Killer Mike Discusses Black Gun Ownership, Starbucks Arrests On Joy Reid

Killer Mike Discusses Black Gun Ownership, Starbucks Arrests On Joy Reid

Last month, Killer Mike gave a controversial interview to the National Rifle Association’s online television channel, speaking out in favor of gun ownership and saying that he didn’t want his children to participate in the student walkouts for gun control. As you can imagine, that interview didn’t go over so well with a lot of people. After being roundly criticized for the video on social media, Killer Mike apologized and said that the clip was “used in the wrong way,” clarifying that he supported the March For Our Lives and that he wanted to have a dialogue specifically about the importance of gun ownership within the black community.

One of the people who criticized Mike for the interview was MSNBC host Joy Reid, who tweeted, “Killer Mike cosigning an organization that traffics in threats against the media (including black women), that ignored Philando Castile, and that pushes gun sales through ‘brown/black scare’ videos is his choice.” And a couple of weeks later, when Reid posed for an Instagram selfie with two other women and wrote that they “rocked the H&M” in the caption, Killer Mike criticized her right back, writing, “So Me doing an interview about black Gun ownership with the NRA is ‘bad’ but u promoting a company that tagged a Black Child a Monkey is ‘good, cool, acceptible.'”

Killer Mike was referring to the offensive ad that the clothing retail company H&M ran earlier this year featuring a photo of a black child wearing a “coolest monkey in the jungle” hoodie. The only problem? That wasn’t the “H&M” Reid was referring to. “‘H&M’ stands for ‘hair and makeup,’ Mike,” Reid explained. “The two women beside me in this pic did my hair (H) and makeup (M) for a shoot. The blouse I’m wearing is by @norisolferrari and I doubt you can buy it in the retail chain you’re thinking of. (I got it from the designer via a stylist.) And here I was thinking you were an intellectual, and not just the guy who hangs out in the sunken place talking guns with the NRA’s ‘official black guy’ who literally changed his last name to ‘black.'”

After being roundly criticized once more, Killer Mike acknowledged that he was wrong and apologized on Twitter. “My apologies for my misunderstanding @JoyAnnReid and I hope we get that Black Gun owner Minus the NRA interview,” he tweeted. And he’s getting his wish: As a result of all of this unnecessary beef, Mike actually managed to get in touch with Reid and her producers, and today, he went on her show AM Joy to talk about black gun ownership “on an acceptable platform.”

On the show, Mike apologized once again to Reid, who pointed out that the NRA has specifically targeted her in a social media campaign and asked Mike, “Do you recognize the sense that a lot of us out here have that the NRA is actually low-key threatening, particularly to people of color?” To which Mike responded, “I’m sorry that an organization like the NRA has sunk to levels of all of us. All of us have become very petty. What I did was petty. It could be argued what other people from the left and right did was petty.”

He went on to discuss the importance of black gun ownership, and they closed the interview by talking about the recent incident in which two black men were arrested while waiting in a Starbucks. Watch a clip from the interview below and watch the whole thing on MSNBC here.

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