Guns and Race...

5fish

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Gun Control laws have racist roots...

There were Gun Control laws even back before and after our Civil War. Their main purpose was to not allow freed slaves to own guns before the war and later after the war for the Freedmen not to own guns. One of the main drivers behind the Fourteenth Amendment was to insure that new Freedmen had the right to keep and bear arms.

Stephen Halbrook’s Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876 is a “study [that] traces the adoption of, and investigates the interrelationship between, the Fourteenth Amendment and the civil rights legislation passed during Reconstruction, particularly focusing on the right to keep and bear arms.

The end of the Civil War was not the end of tyranny against the newly freed slaves. Following the Civil War, former slave owners interested in maintaining their position of power worked with southern state and local governments to implement a myriad of gun control laws against the freed slaves. These laws were publicly argued as reasonable measures for safety, but – as documented by Halbrook - were in reality based in the fear of a rebellion and (in some cases) to impose non-institutionalized slavery upon a defenseless population.


The argument goes before the Civil War and the Fourteenth amendment, The Bill of Rights did not apply to state governments only to the federal government. The states could infringe upon a person right to keep and bear arms if it choose too for the Second amendment did not apply to state governments.

Before the Civil War, states could ignore the Bill of Rights, which was understood to apply only to the federal government. The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Union victory, was intended to ensure the federal government could protect individuals from abusive state governments.

Our Fourteenth amendment is in reality the second amendment of our Constitution even more boldly gives our Bill of Rights its teeth...

Our Fourteenth Amendment:

The Fourteenth Amendment (Section 1):
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


Here is a link to racist roots of Gun Control...
http://www.davekopel.com/2a/mags/dark-secret-of-jim-crow.html
 

5fish

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Here is a better link: the pro-gun people should love this site...

LinkS; http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/dark-secret-of-jim-crow.html

Because the new 14th Amendment forbade any state to deny "the equal protection of the laws," gun control statutes aimed at blacks could no longer be written in overtly racial terms. Instead, the South created racially neutral laws designed to disarm freedmen. Some laws prohibited inexpensive firearms while protecting more expensive military guns owned by former Confederate soldiers. Meanwhile, other laws imposed licensing systems or carry restrictions. As a Florida Supreme Court justice later acknowledged, these laws were "never intended to be applied to the white population" (Watson v. Stone, 1941).

Tennessee

Setting a pattern that was typical in the South, Tennessee courts initially protected the right to arms, but then abandoned the field as Jim Crow took over. In 1870, the Tennessee Legislature prohibited the carrying of "a dirk, sword-cane, Spanish stiletto, belt or pocket pistol or revolver," either openly or concealed. The Tennessee Supreme Court addressed the ban in the well-known and still-influential 1871 case, Andrews v. State.

The Andrews court stated that people had a right to arms, including the right to buy guns and ammunition, to take guns to gunsmiths and to carry guns and ammunition for purposes of sale and repair.

The court rejected the notion that the right to arms was a "political right," like voting or jury service, which belonged to only a subset of the people. Rather, the right to arms was a civil right to be enjoyed by all citizens.

The right to carry in public could be regulated, but not prohibited: "The power to regulate does not fairly mean the power to prohibit; on the contrary, to regulate necessarily involves the existence of the thing or act to be regulated."
 

5fish

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How times change or its who displays the guns... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...istory-race-black-panther-party-conservatives

By 1967, the newly formed, Oakland-based Black Panther Party had made the public display of guns central to its organizing power. That year, the party published a “Ten-Point Program” outlining its demands and beliefs, listing housing, employment, education, an end to the draft, and full prison abolition for black men as basic tenets of its new political platform. Led by charismatic figures like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the emerging movement was younger, more revolutionary in philosophy, and more confrontational in strategy than King’s nonviolent protest movement.

They sound like white people of today...

“We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.

Republican to the rescue... NRA supported it... save white people...

The party’s flamboyant and confrontational strategy came to a crescendo May 2, 1967, when Black Panther Party members went to the California State Capitol to protest a pending bill they saw as an existential threat. The bill was proposed by a conservative Republican in the California legislature named Don Mulford, who sought to prohibit the public carrying of loaded firearms in the state — a move clearly targeted to disband or weaken the Black Panthers by criminalizing their signature tactic. The NRA supported Mulford’s bill, which was consistent with the moderate stance the organization had taken on gun control legislation throughout most of its history up to that point.

Black men defend their 2nd amendment rights...

