…..the ways of a man are before the Lord and He watches all his paths. – Proverbs 5:21

Thank you for listening, downloading and subscribing to this new chapter of my life.

Thank you for sharing, supporting, and staying a faithful friend. It’s good to be back. Thank you for asking me to come back. Thank you for the emails. Thank you for the recent well wishes on my Facebook debut and birthday celebration. I think I got more views on that one video than I did with my conversation with Colion Noir. I said that I came back because you asked me to; I came back because I have a few more things to say. I came back because I want you to help me do what I’ve been called to do, and I want to help you survive another week. I’ve had some time to appreciate you.

This week, I’m going to share with you my take on current events, and you don’t have to agree with me, but please hear me. Try to understand me. This is the start, the baseline, the ground-zero point. I’ll try to get more into guns, Second Amendment concealed carry as we go on. I thought I was done.

And then, 2020 happened.

Who would have known that it’s been a year of COVID-19, pandemic quarantines, the murder of George Floyd, the sparked protests across the United States and across the world, and that Australia burned? There was a toilet paper shortage for a hot minute. We were threatened with “murder hornets.” Everybody has to wear masks, and bars and churches closed. Black Lives Matter became a movement that was embraced around the world. And while we’re just sitting here and waiting, Swine Flu is threatening to join the mix. Who knew there would be a return of Marxism in America? Who planned for the destruction, looting, and the protest of police brutality? The latter is as old as our freedom. But wait, there’s more. They’ve got something called Antifa. We have the rejection of Confederate Anything, and the cancel culture.

The so-called minority gun owner that you’ve been trying to get to the range is finally here. They’re just not with you. They’re shooting on private lands at outdoor ranges and have created small groups to practice and train without you. And there’s even a national organization of African Americans that is celebrating explosive growth.

The infamous National Rifle Association has finally imploded after decades of poor decisions, secrets and mismanagement. It has exposed itself as a bloated, piss-poor representation of gun owners stuck in the ’80s. It has furloughed most of the staff. It has massive legal troubles, but, like our President, people still defend them with cult-like adoration. Meanwhile, highly paid lobbyists still run D.C. All are taking advantage of the loyalty of its members who don’t live in this city. Ninety-eight percent of the politicians around here are not cool. This is a personal observation and opinion. Anyone who’s been in office longer than two terms is no longer serving the people.

I believe that foreign influencers are using social media to pit us against each other. People want to defund the police — which is right out of the textbook of toppling a government by foreign governments. I know a little something about that. I believe our Executive branch has been compromised by foreign interest, but you’re not ready for that truth yet.

You want to talk about guns and American history, mostly, right? You want me to give you some product reviews and interview some interesting people? I’m going to do that. And along the way, I’m going to make you think a little, and hopefully help you understand why we are here and where we might be going.

In all truth, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have to be right. And I don’t have to come back, but I want to now. I want to meet you in the middle so we can walk together, talk together, and fight together.

Now, you know that in the twelve years that the Urban Shooter / Black Man With A Gun Show Podcast has been on, I have always strived to be family-friendly and office-safe. I may have to deviate from that in the future – not from my language, but from the sources that I’m going to use.

I’m going to be giving you history. I’m going to be giving you some educational stuff, some entertainment, things that are not pretty, but they’re ours. If you’re brave enough to stay with me, if you trust me, I promise we’re going somewhere with this. My disclaimer is that I’m not trying to prove that I’m right. What I’m going to try to do, and only you will know if I’m successful, is to speak to what is up. Did you realize that we are right in the middle of a revolution? This isn’t the Civil Rights Era, or is it? There’s gotta be a new name for it, but I don’t have it yet. Have you heard of one? Whatever it is, I’m right here with you. If you were my friend before 2020, you are probably still my friend.

Epictetus says that it’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it, that matters.

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If you have been a long-time listener of this podcast, you know, for many years, I would open up with John Wayne leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Somewhere, around my tenth year on the air, I had somebody tell me that John Wayne was a racist. It hurt me that I didn’t know, but I wasn’t surprised. And because I enjoyed all the Wild West movies that John Wayne had been in, it took me awhile to replace it. I had to think about it, ruminate on it and marinate on that thing. But as I started to do that and peel back the curtain on so many things of our country and our history, it got uglier and uglier. For the record, I still believe to my very soul that this is the very best country in all of the fifteen that I have visited in my lifetime. I would rather be nowhere else.

Them Damn Millennials.

We used to make fun of the younger folks, but guess what? They are changing the world. I know you don’t agree with the burning, looting, the defund-the-police, and all that. It is all stupid stuff, including the tearing down of monuments, but let’s look at it from a view of 60,000 feet above the Earth. Let’s rise above our own issues and thoughts, and look at it differently for a minute. At the speed of social media, these sapsuckers have done what folks have been trying to do since the Civil Rights Era. They’ve embarrassed us and reminded us that we have just accepted some stuff that we should not have. Not everyone will agree, but time will tell. The time had come for us to stop revering and instead reconciling the complexity of heroism and evil in America. That reckoning should have begun in the public school, but it didn’t. They’re doing it now. And how the sausage is made is never pretty.

