About yesterday's St. Louis GRE article

Longtime correspondent Straightarrow, in response, I assume, to yesterday's St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner article about William Rivers Pitt's "Stupid People with Guns," told me of an old joke. It's both very politically incorrect, and extremely pertinent to the subject at hand. For those offended by use of a certain (admittedly offensive) word, my apologies--but the offensiveness is kinda the point:

There's an old joke about a literacy test being given in one of our less racially tolerant states years and years ago. It goes like this " The polling place referees when faced with a black man or woman who wished to vote would tell then that there was a literacy test that was required before anyone could vote. One particular black gentlemen said "I don't mind a literacy test, I can read and write." Then the chief examiner handed him a copy of a Chinese newspaper, the Canton Golden Times, and told him to read it if he was literate.

The man looked at it, and said, "No problem, I can read that headline quite well." The examiner was stunned. He said "What? You're telling me you can read that?"

"Yessir" said the hopeful voter, " Right here in the headline it says ain't no niggers voting in this state this year."

As Straightarrow says, gun owners are the modern-day analogue of those whom Reconstruction-era bigots referred to as "niggers."

It's up to us whether we'll emulate Uncle Tom, or Nat Turner.