GUNS AT VOTING PLACES: WE MUST BAN OPEN-CARRY GUNS AT VOTING SITES, IT'S PLAIN INTIMIDATION (AS INTENDED IN THE 1876 SOUTH CAROLINA ELECTION POLL INSTRUCTIONAL FLYER TO PRE-KKK BLACK VOTER DISRUPTERS)

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

From the Nov 26, 2022, New York Times -"guns, protests and open-carry."

At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking

Armed Americans, often pushing a right-wing agenda, are increasingly using open-carry laws to intimidate opponents and shut down debate.

 the effects of more guns in public spaces have not been evenly felt. is uneven - with Democrats largely eschewing firearms and Republicans embracing them — . This has  has warped civic discourse. "Deploying the Second Amendment in service of the First has become a way to buttress a policy argument, a sort of silent, if intimidating, bullhorn."

One observer described a gathering at an LGBTQ rally.... “What I saw was described as "a group of folks who did not want to engage in any sort of dialogue and just wanted to impose their belief.”

A New York Times analysis of more than 700 armed demonstrations found that, at about 77 percent of them, people openly carrying guns represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.

From this blogsite: (

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2009

President Obama's First Year, Pt 1: From The Bottom of the Pit, The Spirit of South Carolina's Zombie Racism (Red Shirt Vigilantes) Rides Again)

The history of deliberately wearing(and openly showing) guns at political gatherings...to intimidate, especially at votng sites, goes back to America's days of Reconstruction (1870s) when the former Confederate supporters sought to cancel out the votes of newly-freed slaves.

Also, the wearing of guns at the President's town meetings and the shouting of "Liar" by the South Carolina Congressman (Joe Wilson) is a strategy first laid down in print in post-Civil War Dixie in 1870 by the Dixie states in their efforts to squelch the voting of newly freed African-Americans by intimidation (showing of guns at town meetings and political rallies) and murder, if intimidation was not effective. Here is an excerpt from a  1876 South Carolina poster giving instructions to the white supremacist vigilante group, the South Carolina Red Shirts, how to intimidate and disrupt town meetings - the similarity with tactics used recently to disrupt Mr Obama's town meeting can't be denied:

2. That a Roster must be made of every white and of every Negro in the Townships and returned immediately to the County Executive Committee. 3. .... be armed with rifles and pistols and such other arms as they may command..... . . . 13. "... soon as their leaders or speakers begin to speak ..., tell them then and there to their faces, that they are liars, thieves and rascals, and are only trying to mislead the ignorant Negroes and if you get a chance get upon the platform and address the Negroes. 14. In speeches to Negroes you must remember that argument has no effect upon them; they can only be influenced by their fears, superstitions and cupidity. . . . Treat them so as to show them, you are the superior race, and that their natural position is that of subordination to the white man. . . . 16. Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times require that he should die. . . . 29. Every club must be uniformed in a RED SHIRT and they must be sure and wear it upon all public meetings and particularly on the day of election. 30. Secrecy should shroud all of our transactions. Let not your left hand know what your right hand does.

(Source: William A. Sheppard, editor, Red Shirts Remembered: Southern Brigadiers of the Reconstruction Period (Ruralist Press, 1940), pp. 46-50, reprinted in Paul D. Escott, et al, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American South, vol. 2, second ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 37-38.)