"I'm not racist. I have black friends. They just can't date my daughter."

I've heard that phrase and permutations of it come out of the mouth of every bigot i've met. My guess is that they are trying to morally justify their racism.


In American history, gun control and racism have always dovetailed. So it's no surprise when anti-gun bigots like Jimmy Carter make similar claims, albeit about guns:

I have used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own two handguns, four shotguns and three rifles, two with scopes.
...
But none of us wants to own an assault weapon, because we have no desire to kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives.

And this type of bigotry is common among what are now called "Fudds" in the gun enthusiast community; "Fudds" being those who believe their weapons and themselves to be "morally superior" to "assault weapons" and those who own them, despite the fact the "assault weapons" are the least likely to be criminally used.

Jimmy Carter reminds me of the Shoeshine Boy in the Sundown Towns of the segregated South. The Shoeshine Boy was the only black person allowed to stay in town after the sun went down, as he was needed to be there early in the morning to shine shoes before the work day started. As a result of this allowance, the Shoeshine Boy held a false sense of superiority towards other blacks. He thought himself to be a chosen one, morally superior to the other blacks. He would often nod in agreement when the racists claimed that blacks were inferior to whites, as he often assumed they were talking about those "other blacks". However, the Shoeshine Boy was in for a rude awakening when he tried to court the daughters of the men whose shoes he shined. He quickly learned that he wasn't superior to those "other blacks". And he often learned this lesson at the end of a rope on the bridge out of town.

One day Jimmy Carter will have a similar rude awakening when learns that the gun banners dislike his two, "morally superior", scoped rifles guns just as much as they dislike the "assault weapons".