 We have an inalienable right to defend ourselves. Gun is just a tool to make the job easier. There's nothing for a white guy to walk down the street with his rifle on his back, and everything's just fine. When a black person does it, we're a thug, we're an animal, we're about to go stick up a store or something. Dead center! I shoot by guns every day. I train in hand-to-hand combat every day, even by myself. When no one's around, I train. Because it may save my life, but more importantly, it may save the lives of whoever's with me. When I talk to people in the African-American community, I hear they want protection. There were some guys that came around and were shooting protesters, and the protesters were saying that they were yelling some racial slurs. And that was when I decided to go back out there. You have this history well before the Civil War of organized black self-defense in northern communities where black people are free. In the post-Civil War period, the late 19th and early 20th century, you have state officials who basically are in league with groups like the Ku Klux Klan. I think that situation is mitigated to some extent by the fact that black people in the South, in fact, are armed and are able to defend themselves. So there's a tremendous push in the 1950s and 1960s for black voter registration. We've got to make sure that they are reached and get into the city to do the voting. The Ku Klux Klan basically decides that they are going to go after the people who are registering black voters, intimidate them and kill them. So you have groups beginning to be formed designed to protect the black community and protect civil rights workers who are registering black voters. The most effective of these, I would argue, was a group called the Deacons for Defense and Justice. The Deacons for Defense and Justice were basically black men who had been veterans of the Second World War or the Korean War. The Panthers were very good at publicity and not particularly good at protecting black communities. The Deacons, on the other hand, has just very silently let it be known if you try to harm people in our community or the people working with us, it's not going to go very well for you. An illegal right to defend ourselves. Gun is just something that I had to grab every day and bring with me, hoping that nothing would happen. But if it ever had to come to that situation, then at least the option is open. Our streets! Our streets! Our streets! I get the strangest looks when I walk around looking like this. I get the strangest looks more from black people than white people. But then black people, all of a sudden you see a pride just swell up in their chest when they see me walk around like this. Like, shit, yes, yes, he gets it. He knows that he has those rights too. I feel like a lot of people when they look at guns, they look at it from a victim's mentality. They look at it as what can a gun do to me, not versus what can a gun do for me. You're at a protest that is talking about the inequalities in the justice system and police brutality and then you mentally have wired yourself to believe that only the cops should have the gun to protect you and other people. And I just thought that that was really ironic. Middle finger to the law! Middle finger to the law! Middle finger to the law! But yeah, there's nothing for a white guy to walk down the street with his rifle on his back and everything's just fine. NRA, second amendment, this side and the other. But when a black person does it, we're a thug, we're an animal. We're about to go stick up a store or something. But when you see these animals and thugs that they like to call us, well armed, well organized, yeah, it makes you stop and think. Yeah, these guns aren't just for the races, the KKK, the Nazis and everything else. These are also for those rogue police officers. Those ones that like to brutalize us and harm us and get away with it. No, we're not doing that anymore. My man, Eric Garner, six years ago, another reason why I had this hat made that says, I can't breathe. Because that's what he said when he was being choked out by police for selling loose cigarettes. It's funny, I got the hat made six years after he set it and six weeks after George Floyd set it. And there's the whole story about Philando Castile right there. The baby was in the back seat. He's told him I have a concealed weapons permit. Show it to me. He reaches for it and the man kills him. Kills him. Where was the NRA then? Silence. Didn't say a damn thing. When you walk around the statue and you see pictures and birthdays and brief descriptions. How many more of these signs would you like to see before it would change your mind that maybe you're responsible for your own protection? One of the most frequent things that I've always heard is that I would be killed by a cop. They believe that a cop's perception of me being armed is going to be the reason why I get shot. I can honestly say traffic stops prior to me being armed are extremely different than when I am armed. And cops are a lot more friendly and a lot more open to communication when the playing fields are the same. Everybody's out here. You know what I'm saying? Stop listening to the media. Stop listening to that shit. We all here singing songs about freedom. Ain't it great when we win? Almost a month ago, if you notice, wasn't that many of us out there with guns? Now look at night. Big difference, right? Big difference. We're peaceful but we're always going to be protected. And that's been my mission. I believe that I'm channeling my ancestors. I'm channeling our activists before. You had in the 60s and before a situation where there was little or no help from the federal government. In protecting your civil rights. That's not the case today. There's still the issue of how well are you protected? Do you want to totally surrender your ability to protect yourself to others? Basic question, is it a good thing to be helpless? Am I saying no?