The event that seared its way most powerfully into Rice’s memory was the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. She heard the blast. Rice recalls the terror she felt as an eight-year-old. “These terrible events burned into my
consciousness,” she remembers. And, as America shook its head in disbelief at the murder of four girls, Condi was mourning the two she knew personally--including Denise McNair, her kindergarten classmate. “I remember more than anything the coffins, the
small coffins, and the sense that Birmingham was not a very safe place.“
Armed with a shotgun, her father joined the other men of the black community in night patrols to keep the KKK out of the neighborhood.
It was in the crucible of that experience that Condoleezza developed her opposition to gun control and came to value what she sees as the Second Amendment guarantee of the ”right to bear arms.“
I also don’t think we get to pick and choose in the Constitution. The Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment.
My father and his friends defended our community in 1962 and 1963 against white nightriders sitting there armed.
And so I’m very concerned about any abridgement of the Second Amendment.
I am a Second Amendment absolutist.
Source: Draft Condi website, www.4condi.com, “Issues”
, May 11, 2005
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