On May 2, 31 members of the Black Panther Party, led by Seale, entered the capitol in Sacramento with loaded guns to protest the proposed policy, which was designed, according to Seale, to “[keep] black people disarmed and powerless.” With their guns pointed at the ceiling, the party members peacefully entered the legislature to demand their right to carry. The protesters held a de facto press conference reiterating their demands for racial justice; afterward, the group was arrested by Oakland police on charges of conspiring to disrupt the legislative session occurring inside.

Ronnie Reagan going to stop those Black men with guns... stopping open carry...

The state’s governor at the time was Ronald Reagan, who took a public stance in favor of Mulford’s bill. In fact, he praised gun control generally, telling reporters that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons” and calling gun possession a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of goodwill.” He soon signed the Mulford Act into law, and it’s still in effect in California today.

R
eagan was for gun control .... bless his heart...

Here is civil war link... only the white race can have guns...

In the 1860s, in the aftermath of the Civil War, several Southern states passed racist gun control measures that were explicitly designed to disarm newly freed black Southerners. And in the 1930s, NRA President Karl T. Frederick helped draft legislation to restrict concealed carry of guns at the state level in response to gun violence in cities that many Americans associated with Italian immigrants (who were not necessarily, at the time, considered “white”).

Gun control was once accepted, even endorsed, by both Reagan — the icon of modern conservatism — and the NRA, perhaps the most stubborn and effective advocacy organization that this country has ever seen. Gun control used to be bipartisan — when the most visible “law abiding citizens” holding the guns were black. And if the politics of this debate have shifted in the past, there’s no reason they can’t in the future.

The article is long but a fun trip sees how when a black man carries a gun it a threat to white men...
 

Kirk's Raider's

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How times change or its who displays the guns... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...istory-race-black-panther-party-conservatives

By 1967, the newly formed, Oakland-based Black Panther Party had made the public display of guns central to its organizing power. That year, the party published a “Ten-Point Program” outlining its demands and beliefs, listing housing, employment, education, an end to the draft, and full prison abolition for black men as basic tenets of its new political platform. Led by charismatic figures like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the emerging movement was younger, more revolutionary in philosophy, and more confrontational in strategy than King’s nonviolent protest movement.

They sound like white people of today...

“We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.

Republican to the rescue... NRA supported it... save white people...

The party’s flamboyant and confrontational strategy came to a crescendo May 2, 1967, when Black Panther Party members went to the California State Capitol to protest a pending bill they saw as an existential threat. The bill was proposed by a conservative Republican in the California legislature named Don Mulford, who sought to prohibit the public carrying of loaded firearms in the state — a move clearly targeted to disband or weaken the Black Panthers by criminalizing their signature tactic. The NRA supported Mulford’s bill, which was consistent with the moderate stance the organization had taken on gun control legislation throughout most of its history up to that point.

Black men defend their 2nd amendment rights...

On May 2, 31 members of the Black Panther Party, led by Seale, entered the capitol in Sacramento with loaded guns to protest the proposed policy, which was designed, according to Seale, to “[keep] black people disarmed and powerless.” With their guns pointed at the ceiling, the party members peacefully entered the legislature to demand their right to carry. The protesters held a de facto press conference reiterating their demands for racial justice; afterward, the group was arrested by Oakland police on charges of conspiring to disrupt the legislative session occurring inside.

Ronnie Reagan going to stop those Black men with guns... stopping open carry...

The state’s governor at the time was Ronald Reagan, who took a public stance in favor of Mulford’s bill. In fact, he praised gun control generally, telling reporters that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons” and calling gun possession a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of goodwill.” He soon signed the Mulford Act into law, and it’s still in effect in California today.

R
eagan was for gun control .... bless his heart...

Here is civil war link... only the white race can have guns...

In the 1860s, in the aftermath of the Civil War, several Southern states passed racist gun control measures that were explicitly designed to disarm newly freed black Southerners. And in the 1930s, NRA President Karl T. Frederick helped draft legislation to restrict concealed carry of guns at the state level in response to gun violence in cities that many Americans associated with Italian immigrants (who were not necessarily, at the time, considered “white”).

Gun control was once accepted, even endorsed, by both Reagan — the icon of modern conservatism — and the NRA, perhaps the most stubborn and effective advocacy organization that this country has ever seen. Gun control used to be bipartisan — when the most visible “law abiding citizens” holding the guns were black. And if the politics of this debate have shifted in the past, there’s no reason they can’t in the future.

