From the Volokh Conspiracy via the Washington Post, a great article on the history of arms in America and how a people's ability to claim their rights and liberties goes hand-in-hand with the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
Negroes and the Gun: A Winchester “in every Black home”
Negroes and the Gun: A Winchester “in every Black home”
Surveying the landscape in the summer of 1892, Ida B. Wells advised, that “the Winchester rifle deserved a place of honor in every Black home.” This was no empty rhetorical jab. She was advancing a considered personal security policy and specifically referencing two recent episodes where armed Blacks saved their neighbors from lynch mobs.
And from the Black settlements of the west comes the report that “the colored men of Oklahoma Territory mean business. They have an exalted ideal of their own rights and liberties and they dare to maintain them. In nearly every cabin visited was a modern Winchester oiled and ready for use.”