'To Have a Revolver'

There's a pretty good historical article in the New York Times (SURPRIZE!) called "To Have a Revolver". It's about a renegade slave in Virginia who helped the Union forces.

Here are my takeaways... The notion of arming this black man, George Scott, goes well beyond his basic of need of being able to defend himself in battle. After all, by the time he is given arms he has already risked his life several times for the Union army. The subtext here is that giving this black man a gun makes him an equal. So what does that say about the right to keep and bare arms.

Secondly, it should be noted that the Yankees armed this man reluctantly. There was no great rush to put him on equal footing, which should obliterate that holier-than-thou attitude I, as a Southerner, get from some people of the North. They didn't arm George Scott because they wanted to, they did it because they had to.