The article is long but a fun trip sees how when a black man carries a gun it a threat to white men...
Absolutely right . South Africa during Apartied banned black people from armed carry except for black police officers who could even take home their FN -FAL rifles to protect their homes.
In Namibia during South African rule certain Native Africans could possess firearms.
Kirk's Raiders
 

jgoodguy

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How times change or its who displays the guns... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...istory-race-black-panther-party-conservatives

By 1967, the newly formed, Oakland-based Black Panther Party had made the public display of guns central to its organizing power. That year, the party published a “Ten-Point Program” outlining its demands and beliefs, listing housing, employment, education, an end to the draft, and full prison abolition for black men as basic tenets of its new political platform. Led by charismatic figures like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the emerging movement was younger, more revolutionary in philosophy, and more confrontational in strategy than King’s nonviolent protest movement.

They sound like white people of today...

“We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.

Republican to the rescue... NRA supported it... save white people...

The party’s flamboyant and confrontational strategy came to a crescendo May 2, 1967, when Black Panther Party members went to the California State Capitol to protest a pending bill they saw as an existential threat. The bill was proposed by a conservative Republican in the California legislature named Don Mulford, who sought to prohibit the public carrying of loaded firearms in the state — a move clearly targeted to disband or weaken the Black Panthers by criminalizing their signature tactic. The NRA supported Mulford’s bill, which was consistent with the moderate stance the organization had taken on gun control legislation throughout most of its history up to that point.

Black men defend their 2nd amendment rights...

On May 2, 31 members of the Black Panther Party, led by Seale, entered the capitol in Sacramento with loaded guns to protest the proposed policy, which was designed, according to Seale, to “[keep] black people disarmed and powerless.” With their guns pointed at the ceiling, the party members peacefully entered the legislature to demand their right to carry. The protesters held a de facto press conference reiterating their demands for racial justice; afterward, the group was arrested by Oakland police on charges of conspiring to disrupt the legislative session occurring inside.

Ronnie Reagan going to stop those Black men with guns... stopping open carry...

The state’s governor at the time was Ronald Reagan, who took a public stance in favor of Mulford’s bill. In fact, he praised gun control generally, telling reporters that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons” and calling gun possession a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of goodwill.” He soon signed the Mulford Act into law, and it’s still in effect in California today.

R
eagan was for gun control .... bless his heart...

Here is civil war link... only the white race can have guns...

In the 1860s, in the aftermath of the Civil War, several Southern states passed racist gun control measures that were explicitly designed to disarm newly freed black Southerners. And in the 1930s, NRA President Karl T. Frederick helped draft legislation to restrict concealed carry of guns at the state level in response to gun violence in cities that many Americans associated with Italian immigrants (who were not necessarily, at the time, considered “white”).

Gun control was once accepted, even endorsed, by both Reagan — the icon of modern conservatism — and the NRA, perhaps the most stubborn and effective advocacy organization that this country has ever seen. Gun control used to be bipartisan — when the most visible “law abiding citizens” holding the guns were black. And if the politics of this debate have shifted in the past, there’s no reason they can’t in the future.

The article is long but a fun trip sees how when a black man carries a gun it a threat to white men...
I always wonder what would happen if there were left-wing militias with blacks and browns as members.
 

PatYoung

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By this measure, all laws in the United States have racist origins, so why single out gun control. We should not have electoral laws since they once restricted voting to white men. We should not have property laws since many states restricted who could own land. Juries? Juries were restricted to white men.

This whole focus on the "racist origins of gun control" misses the central issue-Race (not gun control).
 

PatYoung

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I always wonder what would happen if there were left-wing militias with blacks and browns as members.
When the black student union at Cornell began carrying guns at their rallies in the '60s, the university took action against them. They protested that the ROTC had long paraded with guns on campus. At least at Cornell, race played a big factor in who could and could not carry guns.
 

Kirk's Raider's

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I always wonder what would happen if there were left-wing militias with blacks and browns as members.
The Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army in the 1960s come to mind as well has Decoans for self defense.
There is the John Brown Brigade in Phoenix,Az.
Kirk's Raiders
 

5fish

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This whole focus on the "racist origins of gun control" misses the central issue-Race (not gun control).
John Brown Brigade
left-wing militias with blacks and browns as members.
https://guncite.com/journals/senhal14.html
Here is a thought... 14th amendment and guns... https://guncite.com/journals/senhal14.html

The link is good you should read it for the right to bear arms was one of the reasons it was promoted

Snip... the south was disarming Color veterans... i just took a few snippets from the article...

If African Americans were citizens, observed Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] "it would give to persons of the negro race ... the full liberty of speech ...; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."[2] If this interpretation ignores that Articles I and II of the Bill of Rights designate the respective freedoms guaranteed therein to "the people" and not simply the citizens (much less a select group of orators or militia), contrariwise Dred Scott followed antebellum judicial thought in recognizing keeping and bearing arms as an individual right[3] protected from both federal and state infringement.[4] The exception to this interpretation were cases holding that the Second Amendment only protected citizens[5] from federal, not state,[6] infringement of the right to keep and bear arms, to provide judicial approval of laws disarming black freemen and slaves.

