When I see phrases like "a multiracial, multigenerational audience" I reach for the barf bag. In this case I was pleasantly surprised.
From the FreeRepublic board, with just the author's name.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39469cdc55c9.htm#1
Targeting a new audience
PAUL H. JOHNSON
At a pistol range tucked into the hills of Sussex County, Percy Bennett stretches one foot out, plants the other firmly in the opposite direction, and sticks out his stomach, demonstrating the proper stance to fire a pistol.
"From the waist up, think of your body as a tank," he tells a multiracial, multigenerational audience of first-timers, turning his torso around the room and pretending to survey an imaginary terrain full of targets.
Bennett tells his audience that in this position, he can hit a target 110 yards away with only a pistol. Then he pulls an imaginary trigger.
"If you put out of your mind everything you see in the movies, I guarantee you will get better and better," he promises the group. "I'm going to give you a skill you're going to use for the rest of your life."
Bennett, a compact, 57-year-old African-American political activist from Newton, is on a mission: He wants more minorities to become gun enthusiasts.
Bennett is a member of the Tenth Cavalry Rifle and Pistol Club, a national group that encourages blacks and other minorities to take up sport shooting. Bennett and his supporters want to erase the negative stereotypes that suggest that African-Americans carry guns only to cause trouble.
With help from the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC), and the National Rifle Association, Bennett organized the first-ever Minorities Day at the Cherry Ridge Range in Highland Lakes on Saturday. The NRA Foundation, a fundraising arm of the NRA, provided part of the funding.
The audience of about 100 people was predominantly black but included several Asian, Hispanic, and white people. Surrounding them were signs of the range operators' support of the NRA.
One wall in the clubhouse has photographs of Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli, both Democrats from New Jersey, and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Handwritten under the pictures is the phrase "The Three Stooges." Schumer, Lautenberg, and Torricelli have supported strict gun laws; they also enjoy a high level of support in the African-American community.
Another picture on the wall is of an old woman carrying a rifle, above the phrase "Social Security." Yet another proclaims: "Gun Rights Are Civil Rights."
In such an environment, it is jarring to see members of the Tenth Cavalry wearing the traditional red, black, and green colors of Africa on T-shirts emblazoned with the logo "ANJRPC Juneteenth Celebration."
"Juneteenth" celebrates June 19, the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, the last Confederate state to learn that President Abraham Lincoln had freed all slaves living in rebel states.
But that's the work of the Tenth Cavalry, to uproot the negative associations between black culture and the gun culture.
"We are historically and culturally conditioned not to associate publicly with firearms," said Ken Blanchard, 38, of Washington, D.C., who founded the Tenth Cavalry.
Early gun laws in America expressly forbade blacks to own or carry firearms. As time wore on, Blanchard said, blacks distrusted anyone who owned one. "It was not politically and socially acceptable to have a gun," he said.
To this day, Blanchard said, many blacks who do use guns shoot only in private hunting clubs that have no white members. They never mention the fact they shoot to anyone.
Blanchard said he wants to "out" them.
"This won't be done overnight," said Blanchard, who runs his own Web site. "I'm trying to correct decades of misinformation."
A born-again Christian, Blanchard said he often runs into black opposition, particularly from members of the clergy, when he speaks about guns.
And, indeed, clerics were upset when they learned that a local gun club was targeting area minorities.
"I'm appalled, personally," said the Rev. Gregory Jackson of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack. "It's one thing for an African-American to buy a gun. It's another to promote aggressively the possession of guns by blacks.
"There's not an absence of guns in our community," he added. "We could probably sell them some guns."
That represents another part of what Blanchard and Bennett say thy are fighting against -- opposition to guns that comes from the black community itself.
"That's where my job comes in, to educate people," Blanchard said. "I talk more now and shoot less."
Blanchard said he started the group at the request of callers to a radio program in Washington.
