill others.

“As a nation we all should find better solutions, all come together.

There’s a divide when it comes to gun violence,” Sutton said. “Gun violence is one of the nation’s worst epidemics that’s going on here right now because so many victims is cities and kids and when it becomes, when

victims become kids it’s time for a lot of people to step up.”

Police were offering $350 for assault rifles, $75 for shotguns, $225 for semiautomatic handguns and revolvers, $35 for Ar-15 magazines and $25 for semi automatic magazines.

Some, like Jack and Diana Keller, wanted to sell back guns that had been stolen from them and later returned by the police.

“We had this gun that was stolen from our house and it, they sawed it off and my husband said it’s unsafe and so he wanted to turn it in because if anybody ever, you know if anything happened to us and they tried to sell it or something, and he says it’s not safe for anybody to have so we just thought, we’ve known it for a couple years and we thought you know why not bring it down here and we would know that no one would ever have

A crate of handguns that were bought from community members during the Decatur Community Day of Peace. This event was put on by an alliance between Decatur churches, the NAACP, the Department of Community Development, Decatur police and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation on Friday, April 2, 2021 in Decatur, Ill. The event was held for members of the community to sell their weapons with no questions asked to limit guns on the streets. Jared Treece | @bisalo

their hands on it again,” Diana said.”

However others at gun buybacks across Illinois have different intentions.

John Boch, Executive Director Guns Save Life, said in an interview with the Daily Egyptian that one of the efforts led by the organization is that they will collect “junk guns” from members and then sell them back at events such as these and use the cash to fund their organization’s youth shooting programs.

“We take generally non-working, broken down, junk and trade it to do gooders who want to buy back guns from criminals,” Boch said. “Criminals don’t participate in these, and we turn that rusted junk into perfectly good cash which we then use to fund the youth shooting programs to bring shooting to the next generation of young people.”

Antonio Brown, the Macon County Sheriff, said they decided to hold the event to do something to stop the uptick in gun violence seen not only in the Decatur community, but other communities throughout the country.

He said the event was more successful than he would have hoped but there are still guns out there, so this event was more about preventing future shootings.

“We said to ourselves, we said if we would have gotten one or two guns we would have been happy but [...] I never ever thought we would see this which is a great thing,” Brown said.

Community member Cheryl Jenkins-Redd thinks the event had a dual purpose and was also a great way to bridge the gap between the Decatur community and the police.

“To me, what I’m seeing right now, it’s a great turn out and this is something that I think can happen on a more regular basis and kind of get that trust back with the community with the things that’s going on in life right now, we need some type of positivity, and this right here, is definitely a step in the right direction,” Jenkins-Redd said.

Editor-in-Chief Kallie Cox can be reached at kcox@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @KallieECox.