Michael Ian Black delivered a bizarre Twitter rant to wrap up the weekend, comparing Americans who own firearms to slave owners. The actor, comedian, and author, also claimed that private gun ownership amounted to terrorism.
It started when Black called for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment:
I’ll say it – assault weapons aren’t the problem. Handguns are the problem. By all means, ban AR-15s and the like, but handguns kill far more people. The solution is to repeal and replace the Second Amendment. Make gun ownership a privilege, not a right.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
But it didn’t stop there. When challenged, Black doubled down on his position and suggested that owning firearms was really no different from owning other people.
“Having the ready ability to take someone’s life is dominion over that person,” he continued. “Gun ownership could be viewed as slavery by another name.”
Black tied his argument to social contract theory (the idea that citizens give up a certain degree of personal liberty in exchange for protections provided by the government) and appeared to claim that, unless only authorities were permitted to carry firearms, the social contract would be violated and the unarmed would be subjected to a form of slavery.
Just to follow up on this; when some of the population is armed with guns, they have control over rest of population. We willingly create a contract with armed police/military for security. We enter no such contract with civilians.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
Those civilians, through the threat or exercise of life-ending power, have control over unarmed civilians. That is a form of slavery.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
Black offered two possible solutions, calling for either equal armament or equal disarmament of all citizens, and argued that the latter was the only way to heal the “American psyche.”
There are only two ways to change the power dynamic: arm everyone equally or disarm everyone equally. NRA would prefer a never-ending escalation of civilian armament because $$$.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
Disarming equally has the advantage of reducing gun violence and removing so much terror from the national psyche. American culture is so used to living in terror that we don’t even name it for what it is. Terrorism, of course, is another form of slavery.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
Black wrapped up his argument by appealing to the emotions of his audience, offering a series of hypothetical situations that he believed would occur less often if the American public were disarmed.
How many times have you accidentally cut somebody off in traffic and worried they might road rage shoot you? Or flinched at a sound thinking it could be gunfire? Or lost somebody to gun violence? Gun ownership is a form of slavery.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
And, of course, historically speaking, gun ownership is entwined with actual slavery. Americans addiction to gun ownership is rooted in inequality and terrorism. We don’t have to live like this.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) March 25, 2018
The overall response to Black’s argument was not positive. Hundreds of replies poured in, telling him that the reference to slavery was in poor taste and sharing personal stories about how the possession of legal firearms save lives. Some flipped his slavery claim on its head, saying that disarmament of the citizens, while authorities continue to carry weapons, would be the first step on the road to actual slavery.