Since the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to overrule Dred Scott by extending individual constitutional rights to black Americans and by providing protection thereof against state infringement,[7] the question arises whether the framers of Amendment XIV and related enforcement legislation recognized keeping and bearing arms as an individual right on which no state could infringe. The congressional intent in respect to the Fourteenth Amendment is revealed in the debates over both Amendments XIII and XIV as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Anti-KKK Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Given the unanimity of opinion concerning state regulation of privately held arms by the legislators who framed the Fourteenth Amendment and its enforcement legislation, it is surprising that judicial opinions and scholarly articles fail to analyze the Reconstruction debates.[8]

Snip...

After the war was concluded, the slave codes, which limited access of blacks to land, to arms, and to the courts, began to reappear in the form of the black codes,[18] and United States legislators turned their attention to the protection of the freedmen. In support of Senate Bill No. 9, which declared as void all laws in the rebel states which recognized inequality of rights based on race, Sen. Henry Wilson (R., Mass.) explained in part: "In Mississippi rebel State forces, men who were in the rebel armies, are traversing the State, visiting the freedmen, disarming them, perpetrating murders and outrages on them.

When Congress took up Senate Bill No. 61, which became the Civil Rights Act of 1866,[20] Sen. Lyman Trumbull (R., Ill.), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicated that the bill was intended to prohibit inequalities embodied in the black codes, including those provisions which "prohibit any negro or mulatto from having fire-arms."[21] In abolishing the badges of slavery, the bill would enforce fundamental rights against racial discrimination in respect to civil rights, the rights to contract, sue and engage in commerce, and equal criminal penalties. Sen. William Saulsbury (D., Del.) added: "In my State for many years, and I presume there are similar laws in most of the southern States, there has existed a law of the State based upon and founded in its police power, which declares that free negroes shall not have the possession of firearms or ammunition. This bill proposes to take away from the States this police power...." The Delaware Democrat opposed the bill on this basis, anticipating a time when "a numerous body of dangerous persons belonging to any distinct race" endangered the state, for "the State shall not have the power to disarm them without disarming the whole population."[22] Thus, the bill would have prohibited legislative schemes which in effect disarmed blacks but not whites. Still, supporters of the bill were soon to contend that arms bearing was a basic right of citizenship or personhood
.

In the meantime, the legislators turned their attention to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill. Rep. Thomas D. Eloit (R., Mass.) attacked an Opelousas, Louisiana ordinance which deprived blacks of various civil rights, including the following provision: "No freedman who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry firearms, or any kind of weapons, within the limits of the town of Opelousas without the special permission of his employer ... and (p.71)approved by the mayor or president of the board of police."[23] And Rep. Josiah B. Grinnell (R., Iowa) complained: "A white man in Kentucky may keep a gun; if a black man buys a gun he forfeits it and pays a fine of five dollars, if presuming to keep in his possession a musket which he has carried through the war."[24] Yet the right of blacks to have arms existed partly as self-defense against the state militia itself, which implied that militia needs were not the only constitutional basis for the right to bear arms. Sen. Trumbull cited a report from Vicksburg, Mississippi which stated: "Nearly all the dissatisfaction that now exists among the freedmen is caused by the abusive conduct of this militia."[25] Rather than restore order, the militia would typically "hand some freedman or search negro houses for arms."[26] As debate returned to the Civil Rights Bill, Rep. Henry J. Raymond (R., N.Y.) explained of the rights of citizenship: "Make the colored man a citizen of the United States and he has every right which you or I have as citizens of the United States under the laws and Constitution of the United States.... He has a defined status; he has a country and a home; a right to defend himself and his wife and children; a right to bear arms...."[27] Rep. Roswell Hart (R., N.Y.) further states: "The Constitution clearly describes that to be a republican form of government for which it was expressly framed. A government ... where 'no law shall be made prohibiting a free exercise of religion;' where 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;'...."[28] He concluded that it was the duty of the United States to guarantee that the states have such a form of government.[29]

Rep. Sidney Clarke (R., Kansas) referred to an 1866 Alabama law providing: "That it shall not be lawful for any freedman, mulatto, or free person of color in this State, to own firearms, or carry about his person a pistol or other deadly weapon."[30] This same statute made it unlawful "to sell, give, or lend fire-arms or ammunition of any description whatever, to any freedman, free negro, or mulatto...."[31] Clarke also attacked Mississippi, "whose rebel militia, upon the seizure of the arms of black Union Soldiers, appropriated the same to their own use."[32]

