Civil rights won by Gandhian, non-violent protests?

In Spectator, George Parry writes,

Gun control doesn’t work, not even when the government uses all of its powers to keep an oppressed citizenry disarmed and submissive. The Deacons for Defense and Justice and thousands of other armed black civil rights advocates proved that conclusively. And society at large is better for it.

Our enlightened progressive betters mock as paranoid fantasy the idea that there would ever be a need for American civilians to arm themselves in order to resist government oppression. That sort of governmental abuse, they tut-tut, won’t and can’t happen here. But it has happened here, and, as recently as the 1960s, armed civilian resistance to tyranny did work. Just ask the Deacons for Defense and Justice.

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