Today is not 1893, and when proponents of restrictive gun control insist that their motivations are color-blind, there is a possibility that they are telling the truth. Nonetheless, there are some rather interesting questions that should be asked today. The most obvious question is, "Why should a police chief or sheriff have any discretion in issuing a concealed handgun permit?" Here in California, even the state legislature's research arm--hardly a nest of pro-gunners--has admitted that the vast majority of permits to carry concealed handguns in California are issued to white males. <36> Even if overt racism is not an issue, an official may simply have more empathy with an applicant of a similar cultural background, and consequently be more able to relate to the applicant's concerns. As my wife pointedly reminded a police official when we applied for concealed weapon permits, "If more police chiefs were women, a lot more women would get permits, and be able to defend themselves from rapists."
Gun control advocates today are not so foolish as to openly promote racist laws, and so the question might be asked what relevance the racist past of gun control laws has. One concern is that the motivations for disarming blacks in the past are really not so different from the motivations for disarming law-abiding citizens today. In the last century, the official rhetoric in support of such laws was that "they" were too violent, too untrustworthy, to be allowed weapons. Today, the same elitist rhetoric regards law-abiding Americans in the same way, as child-like creatures in need of guidance from the government. In the last century, while never openly admitted, one of the goals of disarming blacks was to make them more willing to accept various forms of economic oppression, including the sharecropping system, in which free blacks were reduced to an economic state not dramatically superior to the conditions of slavery.
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html Gun Control:
White Man's Law by William R. TonsoChances are that you've never heard of General Laney. He hasn't had a brilliant military career, at least as far as I know. In fact, I'm not certain that he's even served in the military. General, you see, isn't Laney's rank. General is Laney's first name. General Laney does, however, have a claim to fame, unrecognized though it may be.
Detroit resident General Laney is the founder and prime mover behind a little publicized organization known as the National Black Sportsman's Association, often referred to as "the black gun lobby." Laney pulls no punches when asked his opinion of gun control: "Gun control is really race control. People who embrace gun control are really racists in nature. All gun laws have been enacted to control certain classes of people, mainly black people, but the same laws used to control blacks are being used to disarm white people as well."
Laney is not the first to make this observation. Indeed, allied with sportsmen in vocal opposition to gun controls in the 1960s were the militant Black Panthers. Panther Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver noted in 1968: "Some very interesting laws are being passed. They don't name me; they don't say, take the guns away from the niggers. They say that people will no longer be allowed to have (guns). They don't pass these rules and these regulations specifically for black people, they have to pass them in a way that will take in everybody."
Some white liberals have said essentially the same thing. Investigative reporter Robert Sherrill, himself no lover of guns, concluded in his book The Saturday Night Special that the object of the Gun Control Act of 1968 was black control rather than gun control. According to Sherrill, Congress was so panicked by the ghetto riots of 1967 and 1968 that it passed the act to "shut off weapons access to blacks, and since they (Congress) probably associated cheap guns with ghetto blacks and thought cheapness was peculiarly the characteristic of imported military surplus and the mail-order traffic, they decided to cut off these sources while leaving over-the-counter purchases open to the affluent." Congressional motivations may have been more complex than Sherrill suggests, but keeping blacks from acquiring guns was certainly a large part of that motivation. (Incidentally, the Senate has passed legislation that would repeal the more-onerous provisions of the 1968 act. The bill faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives.)
http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_wtr8512.html From a brief filed to the Supreme Court in the Heller case:
IDENTITY AND INTEREST
OF AMICUS CURIAE
GeorgiaCarry.Org, Inc. submits this amicus
curiae brief in support of Respondents. Pursuant to
Supreme Court Rule 37(2)(a), this amicus curiae brief
is filed with the written consent of all parties.1
GeorgiaCarry.Org, Inc. is a non-profit corporation
organized under the laws of the state of Georgia. It is
dedicated to preserving and protecting the rights of
its members to keep and bear arms.
--------------------------------- ♦ ---------------------------------
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
The Petitioners recite a selective portion of the
history of gun control laws in the District of Columbia,
but omit portions of that history which demonstrate
that the Petitioners’ laws are deeply rooted in a
racist attempt to keep arms out of the hands of the
politically and economically disadvantaged. This brief
will explore the racist history of gun control in the
District of Columbia and throughout the country. It
also will show how the principles of black oppression
via gun control laws of yesterday are used to oppress
the politically weak today via those same, and additional
laws.
***snip***
CONCLUSION
American history, from colonial times to the
immediate past, is replete with evidence that gun
control has frequently been implemented with a
nefarious purpose of subjugating blacks and other
minorities. Even today’s gun control laws are often
vestiges of, or the continuation of, the nation’s Jim
Crow past. At best, many such laws have greater
effects on minorities and the economically disadvantaged.
As the parties and other amici no doubt will
argue, the Framers put into place a constitutional
guarantee that the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed. It clearly was the
intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment
to ensure that this guarantee applied to all people
and against the states as well as the federal government.
This Court should apply the Second Amendment
as it was intended, and eradicate any vestiges of Jim
Crow in the District of Columbia’s firearms laws.
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/briefs/07-290/07-290.mer.ami.resp.gc.pdfThe fact that blacks are largely in favor of gun control is true. However the fact that I am opposed to many of the draconian gun laws proposed by liberal organizations in no way makes me a racist. I have introduced blacks to the shooting sport in the past. Once they realize that shooting ranges welcome all races they find the sport enjoyable and rewarding. (Note: I can't speak for all ranges, but the ranges I shot at in the the Tampa Bay area treated people equally as fellow shooters despite race, gender or sexual orientation.)
The Black population seems to follow the path proposed by the very liberal faction of the Democratic Party. I believe that the liberal Democrats have successfully convinced blacks that white gun owners are similar to KKK members.
Hopefully, gun owning Democrats will, over time, correct this misconception and more blacks will join the ranks of shooters and others will no longer feel threatened by gun owners.
You can always ignore history and state that it's out of date and therefore irrelevant. History is never irrelevant. Ignoring it can lead to unpleasant results.
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