The Sausage of Freedom.

Making freedom. It isn’t pretty. It’s kind of close to being like sausage. To make a pork sausage, you gotta kill a pig. You gotta clean the thing. You must cut the meat. You must grind it up. You must mix it and season it and put it in a cellulose sleeve. It is horrible to look at, but when you seal it, cook it, or grill it, that’s some good-tasting stuff – if you like pork. How we got to this point; how we think we discovered this world, the colonization of North America, the murder of indigenous people to the bringing of different nationalities here….Those who escaped other places to come here to form this nation…..The rise of slavery, the wars, Civil War reconstruction, the progressive era…..The so-called World Wars, the mid-century and the Cold War, and mixed in there were lynchings and the civil rights era and atrocities to humanity. How the sausage of freedom was made. Not a pretty picture. You can’t just glaze it over. You can’t pick one thing and can’t choose it.

But this land is your land. And this land is my land – from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the gulf stream waters….This land was made for you and for me.

If you will look at the 60,000 foot view, it has taken us a long time to make change happen. I have gotten used to it. There are statues, flags and things that I, as a free, law-abiding American citizen would never stand near, take a photo with, or acknowledge, because it doesn’t represent ALL of us. After I learned the history of President Woodrow Wilson, for example, I have no problem with removing his name from anywhere. And then the list just keeps going on, but don’t let me stop there. Don’t leave me yet. Listen, we recognize that our nation’s founding was far from perfect. Don’t look at the destruction as all negative though. Let’s go back in history. Let’s do that, and let’s go back to Greek/Roman history.

There was a guy by the name of Lois Malraux, who says that we judge a society by the monuments it puts up. So, imagine the society, a Roman society, that puts up statues of tyrants, people who nearly succeeded in tearing the country apart, who did horrible, inexplicably, cruel things, even by standards of their own time. Why leave a statue of that person up?

Is tearing down statues destroying history, or is it simply the obvious response of a freed people with a conscience? Of course, the past is complicated. But the fact that something is hard and complicated does not absolve us from the responsibility of resolving it. Rome was able to tear down the monuments of its worst villains, but here, in America, and in the rest of the world, we have more tools at our disposal besides angry Millennials. We can still study and learn about these people in our history books and our schools, but we can take them off of public property, removing them from their prominent places in front of courthouses and capitals, which are supposed to be the houses of ALL the people. All people. If Marcus Aurelius had caused the death of a million Romans and torn the empire in half for the sole purpose of protecting slavery, would he be our hero? No. If he had done it as recently as some people’s great-grandparents, definitely not. If his likeness had been appropriated by vicious tyrants who subverted the rule of law to intimidate fellow citizens, and if his likeness was put up in statutes paid for still by tax dollars, would it be worth protecting? Now, we can make good arguments about Marcus Aurelius. There are good arguments about the good that Churchill did. There are good arguments in favor of Jefferson and Washington and others, but only a coward is afraid of having a conversation.

What about Nathan Bedford Forrest? Jefferson Davis was a fool. Robert E. Lee betrayed his prior service to his country when he raised arms against it and sent a generation of men to their deaths in a rebellion to protect a way of life that enslaved humans. At first I was like you: What the Hell? What is a statue going to do to you today?

Let’s jump on that Black Lives Matter thing for a minute.

One of the obstacles to having an open conversation about race is the tendency to downplay things that are not truly or really racist. And this can actually emboldened or encourage prejudice. The Black Lives Matter movement is real. It is legit. The Black Lives Matter organization to me is another animal all to itself. In 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman killing of Trayvon Martin, Black Lives Matter was born. It was a protest group. Since then it is a group that has been infiltrated by other agendas. The movement itself is not new. It is exactly the same movement with a different name that came about in the ’60s. If you go back and look at your text, you will find pictures of men and women with signs saying, “Am I not a man?” that is an updated version from the past. It stems from the Dred Scott decision that wanted to say that people of African descent were not fully human, thereby they were not citizens of this country or entitled to any of its rights.

 

When you see a sign that says Black Lives Matter it is not denouncing that all life matters. It is saying that we value the life of a person that because of the color of his or her skin was thought of as not being fully human, had no rights to vote, and could not own a firearm. When you try to say All Life Matters, it detracts from that message. You are negating that there was a struggle. You are saying that we should forget that hurt, and that that pain is not important. We have an unreconciled past. So, when you say anything, you diminish others. Oh, you’re saying a lot.

