Do you think gun control is a racist policy?

[bluestateguy]

MInd you I am talking about policy effects, not intentions.

[WheelWalker]

1. Non sequitur

[TPaine7]

2. Of course it is.

May issue laws, for one example, allow officials to give special privileges to those of "good moral character" which will be those most like the officials. In NY City, the rich, the powerful, the connected, the famous and the friends and mistresses of officials get special protection. These people tend to be white.

There are exceptions, of course. Bill Cosby reportedly can carry in NY, and Oprah probably could get a permit. That certainly doesn't mean that the discretionary system isn't racist in its effect, but it does point out another unconstitutional flaw. The system, while definitely racist, is even more emphatically classist. Yet each state is required to afford all citizens the equal protection of the law. Not that fanatics like Bloomberg concern themselves with such trifles as the Constitution of the United States of America.

[Euromutt]

4. As you say, definitely classist

I recall reading in some book about the Vietnam war (possibly After Tet by Ronald Spector, or Working Class War by Christian Appy) that the percentage of draftees who were black was, contrary to widely held belief, not disproportionate to the percentage of the general population (a lot of blacks failed the physical because of nutrition and health problems caused by growing up in poverty). Where blacks were disproportionately represented was in combat MOSs; very few blacks managed to be REMFs. But here's the kicker: when you looked at the percentage of combat troops who were black and compared the ethnic breakdown to that of lower-income groups in American society, blacks were, again, not disproportionately represented. The tentative conclusion (which is supported by further evidence) is that blacks didn't get shafted during Vietnam because they were black per se, but because they were poor, and they didn't get shafted to any greater degree than the poor of other ethnic backgrounds.

Applying this to gun control laws (because I was actually going somewhere with this), I wonder whether gun control laws, for say the past 50 years, have indeed been applied in a classist fashion rather than a racist one, and the reason they are racist in effect is because ethnic minorities are more likely to be lower-income. So, hypothetically, a generous donation to the sheriff's campaign fund will get you a CCW permit no matter what your skin color is, but because ethnic minorities are less likely to be able to afford the requisite donation. I.e. classist implementation has racist effects.

Which isn't to say good old fashioned racism doesn't play a part at times. The previous sheriff of Sacramento County, CA had a policy of refusing to accept applications from residents of Sacramento city; ostensibly this was so as not to tread on the toes of the Sacramento city Chief of Police (though Sac'to PD claimed to be unaware of any such agreement), but perceptive observers noted that it just so happens that most of the county's black and Asian population lives inside the city limits.

[Scuba]

5. Nailed it.

[GreenStormCloud]

6. You beat me to it.

Elitist by intention, racist in effect.

[Francis Marion]

10. Gun control racist? In US history, a resounding YES

Research the facts of gun control as presented by Congress of Racial Equality in their Emerson case brief:
http://www.potowmack.org/emercore.html

"The development of racially based slavery in the seventeenth century American colonies was accompanied by the creation of laws meting out separate treatment and granting separate rights on the basis of race. An early sign of such emerging restrictions and one of the most important legal distinctions was the passing of laws denying free blacks the right to keep arms. "In 1640, the first recorded restrictive legislation passed concerning blacks in Virginia excluded them from owning a gun." Lee B. Kennett and James LaVerne Anderson, The Gun in America: The Origins of a National Dilemma 50 (1975)."

"In the later part of the 17th Century fear of slave uprisings in the South accelerated the passage of laws dealing with firearms possessions by blacks. In 1712, for instance, South Carolina passed “An act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and Slaves” which included two articles particularly relating to firearms ownership and blacks. 7 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 3 53-54 (D.J. McCord ed. 1836-1873). Virginia passed a similar act entitled “An Act for Preventing Negroes Insurrections.” 2 the Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, From the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, 481(W.W. Henning ed. 1823).

Thus, in many of the antebellum states, free and/or slave blacks were legally forbidden to possess arms. State legislation which prohibited the bearing of arms by blacks was held to be constitutional due to the lack of citizen status of the AfroAmerican slaves. State v. Newsom, 27 N.C. 250 (1844). Cooper v. Mayor of Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 72 (1848). Legislators simply ignored the fact that the U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions referred to the right to keep and bear arms as a right of the "people" rather than of the "citizen". Stephen Halbrook, The Jurisprudence of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, 4 Geo. Mason U. L. Rev. 1, 15 (1981).


Chief Justice Taney argued, in the infamous Dred Scott case, that the Constitution could not have intended that free blacks be citizens:

For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operations of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ... nd it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever, they went.

Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 4 16-17 (1856) (emphasis ‘added). In a later part of the opinion, Justice Taney enumerated the constitutional protections afforded to citizens by the Bill of Rights:

Nor can Congress deny to the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel any one to be a witness against himself in a criminal proceeding.

Id. at 450. Clearly, the Court viewed the right to keep and bear arms as one of the fundamental individual rights guaranteed to American citizens by the Bill of Rights; which, blacks, who according to the Court were not American citizens, could not enjoy."

Even after the Civil War supposedly settled the matter of whether blacks were citizens of the US and entitled to rights such as owning guns, southern democrats continued to infringe black gun rights:

"After the Civil War, southern legislatures adopted comprehensive regulations, Black Codes, by which the new freedmen were denied many of the rights that white citizens enjoyed. These Black Codes often prohibited the purchase or possession of firearms by freedmen. The Special Report of the AntiSlavery Conference of 1867 noted with particular emphasis that under these Black Codes blacks were "forbidden to own or bear firearms, and thus were rendered defenseless against assaults." Reprinted in H. Hyman, The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction 219 (1967).

Mississippi’s Black Code included the following provision:
Be it enacted ... hat no freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry firearms of any kind, or any ammunition, ... and all such arms or ammunition shall be forfeited to the informer...
1866 Miss. Laws ch. 23, § 1, 165 (1865)."

On and on. Initially, 'gun control' laws were aimed to exclude blacks from having the means to preserve life, liberty, property. And if the blacks can't have guns, then wouldn't it be great to keep poor people and riffraff and trade union organizers disarmed also by artificially increasing prices through heavy taxation. The shackles forged by racial bigots for blacks eventually fastened upon poor people. Reasonable gun control laws, after all, must not be questioned or debated because they're for our own protection. There is a form of amnesia with respect to repulsive chapters of political history, especially our own. The Democratic party of the mid 1800s would fervently agree with modern Democrat politicians' crusades to disarm urban blacks, but for some reason the moderns can't remember, acknowledge or repudiate such repugnant ancestral policies.

[chibajoe]

11. Whether it's per se or de facto, gun control

is unarguably racist.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

3. I think the roots of most gun is certainly racist.

And perhaps some of today's laws are still a bit racist/classist.
The majority of GC laws nowadays, I feel are not "racist"... but laws that grant discretionary restrictions of rights are wrong altogether.

[aikoaiko]

7. I'll go way out on a limb with no supporting evidence, but yes I think

there are certain elitists (across the political spectrum) who think that lower SES people of color can't be trusted with firearms because people of color are too emotionally unstable or too involved with crime. Of course, its fine for the elitists to have firearms of all types or hirer people to carry firearms to protect their interests.

This its-for-their-own-good position is ultimately racist.

In addition there is evidence that many gun laws enacted 140-70 years ago were to keep Black Americans defenseless.

[X_Digger]

8. Disparate impact, yes.

Registration processes, fees, training requirements- all affect those least likely to a) be able to afford the extra expense, and b) be able to take time off work to take classes or chase a signature by a county bureaucrat.

Measures that raise the prices for guns and ammunition (useless features like microstamping or ammunition registration) affect the poor more than others- and those are more likely minorities.

[slackmaster]

9. It affects poor people disproportionately, so yes, it is inherently racist

More important, it's authoritarian.

[Remmah2]

12. Historical

Currently no, previously yes.

[Recursion]

13. All the talk of "hunters" tell me it still is racist.

"I don't want to keep hunters from being able to hunt", that is, people are fine if rural whites are armed.

[X_Digger]

14. Good point.

Only 1 in 5 gun owners hunt. What about the other 80%?

The best interpretation I can come up with is antiquated ideas about firearm ownership.

[PavePusher]

16. Black people don't hunt?

A lot of them got by on small game during lean years in rural America.

Or did I miss a memo?

[Recursion]

17. White people don't either, for the most part

Most gun owners are not hunters. But the point is about perception, not reality. "Hunting" is ok because "hunters" are perceived to be rural whites. It's urban minorities that people seem hell-bent on disarming, despite the fact that realistically they "need" guns more than the rest of us do.

[jody]

15. If one could eliminate 100% of guns then rates using guns to murder blacks

would go down 7.6 times that of whites so yes gun-control is undoubtedly racist.

That’s a reverse use of Department of Justice data reporting the 2005 homicide offender rate among blacks is 7.6 times that of whites and the homicide victim rate among blacks is 6.2 times that of whites.