Teaching day-long classes on firearm safety, storage, usage, tactics, gun laws, and obtaining a concealed carry permit along with providing basic shooting instruction at a local gun range, Pastor Isaiah Stewart’s 20 years in New Orleans, Louisiana brought him over to the pro-self-defense side of the aisle.
From a great article in The Washington Post . . .
“I know people will say, ‘Why is this happening in a church?’” Stewart said. “But if you read the Bible, Jesus told the disciples to protect themselves. … And to me, as a pastor, I am to look after people. And that’s what I am doing. Helping people who want to protect themselves.”
It began with death. As a pastor, Stewart officiated memorial services for a never-ending litany of murdered teenagers, murder being a leading cause of death among black youth in New Orleans. Crime, violence, shootings, murder. Wearing a bulletproof vest under his pastoral robe because of how frequently funerals get shot up by whoever killed the decedent in the first place.
Then, Stewart survived an attempted carjacking. Again from the WaPo article . . .
Several years ago, he was in his car in Uptown New Orleans when an armed group ran up and tried to carjack him. He wasn’t in a fancy car. “It was an old Pontiac. I had a clergy sticker on it, my Dillard University alumni sticker,” Stewart said, referring to the historic Black university in New Orleans. “I thought, ‘You are going to jack me for this?’”
Stewart already had a concealed-carry permit but didn’t have the gun in the car. He escaped by opening the door and punching the gas, knocking down his young assailants as he drove away — a lucky break that he worried would not happen again. For him, it was a moment of clarity: It wasn’t enough to simply own a gun or have that weapon in an accessible place. He needed to learn how to use it.
That led Pastor Stewart down a road of seeking training for himself, where he met — get this! — white guys at the shooting range who were friendly, welcoming, and helpful. Frankly, I can’t even believe the WaPo ran this article.
It’s incredible that the legacy media still run stories about black people, other minorities, and women taking up firearms ownership then looking toward white gun owners waiting to catch the racist reaction that never comes. Yeah, the Second Amendment is for everyone and we’ve been saying it for years.
Anyway, fast-forward a couple years and Pastor Stewart has trained and helped certify at least 300 people for concealed carry permits. Almost entirely black folks, with more and more women every single time.
Yes, this is The Washington Post. I’d suggest you hop on over there and read the story. It’s quite good.
Read the full article here