"Call me tomorrow and I'll start a club," Blanchard recalls telling the listeners. The next day, he said, he heard from 10 of them.
Today, Blanchard says, the club has a couple of hundred members nationwide, including 30 in New Jersey.
The NRA said it does not ask the race of its members, so it's impossible to determine exactly how many minority members it has. Blanchard estimates that about 30,000 of the organization's nearly 4 million members are African-Americans.
Blanchard, who trains governmental agencies on how to provide security and protection for high-level government employees, travels around the nation lobbying for concealed gun-carrying laws and encouraging blacks to take up the sport of shooting.
He even envisions sponsoring an all-black Olympic squad of shooters one day, saying, "The next Michael Jordan could be from the shooting sports."
For New Jersey residents, pursuing an interest in guns is difficult: There aren't many places to shoot and it can be difficult to obtain a permit.
Cateif Dickerson, 31, a corrections officer from Jersey City, said blacks run into discrimination when they try to apply for a permit.
"Minorities are systemically discouraged," said Dickerson, an NRA training counselor
Often it will take 90 days instead of the usual 30 to obtain the permit, Dickerson said. He recalled one student who received a permit, only to have the police chief refuse to sign it.
After a morning of classes Saturday, it was time to enter the gun range. The participants were given earplugs and eye protection and were supervised by a half-dozen black, NRA-trained shooters.
Dickerson showed his students how to hold a handgun carefully -- in this case, a 9mm Beretta. The key, he told them, is not to cross your thumbs and to keep half of your index finger on the trigger. Then you gently apply pressure until the gun fires off a round, he said.
But be prepared, he told them: It will come as a surprise how much pressure it takes to fire off a round on the gun, which jerks when it is fired.
It was all a new experience for Sal Baxter, 28, an elevator technician from Newark, who came early Saturday morning to shoot with his friend Marc Hunt, 29, also a newcomer to the sport.
"It's something serious," Baxter said after he fired a .38-caliber pistol for the first time.
"You know you have to respect [the gun]," Baxter said. "You can sense the amount of responsibility it takes just to fire it."
From the FreeRepublic board, with just the author's name.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39469cdc55c9.htm#1
Targeting a new audience
PAUL H. JOHNSON
At a pistol range tucked into the hills of Sussex County, Percy Bennett stretches one foot out, plants the other firmly in the opposite direction, and sticks out his stomach, demonstrating the proper stance to fire a pistol.
"From the waist up, think of your body as a tank," he tells a multiracial, multigenerational audience of first-timers, turning his torso around the room and pretending to survey an imaginary terrain full of targets.
Bennett tells his audience that in this position, he can hit a target 110 yards away with only a pistol. Then he pulls an imaginary trigger.
"If you put out of your mind everything you see in the movies, I guarantee you will get better and better," he promises the group. "I'm going to give you a skill you're going to use for the rest of your life."
Bennett, a compact, 57-year-old African-American political activist from Newton, is on a mission: He wants more minorities to become gun enthusiasts.
Bennett is a member of the Tenth Cavalry Rifle and Pistol Club, a national group that encourages blacks and other minorities to take up sport shooting. Bennett and his supporters want to erase the negative stereotypes that suggest that African-Americans carry guns only to cause trouble.
With help from the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC), and the National Rifle Association, Bennett organized the first-ever Minorities Day at the Cherry Ridge Range in Highland Lakes on Saturday. The NRA Foundation, a fundraising arm of the NRA, provided part of the funding.
The audience of about 100 people was predominantly black but included several Asian, Hispanic, and white people. Surrounding them were signs of the range operators' support of the NRA.
One wall in the clubhouse has photographs of Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli, both Democrats from New Jersey, and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Handwritten under the pictures is the phrase "The Three Stooges." Schumer, Lautenberg, and Torricelli have supported strict gun laws; they also enjoy a high level of support in the African-American community.
Another picture on the wall is of an old woman carrying a rifle, above the phrase "Social Security." Yet another proclaims: "Gun Rights Are Civil Rights."
