Today, minorities in the highest crime areas, where police protection is often weakest, most urgently need their civil rights of self-defense. Yet disarmament laws and the additional costs and legal hurdles they bring hurt poor communities especially. Because of drug prohibition, America incarcerates a greater percentage of the population than any other nation on earth. Violent felons walk free in order to make room for more non-violent drug offenders. Police are more likely to bust a black drug offender than a white drug offender, and the courts are more likely to put the black person in prison for longer sentences.
Drug prohibition exacerbates the already difficult problems of some poor and minority neighborhoods.
If civil libertarians of the left and civil libertarians of the right will stop demonizing one another and join forces for the betterment of all people, the resulting political movement will be unstoppable. If the sides continue in their myopic and mutually destructive struggles, both may lose to the police state. It's time to stand together.