Sir, I find in the Constitution of the United States an article which declares that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." For myself, I shall insist that the reconstructed rebels of Mississippi respect the Constitution in their local laws....[33]

Emotionally referring to the disarming of black soldiers, Clarke added:

Nearly every white man in that State that could bear arms was in the rebel ranks. Nearly all of their able-bodied colored men who could reach our lines enlisted under the old flag. Many of these brave defenders of the nation paid for the arms with which they went to battle.... The "reconstructed" State authorities of Mississippi were allowed to rob and disarm our veteran soldiers....[34](p.72)

In sum, Clarke presupposed a constitutional right to keep privately held arms for protection against oppressive state militia.



 

Viper21

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The 2A is going to be front & center for much of the year. Due to actions currently underway in my beloved Virginia, many of the issues involving the 2A are going to be heard at the Supreme Court level relatively soon. With the push back from 91 of the 95 counties in Virginia, these issues are aren't going to go away quietly. I believe the SCOTUS will be forced to act.

I believe lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the measures, will be filed immediately following any new laws enacted by our general assembly which is currently in session.
 

5fish

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I believe lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the measures,
A long article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

Although decades of electoral defeats have moderated the gun-control movement’s stated goals, advocates still deny that individual Americans have any constitutional right to own guns. The Second Amendment, in their view, protects only state militias. Too politically weak to force disarmament on the nation, gun-control hard-liners support any new law that has a chance to be enacted, however unlikely that law is to reduce gun violence. For them, the Second Amendment is all regulation and no rights.

snip... Founding father

While the two sides disagree on the meaning of the Second Amendment, they share a similar view of the right to bear arms: both see such a right as fundamentally inconsistent with gun control, and believe we must choose one or the other. Gun rights and gun control, however, have lived together since the birth of the country. Americans have always had the right to keep and bear arms as a matter of state constitutional law. Today, 43 of the 50 state constitutions clearly protect an individual’s right to own guns, apart from militia service.

Yet we’ve also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.

Snip ... individual mandate!

For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.

Snip... racist...

Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as “an arsenal.” William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King’s parsonage.

Snip... Civil war...

Indisputably, for much of American history, gun-control measures, like many other laws, were used to oppress African Americans. The South had long prohibited blacks, both slave and free, from owning guns. In the North, however, at the end of the Civil War, the Union army allowed soldiers of any color to take home their rifles. Even blacks who hadn’t served could buy guns in the North, amid the glut of firearms produced for the war. President Lincoln had promised a “new birth of freedom,” but many blacks knew that white Southerners were not going to go along easily with such a vision. As one freedman in Louisiana recalled, “I would say to every colored soldier, ‘Bring your gun home.’”


After losing the Civil War, Southern states quickly adopted the Black Codes, laws designed to reestablish white supremacy by dictating what the freedmen could and couldn’t do. One common provision barred blacks from possessing firearms. To enforce the gun ban, white men riding in posses began terrorizing black communities. In January 1866, Harper’s Weekly reported that in Mississippi, such groups had “seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen” in parts of the state. The most infamous of these disarmament posses, of course, was the Ku Klux Klan.

Snip... laws...

In response to the Black Codes and the mounting atrocities against blacks in the former Confederacy, the North sought to reaffirm the freedmen’s constitutional rights, including their right to possess guns. General Daniel E. Sickles, the commanding Union officer enforcing Reconstruction in South Carolina, ordered in January 1866 that “the constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed.” When South Carolinians ignored Sickles’s order and others like it, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of July 1866, which assured ex-slaves the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty … including the constitutional right to bear arms.”

The Fourteenth Amendment illustrates a common dynamic in America’s gun culture: extremism stirs a strong reaction.
The aggressive Southern effort to disarm the freedmen prompted a constitutional amendment to better protect their rights. A hundred years later, the Black Panthers’ brazen insistence on the right to bear arms led whites, including conservative Republicans, to support new gun control. Then the pendulum swung back. The gun-control laws of the late 1960s, designed to restrict the use of guns by urban black leftist radicals, fueled the rise of the present-day gun-rights movement—one that, in an ironic reversal, is predominantly white, rural, and politically conservative.

The end of the article points to where in history the NRA supported and push for gun control laws. They supported the "gangster tax" on guns...

link:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/
 

5fish

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I decided to balance the argument here with pro-gun quotes by our Founding Fathers... I think we have Thomas Jefferson's "dangerous peace" an sample of them...


"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined..."
- George Washington, First Annual Address, to both House of Congress, January 8, 1790

"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
 
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