The Daily Beast
Is Gun Control Racist?
Author Adam Winkler uncovers the surprising racist roots of gun control in America—and how the NRA and other groups flipped entirely. Winkler’s new book is “Gun Fight.”
If you browse the gun-rights websites for only a few minutes, you’re sure to find the claim: “Gun control is racist.” The statement seems absurd: African Americans favor gun control at substantially higher rates than whites. The gun-fatality rate for blacks far exceeds that for whites. And one of the few places you can easily find virulent racist literature is at a gun show. In what bizarro world is gun control racist?
Actually, the gun-rights websites are on to something. As I discovered in researching my new book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, for much of our history, gun regulation has been tainted by the stains of racism and discrimination. Today, the story is more complex than the simplistic slogans of gun-rights advocates. But there is no denying that racial politics have profoundly shaped America’s gun laws.
Gun-rights hardliners are fond of dismissing nearly any gun-safety effort as a violation of the Second Amendment. Yet the men who wrote and ratified that provision had extensive gun laws—and many of them were racially discriminatory. Not only did they support laws prohibiting slaves from possessing guns, they also disarmed free blacks, who the Founders feared might join together with their brethren in chains to revolt.
The fear of blacks with guns was one of the reasons behind the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in the Dred Scott case. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion insisted that blacks could not be citizens because, if they were, they’d have all the protections of the Bill of Rights, including the right to “full liberty of speech... to hold public meetings on political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
America’s most horrific racist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, began with gun control at the very top of its agenda. Here is the rest of the Daily Beast article.
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More links on racism and the Second Amendment.
Is Gun Control Racist?
Author Adam Winkler uncovers the surprising racist roots of gun control in America—and how the NRA and other groups flipped entirely. Winkler’s new book is “Gun Fight.”
If you browse the gun-rights websites for only a few minutes, you’re sure to find the claim: “Gun control is racist.” The statement seems absurd: African Americans favor gun control at substantially higher rates than whites. The gun-fatality rate for blacks far exceeds that for whites. And one of the few places you can easily find virulent racist literature is at a gun show. In what bizarro world is gun control racist?
Actually, the gun-rights websites are on to something. As I discovered in researching my new book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, for much of our history, gun regulation has been tainted by the stains of racism and discrimination. Today, the story is more complex than the simplistic slogans of gun-rights advocates. But there is no denying that racial politics have profoundly shaped America’s gun laws.
Gun-rights hardliners are fond of dismissing nearly any gun-safety effort as a violation of the Second Amendment. Yet the men who wrote and ratified that provision had extensive gun laws—and many of them were racially discriminatory. Not only did they support laws prohibiting slaves from possessing guns, they also disarmed free blacks, who the Founders feared might join together with their brethren in chains to revolt.
The fear of blacks with guns was one of the reasons behind the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in the Dred Scott case. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion insisted that blacks could not be citizens because, if they were, they’d have all the protections of the Bill of Rights, including the right to “full liberty of speech... to hold public meetings on political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
America’s most horrific racist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, began with gun control at the very top of its agenda. Here is the rest of the Daily Beast article.
===================================================
More links on racism and the Second Amendment.
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