During a Friday afternoon appearance on CNN, Larry Ward — chairman of Gun Appreciation Day (which is not a joke, but a planned mass gun buy during the weekend of President Obama’s inauguration) — claimed that slavery never would have existed if the slaves had guns.

“I believe that gun appreciation day honors the legacy of Dr. King,” Ward told his debate partner, United for Change USA founder Maria Roach. “I think Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African-Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.”

Of course, as Alec MacGillis pointed out via Twitter, “Yeah, John Brown had that thought, too. Didn’t turn out so well.”

Moreover, when Martin Luther King Jr. said “The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence,” he didn’t make an exception for “unless you’re packing heat.”

Perhaps this quote from Dr. King would be more appropriate for Ward: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”