That’s why I advise many of my friends to shut up. Don’t wait to be heard. Listen, there’s some things happening right here in your space, in this time period that you’re missing by trying to be right, trying to get your points made, trying to make your memes pop or even creating groups on the side. You’re not helping at all. The Black Lives Matter movement has given us a moment to reflect on a very important matter: our history of racism. When I was becoming a podcaster, when I was tackling things like the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms for all people, I was advised to stay away from the race word truth. As soon as you talk about race, it gets quiet because everybody involved is uncomfortable. But guess what? The millennials don’t care – They’re going for it. They are putting it in our faces. And because of all the craziness they have done, change is happening again from the 60,000 foot view. This is a good thing, because in the end we have to reckon with ourselves; We have to reconcile. We have to fix what’s not right. It’s about time. We’ve been rolling wrong for a long time, and just accepting it, believing the lie because it’s been told so many times. Now, you don’t have to subscribe to doctrines of racial superiority or incite racial violence to say or do something that has racist implications. It’s in our speech. It’s in our culture. Racism is as much about impact as it is about intention. We shouldn’t forget about those who are on the receiving end of that discrimination.

 

–All right, Kenn, I’m hearing you, but um, what am I supposed to be doing now? — Well, here’s the problem that folks don’t realize: Millennials know how to start some mess, but they can’t fix it all. We still need to be involved. They still need our guidance. The end. It might be a 40-year-old or 30-year-old. Now, they’re as smart as I don’t know what, but they don’t have any life experience. They’ll know how to talk to anybody, but they don’t know politics. It’s time for us to step up now and instruct them, show them, now that they got a firearm, how to use it.

Because even though politics is jacked up right now, they need to be involved in that too, to change things. Don’t let one side be the answer for everything. Now, it’s time for you to get your butt in gear and assist and help and give consultation to these folks who are on fire to change the world without guidance. It’s the Lord of the Flies. I need the adults who are strong among us to work with these people. They’re not all bad. They just don’t have all the answers. They don’t have all the, you know, the inside stuff – the stuff we take for granted. And if we let them, they’ll burn the crap to the ground and not realize that you also have to rebuild. Don’t give up on them. Don’t leave them to their own devices. Don’t let some other interests take them away from us. We still have a chance to fix this country, but we must be involved, and you can only be involved if you’re talking to them. Communication is more important now than ever.

The Rise of the Black Gun Owner

Collectively, we still are little kids on the playground picking sides by gender, color, size and familiarity. Look back at kindergarten, remember when we used to segregate ourselves? All the kindergarten kids, the first-grade kids, the big kids from the little kids. There was the all-girl groups and over there, all the boys. And then, as we grew and social constructs began, we segregated ourselves by race. In nature, we separate ourselves for safety. Anything you think is strange is a threat. Well, right now, in an elementary sense of the word, we are grouping ourselves for safety. There is a fear that’s promoted and pushed pretty well by foreign governments on social media. The Race War. People fall for it. It sells black fatigues pretty well.

I have found that over time, as the group grows, it learns that it can’t be monolithic. You can’t be all “one people.” You must be diverse if you want to grow outside of your niche. If you want to grow outside of your field, you must embrace other people. That’s why there’s power in diversity. It’s a growth thing. Once you leave kindergarten and go to college, you mix and learn about other languages, other people, other cultures, and you get stronger because you grow in knowledge. In the beginning, it’s safer to be exclusive. There are some positives for being racist and segregationist. As a group, you can grow really fast. You can grow really strong. You can garner a lot of power using fear in small groups. But when you are ready to train outside of your group or shoot different firearms and travel to other ranges, you have to change.

It’s a growth thing. It’s a maturity thing.

I hope that one day we get to see that Americans realize that we are all the same with this faith. We will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “my country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died. Land of the Pilgrim’s pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”!! And if America is to become a great nation, then this must be true. – Dr. MLK

Another thing that makes us different is not only our age and core values, but many of us served in uniform and took an oath to defend the constitution of the United States and to serve as an example to an America that doesn’t transfer or translate to the folks you see on “rage TV.”

Hang on, brother.

Yes, the media is doing what it does. It is showing you what you want to see to scare you. You know, we like to be scared. Some of us are writing articles about a race war and how we won’t kneel – none of which is helping anybody. The best advice I can give to friends who are listening is to not respond, not knee-jerk reaction, not come off-the-cuff, not try to be cute, to just shut up right now, but I’ll get back to that. I know that’s tough to hear from your friend. I know you know this, I’m just here to remind you. We have been here before. I didn’t think we would return, but humanity is not as cogent progressive or intelligent as it claims to be.

I’m still gonna need some financial help to get this puppy moving. If you can, please contribute to the https://patreon.com/blackmanwithagun , or to buy-me-a-coffee links. I still believe that

none of us is as strong as all of us.

I know, it’s been rough. It’s been tough. It’s been hard, but don’t let the media get ya. You’ve been right on so many things. Let’s continue to walk this thing together. Amen? And just in case, nobody has told you this today – I’m sure they haven’t, so I’m going to tell you – I love you. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Until next week. Shalom, baby.

Reverend Kenn Blanchard

Check out these podcast:  Black Man With A Gun Show ,  Speak Life church , and  Indian Motorcycle radio  The Books, Kenn has written.