While America is honoring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., some on the left are using his birthday to push for stripping Americans of their Second Amendment rights.
Giffords, one of the nation’s leading anti-gunner organizations, wrote a post on X in which it noted that King “dreamed of a world rooted in justice and peace,” but his “life was cut short by gun violence.”
The organization is honoring King “by continuing the fight for safer communities for all.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a world rooted in justice and peace.
— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS_org) January 19, 2026
His life was cut short by gun violence—but his vision continues to guide the work we do every day at GIFFORDS: standing up for justice, protecting lives, and building a safer future.
This MLK Day, we… pic.twitter.com/FuuilPFvSr
The Stop Gun Violence PAC noted that King “taught us that every person has the right to live free from fear,” but “gun violence steals that freedom from our families every day.”
Dr. King taught us that every person has the right to live free from fear.
— Stop Gun Violence PAC (@SGVPAC) January 19, 2026
Yet, gun violence steals that freedom from our families every day.
We are committed to lifting and advancing gun safety to protect the safety of all of our communities.
Here’s something the anti-gunners won’t tell you about King. He applied for a concealed carry permit in 1956 after his home in Montgomery, Alabama, was firebombed.
Back then, the police were responsible for determining who would be allowed to have a permit. They denied his application as they had with most other Black applicants.
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King wished to carry a firearm to protect himself and his family against the KKK and others. Yet, the sheriff deemed him “unsuitable.”
The civil rights leader was known for his nonviolent approach to fighting for equality. Yet, most don’t know that he still approved of the use of firearms for self-defense in one’s home.
In a 1966 essay titled “Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom,” he wrote:
It goes without saying that people will protect their homes. This is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and respected even in the worst areas of the South. But the mere protection of one's home and person against assault by lawless night riders does not provide any positive approach to the fears and conditions which produce violence.
In a 1961 letter to Robert F. Williams, King wrote, "The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.”
Ironically enough, Democrats back in the 1960s had no problem using the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy to restrict gun rights. The Gun Control Act of 1968 was signed into law two months after Kennedy’s assassination, spurred in large part by the two killings
President Lyndon B. Johnson had been pushing for comprehensive gun control legislation since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. But MLK’s and RFK’s deaths were exactly what the anti-gunner crowd needed to pass one of the most egregious infringements on the Second Ameendment in U.S. history.
King later decided against having firearms in his home after conversations with other civil rights leaders such as Bayard Rustin and Rev. Glenn Smiley.
"I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it,” King reportedly said. “From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors."
However, this did not mean that King opposed others owning firearms for self-defense. While he decried gun violence — as most Americans do — he never advocated for gun control laws.
This is the history the anti-gunner left would rather you didn’t know. They would rather exploit King’s death — as they did in 1968 — to strip Americans of our right to keep and bear arms.
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