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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The intruder(s) shot him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Atlanta forward Shelden Williams was recently carjacked at gunpoint.

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

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

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

Wealthy athletes are targets for violent crime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Lott goes on to state:

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

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

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

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

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

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

See NFL Athletes; Guns & Second Amendment.

The following notes are the beginning of a series of observations penned by a man that attends autopsies- lots of autopsies. I cannot vouch for the author’s authenticity but the issues identified below seem worth considering. The prose may seem morbid but there are passages herein that constitute sheer poetry for serious gunners and the information may save your life:

One of the benefits of working in a morgue is that I get to see what works and what doesn’t. Ballistic gelatin is good as far as it goes, but there’s nothing like seeing what a bullet actually does once it strikes bone, flesh, and organs. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t always mimic ballistic gelatin.

The other is that I get to hear some great CCW stories. Here’s one of them: A recently-married couple living in one of the less desirable sections of Atlanta decided that for safety purposes they should get a handgun and learn how to shoot it. They bought a Glock 27 in .40, CCW permits, and made regular trips to an indoor range. One evening, having just come back from the range, they cleaned and loaded the Glock and had left it on the coffee table in the living room, intending to put it up later. Shortly thereafter they heard a knock at the door and, expecting company, opened it without looking through the peephole.

A crazed male entered the apartment brandishing a handgun yelling, “Give it up, give it up!” The husband said that it was obvious the individual was high on drugs and there was absolutely no question in his mind that both he and his wife were going to die. Knowing this, he decided that his only option was to go down fighting.

The BG forced them both down a narrow hallway into the living room, screaming all the while. The husband was in the lead, followed by his wife, and then the BG, whose view of the living room was being blocked by the husband and wife.

The husband reached down, grabbed the Glock, pushed his wife aside, and fired one shot at the BG, striking him dead center in the middle of the chest. Although knocked to the floor, the BG still made a feeble attempt to retrieve his own gun. At this point, the husband let him hold another one to the chest. That ended that little problem.

Upon talking to the still-shaken husband, the police said he could remember little of what all the BG had said. As he recalled it, “All I can remember is that his first words were ‘Give it up!” and his last words just as he saw the Glock were “Oh, (fill in the blank)!”

I see an average of 8.2 autopsies per day/365 days per year, and I can tell you that when the chips are down, there’s nothing that beats a 12-gauge. As for handguns, the name of the game is not only shot placement but how a properly-placed bullet acts once it gets there. I’ve seen folks killed by a bb to the eye and others survive after being hit by several well-placed rounds with a 9mm.

As for me, I’ll take a slow-moving .45 to a gun fight any day. I absolutely despise a 9mm for defensive situations (yes, they will eventually kill but often not quickly enough to prevent the BG from doing you in first)and a .380 as well. These are probably the two calibers I see most often on the autopsy table.

But then, I’ve seen most everything. I’ve seen a guy killed by a .416 Rigby, as well as a suicide to the head with a .44 Mag that didn’t penetrate the skull on the other side.

The long and short of it is that you just don’t know how ANY bullet will react to tissue and bone until you open them up and take a look. I’ve seen hardball fragment and hollowpoints act just like hardball. That said, shoot what you’re comfortable with and place your shots well whatever caliber you use.

The .357 is gloriously effective. It’s just that semi-autos are much more common than they used to be, so we see far more 9mm and .380 rounds on the autopsy table than we do the .38 and .357.

Particularly among the gangbangers, the 9mm and .380 are the weapons of choice. The .357 is a wonderfully effective round for self-defense from what I’ve seen, but it’s rare that we get them in anymore.

Again, this is from experience that I’ve made my calls on what works and what doesn’t. I have no use for mouse guns like the .32, although it’s a lot better to have a mouse gun than nothing at all. Personally, I’ll never carry anything smaller than a .40 and prefer the .45. Day in and day out, results from the autopsy table show me that the .45 is the gun to have in a gun fight, provided you can shoot it well. If not, it’s better to have something you can shoot well, even if it’s a mouse gun, than something you can’t.

I spent most of my life in Knoxville, TN and absolutely loved it. But then, my job is working in the Medical Examiner’s Office, and, as you said, this is a target-rich environment. Having a job in an Atlanta morgue is job security at its best.

KRL, I’ll take slow and heavy to light and fast any day. What I want is a round that plows through bone and tissue and expends ALL of its energy in the body. That said, the 125-grain .357 is marvelously effective.

S/W-Lifer, You’re correct in what you’re thinking. Yes, the 9mm and .380 are the rounds I most often see on the autopsy table, but they’re also the rounds that usually require multiple hits to make the kill. The standing joke in the morgue is to guess the caliber by looking at the x-rays. If multiple rounds show up on the x-rays more often than not it’s a 9mm or .380 (or .32 or .25 or some mouse gun caliber). If only one round shows up, it could be an inordinately good hit with a .380 or 9mm, but more likely it’s a .40 or .45.

Yes, the .380 and 9mm will do the job, but usually multiple hits are required as opposed to single hits with a .40 or .45.

Instead of individual replies to each of these questions, let me see if I can narrow some observations down into one long one. Forgive me if some of these have been in other posts, but they bear repeating.

First, ballistic gelatin, being all that’s available for most bullet testing, is good as far as it goes but it’s often far different from what we see in the morgue. A far more realistic scenario would be to dress up ballistic gelatin with a heavy coat of denim to mimic blue jeans, embed some bones obtained from a butcher shop, and throw in a few objects of varying densities to mimic organs. Try it again, and I think you’ll see that this impressive wound cavity that’s so often seen in ballistic gelatin goes down the tubes. The human body isn’t just composed of one density as ballistic gelatin is, and the bullet does various things to various parts of the body as it passes through.

And that’s why I think observations from a morgue are so important. Day in and day out, I get to see what works and what doesn’t. More than that, I get to see what the same caliber does with various bullets weights and designs and how it reacts to different parts of the body. The best of all are when the gangbangers use the mix and match technique and shoot a variety of bullets in the same magazine and these bullets wind up in the same victim shot from the same gun. Hardball and hollowpoints in the same body from the same gun give a great comparison on the effectiveness of each.

To be continued. Please e-mail your comments to

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See also Notes From the Morgue.