On the one hand, the guns were there to help capture the imagination of the people. But more important, since we knew that you couldn’t observe the police without guns, we took our guns with us to let the police know that we have an equalizer.

Bobby Seale
Co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (later shorted to just The Black Panther Party)
Also important to note is that the organization was primarily socialist in nature.