John Moses Browning Day

Smith advocates getting rid of Martin Luther King Day and replacing it with John Moses Browning Day. He makes some good points:

For the record, I am opposed to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a national holiday in the month of January or, for that matter, any other month. It isn’t that I oppose a national holiday celebrating the legacy of America’s greatest civil rights leader. I just don’t believe that King was our greatest civil rights leader. I believe that distinction belongs to John Browning.

Since John Moses Browning was born on January 23rd, 1855, it will be easy to make the transition from a Martin King to a John Browning national holiday. And it will be educational, too. Many gun owners are unaware that Browning sold 44 guns to Winchester including the Model 94 level action repeater. Guns based on the Model 94 design and chambered in 30-30 have probably killed more deer in North America than any other model before or since.

Few Colt owners have had a chance to shoot the .30 and .50 caliber machine guns or 37-mm aircraft cannon. But all of those lucky enough to own Colts including the .45 Caliber and Woodsman models are benefiting from a basic design coming from the greatest genius the firearms industry has ever known.

Today’s “civil rights” movement has become a disgrace largely because it is based on the idea that people are entitled to things they did not earn through the fruits of their own labor. Instead, people are given things on the basis of what their ancestors suffered – all coming from those who did nothing wrong on the basis of what their ancestors did wrong.

But John Browning was a different kind of man. He refused to take anything he did not earn. He even refused an honorary degree from a university on the basis of that principle. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson could learn a lot from a man who practices what he preaches.

Although it took a lot of courage to attack MLK I’m not sure there was anything to be gained by that except getting a little more attention. That extra attention is likely to be about 90% hostile.

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One thought on “John Moses Browning Day

  1. I’m not sure Browning was a civil rights leader, unless you count Gutenberg as a civil rights leader.

    They both created beautiful designs for the “tools of the trade” in support of liberty, but then we’d have to count Bill Gates, and countless others.

    Regarding racial entitlement or racial guilt: The ancestors of many white Americans never owned slaves. To the contrary, many whites were abolitionists. Should we force the descendants of John Brown (who lost his life fighting slavery) to pay reparations? Likewise, many American blacks’ ancestors were never slaves, plus one could credibly argue that today’s slave descendants are far better off for living in America, than they would be living in Africa. Then there is the issue of mixed race. Should an American of mixed race be forced to pay reparations to himself?

    The whole thing is ridiculous. I’d like to know just exactly when, and under what exact circumstances, we can finally have racial equality– the color-blind government envisioned by Dr. King Jr.. But that’s not the goal of some, is it?

    Lest anyone accuse me of insensivitity or bigotry, I can say these things because I have been granted amnesty and a pardon from the great Walter E. Williams, for all of my white racial guilt:
    http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/gift.html
    So there you have it. You have a beef, take it up with Walter.

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