Opinion of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Seriously?  I'm not one to freak out about Black Panther cosplay like Fox News racists.  But, these people are knuckle-heads sending a horrible message and embarrassing their community.  

This, they are the best friends the St. Louis police department could possibly ask for and are an embarrassment to their community.  If the St. Louis PD threatens and attacks peaceful protesters, it becomes a Bull Connor moment.  If a bunch of idiots start marching around with guns, some of the people watching the news are going to go "huh, maybe those protesters were a bunch of thugs afterall."  Playing Black Panther dress-up and waving around guns may make those guys feel short-term emotional gratification, but it also scares away many whites who would otherwise be extremely sympathetic to Ferguson's African-American community (and willing to support serious action to combat the institutional problem of police brutality).  

The guys in that picture are also complete cowards.  There's nothing brave or admirable about wandering around with a gun to see how many people you can intimidate before someone finally stands up to you (and it is often counter-productive, as the gun-rights crowd has proven countless times).  The people with real courage are the ones who protest peacefully, day after day, knowing full well that they may be viciously attacked.  Any idiot can throw a punch, the real FFs are the people who can take a punch and still have enough sense to think before they punch back.  There's a reason Martin Luther King became arguably the single most influential civil rights leader in American history while Huey P. Newton ended up becoming little more than a boogie-man that "Law and Order" style racist politicians could use to scare people into voting for them.

TLDR: Major HPs

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Seriously?  I'm not one to freak out about Black Panther cosplay like Fox News racists.  But, these people are knuckle-heads sending a horrible message and embarrassing their community.  

This, they are the best friends the St. Louis police department could possibly ask for and are an embarrassment to their community.  If the St. Louis PD threatens and attacks peaceful protesters, it becomes a Bull Connor moment.  If a bunch of idiots start marching around with guns, some of the people watching the news are going to go "huh, maybe those protesters were a bunch of thugs afterall."  Playing Black Panther dress-up and waving around guns may make those guys feel short-term emotional gratification, but it also scares away many whites who would otherwise be extremely sympathetic to Ferguson's African-American community (and willing to support serious action to combat the institutional problem of police brutality).  

The guys in that picture are also complete cowards.  There's nothing brave or admirable about wandering around with a gun to see how many people you can intimidate before someone finally stands up to you (and it is often counter-productive, as the gun-rights crowd has proven countless times).  The people with real courage are the ones who protest peacefully, day after day, knowing full well that they may be viciously attacked.  Any idiot can throw a punch, the real FFs are the people who can take a punch and still have enough sense to think before they punch back.  There's a reason Martin Luther King became arguably the single most influential civil rights leader in American history while Huey P. Newton ended up becoming little more than a boogie-man that "Law and Order" style racist politicians could use to scare people into voting for them.

TLDR: Major HPs

What "action" is actually going to be taken as a result of the Ferguson protests? The only thing I could see even attempted to be done would be to stop funneling military equipment to police departments. Anyone who would oppose that because they saw black people with guns on TV probably wasn't going to support it in the first place.

Also, you think shooting or otherwise attacking someone for engaging in open carry constitutes "standing up" to them?

I believe that if people like the members of this Gun Club can manage to avoid giving suburban whites an excuse to revert to the default "police right, unarmed black person wrong" that there will be major and reasonably effective (albeit not perfect) changes to the way police do their job and that there will be greater accountability (although these changes will be bottom-up).  I think that you could see enough pressure to force most states to completely reform the rules for police departments and start requiring officers to have a small camera on their uniform at all times (which would presumably make them less likely to think they'll get away with murdering, beating up, or otherwise harassing African-Americans and Hispanics.

As for your straw-man question, no.  I was referring to things like business establishments changing their policy to start banning people from carrying around guns in their stores.  Another thing I meant was people refusing to let themselves be intimidated by the bad elements of either the white and African-American communities.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Seriously?  I'm not one to freak out about Black Panther cosplay like Fox News racists.  But, these people are knuckle-heads sending a horrible message and embarrassing their community. 

That horrible message being self-defense against racist cops?

I value the lives of black people in poor communities over the of militantly stupid cosplay that glorifies violence.  Marching around with a gun in an American city is insane.  Shooting cops as a means of dealing with police brutality is even more insane.  But, again these are just stupid knuckleheads doing some cosplay to show off how cool they look in berets.  There's no real reason to pay attention, "black nationalism" is more silly than anything.

This, and stuff like Black Panther dress-up is counter-productive because it freaks out enough whites to significantly reduce the political pressure for real, meaningful changes.  Whether the TNFs of the world like it or not, there won't be enough political pressure to force politicians to address the institutional problem of police brutality against African-Americans if the only people who are demanding changes are African-Americans and liberal whites.  This is the sort of thing that won't change without a Bull Connor moment and Ferguson could very well be one if people like this Gun Club don't get any attention from the media.