Carl T. Rowan Jr. Quotes
We must reverse this psychology. We can do it by passing a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail--period!
of needing guns for home defense
Carl T. Rowan Jr., 1925-2000, U. S. Ambassador to Finland, Political Columnist, 1981 Column
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was unhappy about the fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were still routinely carrying guns on duty. In England and Canada there has been a tradition of police officers on their beats being unarmed. When more force is needed special armed police are dispatched.
10 years later the Supreme Court ruled that such a prohibition would be unconstitutional.
There were very few people who believed that a pistol would have no defensive value then and there are very few today. The advocates of gun control grant its defensive value, but argue that the rise of using a gun is greater than the benefit of the use. Add to that the deaths from suicides and gun accidents which kill more Americans than those who are shot and killed intentionally.
Like many other ideologues, the Senator was a better politician than he was a historian. He had a tendency to not be very accurate in his facts. In this particular gaff, which was castigated by critics, he was wrong about both facts he gave. First, not only was it not the case that there were few gun crimes “back then”. See {640086} and {640085} . Second his implication that everyone carried guns, and the guns were responsible for the “low” gun crime rate, was also false. Gun crime was so prevalent that most towns and cities in the West had gun control ordinances prohibiting carrying guns in the city limits. The famous Gunfight at the OK Corral which the Senator cited was in Tombstone, AZ in 1881. At that time, it was illegal to carry a gun in Tombstone. See {640063} for the gun control ordinance. As a matter of fact, the OK Corral gunfight was fought because Sheriff Wyatt Earp was disarming some cowboys who brought their guns to town. Glen Kessler, The Washington Post fact checker gave this quotation “3 Pinocchios”.
She advocated armed self-defense for Blacks.
