A Gun Owner's Passionate Takedown Of The Cult Of Conformity

I do a lot of interviews for Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, but every now than then I get to have an actual, honest-to-goodness conversation, and that’s the case with today’s show and my guest John Rochford, a graduate student at Iowa State University and the author of a fantastic piece that recently appeared in the student newspaper entitled “I am a minority, I am an individual, and I am free.”

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Rochford was writing in response to another column at the Iowa State Daily that tried to tie in the rise in violence in Chicago to systemic racism throughout the American experience. As the columnist wrote:

Our American anthem is not the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The American anthem reeks of killing Black and Brown Americans. The American anthem reeks of oppression. The American anthem has nothing to do with freedom. Otherwise, people would be free. Black and Brown Americans would be free.

What does freedom look like to you? I hope it isn’t the white picket fence with a family of four in a white suburban neighborhood. I hope it isn’t the right to bear arms when Black people can’t bear an arm without getting shot. I hope it isn’t taking a jog in beautiful weather without having to worry about that same right taking your life.

Rochford says that after reading that column, he couldn’t help but respond by talking about his own experience as a minority gun owner, as well as reminding the column’s author about the recent examples of black and brown gun owners proudly exercising their Second Amendment rights without incident.

A rudimentary Google search would show the author that minorities have exercised their First and Second Amendment rights at demonstrations across the country.

At Stone Mountain, Georgia, without an arrest or death, a Black militia of approximately 200 protested the Confederate monument in the state park, and indeed, they were heavily armed. The same organization appeared in Texas, and though I may not fully agree with the entire ideological agenda of these groups like the NFAC (go look up the name, it cannot be published, I am sure) I do agree with their right to bear arms.

Heck, armed Black Lives Matter protesters and right-wing groups banded together in Richmond, Virginia, to support the Second Amendment. I can tell you personally, here in Story County, Iowa, my race did not make it difficult to obtain a carry permit from the sheriff’s office. My race has not played any role in purchasing firearms, nor in carrying firearms, and I am not the only minority with that story. So yes, I will say one of our unique American freedoms includes bearing arms.

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While Rochford and I spend quite a bit of time talking about the Second Amendment, our conversation also turned to the broader issue of cancel culture, which is really nothing more than a culture of conformity. Don’t agree with the position held by the far-Left? You have a choice; shut up and be silent or speak your mind and face the consequences of non-conformity.

We’ve been told recently that cancel culture doesn’t exist and that what’s really taking place is a changing of the guard; “a cohort of established influencers grappling with the fact they are losing control over how their work is received,” in the words of Nesrine Malik at The Guardian. What’s actually happening is the loss of freedom of expression. Without the freedom to disagree, do you really have any freedom at all?

Be sure to check out the entire conversation with John Rochford above, and stick around after our talk for more news, including an Illinois teen who allegedly shot a woman just hours after a court hearing where a judge extended the teen’s probation for illegally possessing a gun; a Pennsylvania man who acted in defense of others when he shot a double murder suspect moments after the killings had taken place, and an officer in St. Louis County, Missouri in the right place at the right time to revive a one-week old baby who had stopped breathing.

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