Gun advocates plan to observe America's first national Gun Appreciation Day on January 19, 2013, which is just a few days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birth-date. The 19th also happens to be the birth-date of General Robert E. Lee, as well as a day observed as Confederate Memorial Day in several Southern states. 

Today the founder and chairman of Gun Appreciation Day Larry Ward said the following on CNN:

"I believe that Gun Appreciation Day honors the legacy of Dr. King. The truth is, 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."