Maj Toure Returns to the Twin Cities

@ChicagoMorningAnswer

Maj Toure Returns to the Twin Cities: Not Just Talking Rights—Teaching Responsibility

Minneapolis–St. Paul, July 2020

Three years after his first Twin Cities stop, Maj Toure returned — this time, not to speak, but to train.

The founder of Black Guns Matter stepped back into Minnesota not with a campaign or a speech, but with live rounds, registered students, and a continued commitment to ensure that Black gun ownership is not only informed, but skilled, lawful, and confident. This time, it wasn’t a meet-and-greet. It was a firearms safety and shooting course.

In a country where Black gun ownership is disproportionately politicized, criminalized, and misunderstood, Toure’s work isn’t theoretical — it’s survival-focused.

“There’s no savior coming to solve our problems. We have to become our own first responders,” Toure told Business Insider in a 2020 interview. And in many communities, that starts with understanding rights, then building the competence to safely exercise them.

That’s what this training was: a hands-on response to the reality that simply owning a firearm isn’t enough. Knowing how to use it responsibly, safely, and legally is the other half of the right — and too often, the part underserved communities are denied access to.

Bridging the Gap: Information, Access, and Dignity

Toure’s approach isn't just about the Second Amendment — it's about equity. It’s about bridging the massive gap between legal gun ownership and cultural access to training, context, and dignity. While mainstream narratives often depict gun culture through a rural, white, conservative lens, Black Guns Matter reframes the conversation entirely: Gun rights are civil rights.

That idea isn’t new — but Toure's framing is precise, modern, and unapologetic. He speaks directly to young, urban audiences often left out of mainstream firearms education, offering real talk instead of rhetoric. This includes confronting both the state and internalized stigma: the fear that Black people with guns are always presumed criminals, even when legal, licensed, and trained.

That reality is what makes education essential. A right you can’t safely exercise is a right denied — and Toure’s work meets that denial head-on.

More Than a Movement — A Civic Duty

What makes Black Guns Matter resonate is its simplicity: community education as harm reduction. No political theater. Just a grassroots model: show up, share knowledge, offer tools. Repeat.

This return to the Twin Cities wasn’t a rally. It wasn’t a photo op. It was a training session. Quiet, intentional, focused.

And in a moment where Black civic power is surveilled, policed, and debated in every direction, sometimes the most radical act is this: to learn. To teach. To show up. Again.

Toure did that.

And for those in attendance — legally registered and ready to be trained — it was one more reminder that civic self-determination is a muscle. You build it by doing the work.