Guns 'N Roses

The thought of 60 white people carrying guns was enough to keep my black ass out of Northside last Sunday (see Show of Force).

Sure, they say they were protesting the Ohio Supreme Court's decision to uphold Ohio's ban on carrying concealed weapons, but why not transport that posse to lawmakers' doorsteps in Columbus?

Why not? Because the broad daylight gun-toting faction of Cincinnati doesn't carry guns for protection. They carry guns for perpetuation.

They're trying to bully the rest of us into believing that a menace is intent on charging into our homes, pillaging our belongings and shooting us down in front of our families.

Clearly the author doesn't have a clue. If the threat was "charging into our homes", no one would need a carry permit. But it is undeniable that crime is a continuing problem; no place is safe enough to justify removing our right to self-defense.

The fact is, proponents of concealed carry aren't trying to bully anyone into anything. They just want to keep themselves, and their families, safe.

But for some people, that's beside the point. Guns are scary, and white people with guns are even more scary. Yet, somehow, that's not a racist statement coming from a black woman. As pointed out earlier, gun control laws were in many cases founded in racism. This paper seems determined to perpetuate the racial division on gun control. It's a shame they feel that way.

They aren't arming themselves against any slippery threat. They're publicly arming themselves to perpetuate their myth of the Wild West, where the law went like this: Shoot first and arrange justice to fit your guilt.

That's a fairly serious charge, but the record in other states that permit concealed carry shows that it's a charge lacking any basis in reality.

The choice to carry a weapon -- concealed or not -- is personal, just like worship, sex and abortion. Yet zealots ram down our throats their displeasure with people trying to peacefully coexist in a city and a neighborhood that could well do without any more stirring along extremist lines.

I don't think that this ignorant editorialist realizes that she has just equated the right to carry a gun -- concealed or not -- with other individual, constitutionally-protected rights. In other words, Ohio's laws forbidding concealed-carry are unConstitutional, and the "Defense Walk" to which she is referring is a completely legitimate protest of an invalid court ruling on the issue. She's just uncomfortable that it happened in her neighborhood.

White gun owners "parading" for no other reason than to show the general public how pissed off they are about a law upheld two hours away is as divisive, irresponsible and racist as the white customers perpetually flitting in and out of Northside from other communities to cop crack.

Do you even know they were white? You weren't there, remember? And with your own racist comments opening this column, you don't have any ground to stand on. Pot, meet kettle.

Fed-up Northside business owners have repeatedly told me they've called on Cincinnati cops to stem the drug- and sex-dealing tide there. The cops rarely, if ever, show up.

So, in other words, there IS a crime problem in this neighborhood. Interesting change of tune.

And evidently 60 gun-strapped white people weren't enough to immediately rouse cops across the viaduct to Northside either.

I bet my blackness that if 60 black, predominantly male "protesters" visibly carrying guns cut a swath down any Cincinnati neighborhood the streets would transform to a SWAT training video. I can see it now: cops on horseback, plain-clothed detectives moving through the gathered crowd, Simon Leis' ghetto bird hovering overhead and rubber bullets at the ready.

Instead, Cincinnati cops followed along as Hamilton County Commissioner Phil Heimlich and Harold "Hal" McKinney, my long-ago Friday night date, showed their support for carrying concealed weapons.

Northside, he said, is not a safe and thriving place to live. Pissed-off gun owners and drug dealers will see to that.

You can "bet your blackness" on that matter, and you're probably not far wrong, but if you want to cry racism, you're going to have to face the hard, cold facts. Specifically, these "white men with guns" didn't cause a riot. They didn't smash anything, set anything on fire, loot any stores, assault any police officers. There was no violence. And that exposes everything you've written as nothing more than hot air.

The author of the referenced editorial is accessible to email at: kwilson@citybeat.com.