In such an environment, it is jarring to see members of the Tenth Cavalry wearing the traditional red, black, and green colors of Africa on T-shirts emblazoned with the logo "ANJRPC Juneteenth Celebration."
"Juneteenth" celebrates June 19, the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, the last Confederate state to learn that President Abraham Lincoln had freed all slaves living in rebel states.
But that's the work of the Tenth Cavalry, to uproot the negative associations between black culture and the gun culture.
"We are historically and culturally conditioned not to associate publicly with firearms," said Ken Blanchard, 38, of Washington, D.C., who founded the Tenth Cavalry.
Early gun laws in America expressly forbade blacks to own or carry firearms. As time wore on, Blanchard said, blacks distrusted anyone who owned one. "It was not politically and socially acceptable to have a gun," he said.
To this day, Blanchard said, many blacks who do use guns shoot only in private hunting clubs that have no white members. They never mention the fact they shoot to anyone.
Blanchard said he wants to "out" them.
"This won't be done overnight," said Blanchard, who runs his own Web site. "I'm trying to correct decades of misinformation."
A born-again Christian, Blanchard said he often runs into black opposition, particularly from members of the clergy, when he speaks about guns.
And, indeed, clerics were upset when they learned that a local gun club was targeting area minorities.
"I'm appalled, personally," said the Rev. Gregory Jackson of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack. "It's one thing for an African-American to buy a gun. It's another to promote aggressively the possession of guns by blacks.
"There's not an absence of guns in our community," he added. "We could probably sell them some guns."
That represents another part of what Blanchard and Bennett say thy are fighting against -- opposition to guns that comes from the black community itself.
"That's where my job comes in, to educate people," Blanchard said. "I talk more now and shoot less."
Blanchard said he started the group at the request of callers to a radio program in Washington.
"Call me tomorrow and I'll start a club," Blanchard recalls telling the listeners. The next day, he said, he heard from 10 of them.
Today, Blanchard says, the club has a couple of hundred members nationwide, including 30 in New Jersey.
The NRA said it does not ask the race of its members, so it's impossible to determine exactly how many minority members it has. Blanchard estimates that about 30,000 of the organization's nearly 4 million members are African-Americans.
Blanchard, who trains governmental agencies on how to provide security and protection for high-level government employees, travels around the nation lobbying for concealed gun-carrying laws and encouraging blacks to take up the sport of shooting.
He even envisions sponsoring an all-black Olympic squad of shooters one day, saying, "The next Michael Jordan could be from the shooting sports."
For New Jersey residents, pursuing an interest in guns is difficult: There aren't many places to shoot and it can be difficult to obtain a permit.
Cateif Dickerson, 31, a corrections officer from Jersey City, said blacks run into discrimination when they try to apply for a permit.
"Minorities are systemically discouraged," said Dickerson, an NRA training counselor
Often it will take 90 days instead of the usual 30 to obtain the permit, Dickerson said. He recalled one student who received a permit, only to have the police chief refuse to sign it.
After a morning of classes Saturday, it was time to enter the gun range. The participants were given earplugs and eye protection and were supervised by a half-dozen black, NRA-trained shooters.
Dickerson showed his students how to hold a handgun carefully -- in this case, a 9mm Beretta. The key, he told them, is not to cross your thumbs and to keep half of your index finger on the trigger. Then you gently apply pressure until the gun fires off a round, he said.
But be prepared, he told them: It will come as a surprise how much pressure it takes to fire off a round on the gun, which jerks when it is fired.
It was all a new experience for Sal Baxter, 28, an elevator technician from Newark, who came early Saturday morning to shoot with his friend Marc Hunt, 29, also a newcomer to the sport.
"It's something serious," Baxter said after he fired a .38-caliber pistol for the first time.
"You know you have to respect [the gun]," Baxter said. "You can sense the amount of responsibility it takes just to fire it."