For an Atlanta-based rapper who came up in the 90’s with Outkast and is now one-half of the iconic duo Run the Jewels, Killer Mike has been known to flex his Left-leaning political stances, specifically with his surrogacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during the 2016 presidential election.
However, in a new interview with Colion Noir on the National Rifle Association’s television channel, NRATV, Killer Mike, born Michael Render, got to show his more conservative side, specifically when it comes to his support for the Second Amendment.
“I told my kids on the school walkout: ‘I love you. If you walk out that school, walk out my house,'” Killer Mike said of National Walkout Day on March 14. “We are a gun-owning family. We are a family where my sister farms. We are a family where we’ll fish, we’ll hunt. But we are not a family that jumps on every single thing an ally of ours does because some stuff we just don’t agree with.”
Despite his strong support for single-payer healthcare, ending the drug war, prison and criminal justice reform, and military intervention abroad, Killer Mike understands that stricter gun control isn’t the solution this country needs and disagreed with the anti-gun message at the March for Our Lives rallies that took place across the country on Saturday.
“There was something that the woman who is the NRA spokesperson [Dana Loesch] said and everybody just kinda lost it … Dana says that the tears of white mothers are like ratings. And that’s so true and it was so sad to hear her acknowledge it, but it’s true, and black people know it’s true,” Killer Mike said.
He even referenced the superhero film “Black Panther” to show that law-abiding gun owners make societies safer. “You’re not woke! In Wakanda, everybody had guns! They had spears and everything else! You can’t continue to be the lackey.”
Killer Mike continued to say how Noir has been accused of being a lackey for the NRA, when those same people making those accusations are lackeys to the progressive movement.
“You have never disagreed with the people who tell you what to do,” Killer Mike explained. “Think about that. You have never disagreed. You never said, ‘Wait, hold up! A football player just got shot by an armed white man for a traffic argument. A black teenager just got shot by an armed white man in a gas station because he played his music loud, where were you then?'”
Killer Mike used the example of Jordan Davis, the teenager who was shot 10 times and killed at a gas station for playing his music too loud in Jacksonville, Fla., in November 2012. Luckily, there were people who were there to stand for Davis, including law enforcement and Davis’s mother, Lucia McBath, who is the national spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. It may not have been the best example in terms of the apathy directed at victims of color who suffered from gun violence, but the sentiment is still very real for much of black America.
Gun violence has rocked cities like Chicago, where in the last year (as of March 18), there have been 587 gun homicides. Out of 646 homicides in the last year, 502 victims were black — 77 percent of the victims. And while it is a tired line to roll out the example of Chicago to discredit the effectiveness of gun control to create a safer society considering Illinois has one of the strictest gun laws in the country, it’s still no less true.
What Killer Mike is getting at is that there is a certain level of white privilege with these marches against gun violence. Parkland survivors even admitted that during the March for Our Lives. As of 2016, Parkland, Fla., has a median household income of $131,340 — the state average is $50,860 — while the median home value is $596,212 — the state average is $197,700. Its population is 84 percent Caucasian, according to the 2010 Census.
Considering how the media covers schools shootings, it’s hard to argue that if a majority student of color school experienced a mass shooting on the level of Parkland that the survivors would receive the kind of attention they’re getting. Killer Mike knows that. And he understands the power of what it means as a black man in America to legally bear arms for protection.
While critics will make light of Killer Mike siding with the NRA, he brings up a valid point about how privileged these pro-gun control marchers really are, and very few liberals and progressives, unlike Killer Mike, are willing to admit that.
