Dr. Alveda King, whose uncle Martin Luther King, Jr. was cut down by an assassin’s bullet in 1968, tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview that President Barack Obama has gone too far in proposing “extreme measures” that aren’t likely to succeed in turning the tide of gun violence in America.
“I believe that you can have some normal restraints even for use of guns just like people have driver’s licenses,” King said on Wednesday. “So there should be some regulation, of course — for everything including guns — but the extreme measures that are being recommended by the current administration and the political world will not solve the problems.”
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Earlier on Wednesday President Obama announced the most sweeping set of gun control measures in two decades, pressing a reluctant Congress to pass universal background checks and bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the Newtown, Conn. school shooting that flooded American homes with images of tiny coffins, and selfless acts of heroism only days before Christmas.
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A month after that horrific massacre, Obama also used his presidential powers to enact 23 measures that don't require the backing of lawmakers.
The president's executive actions include ordering federal agencies to make more data available for background checks, appointing a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and directing the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence.
“My dear uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was cut down by an assassin’s bullet. His mother — my grandmother, Mama King — was also shot in our church. However, my father was killed under very suspicious circumstance in the same civil rights movement, and no gun was involved,” recalled King, a pastoral associate and director of African-American outreach for Priests for Life and Gospel of Life Ministries.
“He was in a pool with no water in his lungs. And if you take away all of the guns, people can use bombs, they can use knives, they can use clubs, and they can use poison.”
By introducing the new measures just days before his inauguration, Obama is placing the gun debate at the top of his second-term agenda. He and his congressional allies face strong opposition, particularly in the Republican-run House, to his legislative proposals. Supporters in the Senate lack the 60 votes needed to advance major legislation there.
King, a Newsmax contributor, who grew up in America’s civil rights movement, has certainly encountered more than her share of violence, recalling as a young girl the night her family’s home in Birmingham was twice firebombed back in May 1963.
“My father was able to rescue all of us out of that house, guided by the power of the Holy Spirit. None of us were harmed, although, when those fire bombs hit — there were two — half of our house was destroyed,” she explained. “And my father, I remember him getting us outside, and I remember him standing up on a car because the people were angry, they were outraged and they wanted to riot and they wanted to overturn the police cars and all of this.”
Her father, A.D. King, appealed to the angry crowd for calm, himself still reeling from the blasts that shook young Alveda to her very core. “I remember my father standing up on a car and he said, ‘My family and I are okay. Please go home. Please do not riot. If you have to hit somebody, hit me.’ He said, ‘I rather you not hit anybody. Please, we’re okay,” she explained. “God is good. We’re safe.’ And that was a message that I always heard from my father in very perilous times. He always called on the Lord, he really did.”
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Her message today to President Obama, is that there are many ways that people kill one another in the absence of guns.
“My uncle called it inhumanity to man. So, rather than giving all of our effort to gun control, we need . . . to start looking at the hearts of the people and even consider when you do things like taking prayer out of schools, like they did in 1963, or just cut off all efforts to give people value systems and morals and values that we used to have — like my uncle said in rediscovering lost values — then that’s where our efforts should be.”
She believes that the U.S. needs to educate people with respect to the potential harm that can be done not just with guns — but all weapons.
“We can improve the messaging that’s in our movies, in our music, in our videos, it’s in games that the children use, and then we can look into giving people options other than violence to resolve their conflicts,” she asserted, pointing to the 10 steps of nonviolent social change advocated by her uncle and father even during her family's darkest hours.
“They embraced those values which are Bible-based and Bible-founded,” she said. “Even in the Bible, when Peter was going to try to protect Jesus and he cut off a soldier’s ear and Jesus put the ear back on the soldier and said, ‘look, I’m going to do the job that I came here to do.’ And so we know that violence does happen but there are ways to change the heart without trying to overregulate even the civil rights in the Constitution of good people.”
Nevertheless, King doesn’t support the idea that teachers should be permitted to carry arms into the classroom as some Second Amendment proponents have suggested.
“You’re going to arm teachers with a gun, but you’re not going to arm the teachers with a Bible or the ability to pray?” she asked. “So you say to a teacher 'you can’t pray, but you can shoot a student.' I’m wondering if people are thinking about this.”
King believes that the Sandy Hook killing is emblematic of a society that has grown tolerant of abortion since the Supreme Court first legalized the practice 40 years ago in Roe vs. Wade.
“I always say to people that there’s a greater protection and that’s the Lord,” said King, a Newsmax contributor. “But our Constitution provides that right for us to make those decisions. So it’s okay to let doctors and facilities abort babies but it’s not okay for citizens to obey the United States Constitution? It’s just – I don’t understand.”
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King plans to attend the annual March for Life in Washington on January 25 to rally support for the repeal of Roe vs. Wade.
“I want to invite America to stop the biggest violent act that happens in America — killing millions of babies, harming millions of women,” she added. “Are we going to regulate Planned Parenthood . . . the largest abortion provider? So we want gun control . . . Where’s the Planned Parenthood control?"
The Associated Press and Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
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