Roxane Gay

And I also know that there have been many people during the Civil Rights Movement who decided that, you know what, we are going to fight fire with fire.

And Black gun owners in the South, in particular, were big advocates of not just going quietly when lynch mobs tried to come to their homes and

kidnap them and do grievous harm to them, they decided, no, you know what, we're going to use our guns because we have them too.

And in a perfect world, we would never have to go there.

But the right to defend oneself

That is a right, and I think that more people should avail themselves of that right when they need to.

And I'm not talking about just going out and buying a gun, but I am saying we do get to fight back.

We shouldn't have to just bow our heads and suck it up.

But I very much admire what nonviolent activists were doing.

And in that piece I wrote, because I had recently been to the Civil Rights History Museum, and it was just so...

powerful.

I had, you know, it's just a really great museum and really well curated and very

educational, and I mean that in the best possible way.

And so ever since then, I've just been thinking so much about what a significant effort it was during the 40s, 50s, 60s, and quite honestly, up to till today, that what a great movement and how powerful it has been to see so many different approaches all arcing toward the same goal.

And we need multiple approaches.

It's not going to be just any one strategy that's going to overcome the rise of the second or the third or the fifth rise of fascism in this country and honestly in other places as well.

So we just have to be able to have that conversation and say, you know, it's going to take a lot of different strategies and a lot of different minds.

I thought that it was all very performative on the parts of politicians.

And I don't think they care one way or the other about Charlie Kirk or what happened.

I think they understood that they had to perform contrition just in case.