3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

movement could not coalesce around such theoretical inconsistencies . Without clarifying
the relationship between nonviolence, self-defense, and revolution, those involved in this
phase of the movement were doomed to fail .
It is quite plausible, thirdly, that the presence of weapons served not to deter, but
to heighten tensions and nourish violence. Interrogating David Hilliard in a television
interview for CBS's "Face the Nation" in 1969, Bernard Nossiter wondered if storing
caches of firearms was not "an invitation for the police to take action ." g Hilliard denied
stockpiling guns . By carrying guns, the Panthers' critics argued, they put themselves in a
position where sooner or later they would have to use them. When Henry David Thoreau
wrote in his famous "Plea for Captain John Brown" in 1859 "the question is not about the
weapon but the spirit in which you use it," he meant to imply that Brown's motives were
respectable; however, his words might also serve as a failsafe for the motives of anyone
who would carry a firearm . Guns equal power over life, and even when equipped with
the best intentions, people who carry them often seem to invite conflict. Only assassins
intend to kill, but they arc not the only ones who do .9
Fourth, and finally, the security gained from carrying guns was quite possibly
more illusory than real . A firearm offers a defensive chance only if it is carried
eNossiter, quoted in David Hilliard, This Side of Glory: The Autobiorm~a~y of David
Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Partv (Boston : Back Bay Books, 1993), 272 .
'In discussing Bob Moses's appreciation for Albert Camus, Eric Burner captures the
giddy lure of the gun when he writes that "violence in good causes has within it a capacity
for oppression," and "within the rebel there lurks the oppressor." See Burner, Andes
He Shall Lead Them : Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississ~ooi (New York:
NYU Press, 1994), 7 .
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