gun control debate

[blugiant]

i did a quick search and found this

2000 white on white murder - 4,643 black on black murder - 4,298
2001 white on white murder - 4,813 black on black murder - 4,301
2002 white on white murder - 4,795 black on black murder - 4,365
2003 white on white murder - 4,645 black on black murder - 4,367
2004 white on white murder - 4,761 black on black murder - 4,201
2005 white on white murder - 4,755 black on black murder - 4,497

tink pon diss wen gun control debate iss discussed de murder rate beecum ann issue fe inject racism inn da debate. ask yuself oww manee aff dose murders were gun used? ask yuhself iff manee aff dose action wey dem classify as murder were classified widdout regard to race? ar action by blakks dat cause de death aff another more likeleee fe be cawl murder? ar actions by oyinbo dat cause de death aff blakks less likelee fe be classified as murders?

[blugiant]

These numbers are alarming when you consider that white Americans outnumber black Americans by nearly 8 to 1, yet the murders by/against the respective races is almost equal in numbers.

Obviously there are underlying reassons for these stats that need to be addressed.

ar da stats flawed? usinn flawed stats fe raise issue ann mislead iss y sum peeps chatt bout damm statistics

[blugiant]

Black murder is so common it does not even make the news. It is an accepted practice that blacks kill each other. White murder makes the news because it's unusual, and assault rifles used in a murder is not the norm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/chicago-homicide-rate-alr_n_2433329.html

You have lost your mind...whites don't care what guns black people buy. Blacks are not a real threat to whites, but they are a real threat to each other. The stats of black on black crime and murder rate back up this fact. I told you before, I deal in facts, and you deal in your own little perverted, wacked out world of fantasy.

diss mekk mii laff

usinn yur lagtrixx mii guess mii cood awlso sey dat missinn blakk oomen ann missinn blakk men rrarelee mekk de news cah itt so common ann natt cah oyinbo media iss racist.

y yuh tink medical malpractice rarelee mekk de news wen more blakk peeps ar killed cah aff badd oyinbo doctors, hospitals, etc? does medical malpractice cause more blakk death dan murder?

so yu still inn denial dat de gun control debate iss bout oyinbo tryinn fe cantrol blakks. even de nra argue dat gun cantrol debate iss racist. even de court wey overturned sum gun cantrol laws admit dat gun control laws were passed fe restrict blakk peeps owninn guns

da joke iss dat de left ann demonkkkrats, widd dem supportinn kkk arigin, a argue oyinbo wey defendinn de rites fe bear arms ar racist wen iissstaree show dat de kkk wass farmed fe disarmed blakks.

da joke iss dat pon diss issue mii ann yuh pon de same side even dough yuh fail fe acknowledge de racism invalved ann oww peeps woo arguinn fe more gun cantral a use racism fe stereotype oyinbo dat defendinn dem constitutional rite fe own gun.

[blugiant]

You have lost your mind...whites don't care what guns black people buy. Blacks are not a real threat to whites, but they are a real threat to each other. The stats of black on black crime and murder rate back up this fact. I told you before, I deal in facts, and you deal in your own little perverted, wacked out world of fantasy.

Gun Control: White Man's Law

by William R. Tonso

Chances 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.)

There is little doubt that the earliest gun controls in the United States were blatantly racist and elitist in their intent. San Francisco civil-liberties attorney Don B. Kates, Jr., an opponent of gun prohibitions with impeccable liberal credentials (he has been a clerk for radical lawyer William Kunstler, a civil rights activist in the South, and an Office of Economic Opportunity lawyer), describes early gun control efforts in his book Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptic Speak Out. As Kates documents, prohibitions against the sale of cheap handguns originated in the post-Civil War South. Small pistols selling for as little as 50 or 60 cents became available in the 1870s and '80s, and since they could be afforded by recently emancipated blacks and poor whites (whom agrarian agitators of the time were encouraging to ally for economic and political purposes), these guns constituted a significant threat to a southern establishment interested in maintaining the traditional structure.

Consequently, Kates notes, in 1870 Tennessee banned "selling all but 'the Army and Navy model' handgun, i.e., the most expensive one, which was beyond the means of most blacks and laboring people." In 1881, Arkansas enacted an almost identical ban on the sale of cheap revolvers, while in 1902, South Carolina banned the sale of handguns to all but "sheriffs and their special deputies--i.e., company goons and the KKK." In 1893 and 1907, respectively, Alabama and Texas attempted to put handguns out of the reach of blacks and poor whites through "extremely heavy business and/or transactional taxes" on the sale of such weapons. In the other Deep South states, slavery-era bans on arms possession by blacks continued to be enforced by hook or by crook.

The cheap revolvers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were referred to as "Suicide Specials," the "Saturday Night Special" label not becoming widespread until reformers and politicians took up the gun control cause during the 1960s. The source of this recent concern about cheap revolvers, as their new label suggests, has much in common with the concerns of the gunlaw initiators of the post-Civil War South. As B. Bruce-Briggs has written in the Public Interest, "It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the 'Saturday Night Special' is emphasized because it is cheap and is being sold to a particular class of people. The name is sufficient evidence--the reference is to 'niggertown Saturday night.'"

Those who argue that the concern about cheap handguns is justified because these guns are used in most crimes should take note of Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America, by sociologists James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi, and Kathleen Daly. The authors, who undertook an exhaustive, federally funded, critical review of gun issue research, found no conclusive proof that cheap handguns are used in crime more often than expensive handguns. (Interestingly, the makers of quality arms, trying to stifle competition, have sometimes supported bans on cheap handguns and on the importation of of cheap military surplus weapons. Kates observes that the Gun Control Act of 1968, which banned mail-order gun sales and the importation of military surplus firearms, "was something domestic manufacturers had been impotently urging for decades.") But the evidence leads one to the conclusion that cheap handguns are considered threatening primarily because minorities and poor whites can afford them.

Attempts to regulate the possession of firearms began in the northern states during the early part of the 20th century, and although these regulations had a different focus from those that had been concocted in the South, they were no less racist and elitist in effect or intent. Rather than trying to keep handguns out of the price range that blacks and the poor could afford, New York's trend-setting Sullivan Law, enacted in 1911, required a police permit for legal possession of a handgun. This law made it possible for the police to screen applicants for permits to posses handguns, and while such a requirement may seem reasonable, it can and has been abused.

Members of groups not in favor with the political establishment or the police are automatically suspect and can easily be denied permits. For instance, when the Sullivan Law was enacted, southern and eastern European immigrants were considered racially inferior and religiously and ideologically suspect. (Many were Catholics or Jews, and a disproportionate number were anarchists or socialists.) Professor L. Kennett, coauthor of the authoritative history The Gun in America, has noted that the measure was designed to "strike hardest at the foreign-born element," particularly Italians. Southern and eastern European immigrants found it almost impossible to obtain gun permits.
part 1

[blugiant]

Gun Control: White Man's Law

by William R. Tonso
part 2

Over the years, application of the Sullivan Law has become increasingly elitist as the police seldom grant handgun permits to any but the wealthy or the politically influential. A beautiful example of this hypocritical elitism is the fact that while the New York Times often editorializes against the private possession of handguns, the publisher of that newspaper, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, has a hard-to-get permit to own and carry a handgun. Another such permit is held by the husband of Dr. Joyce Brothers, the pop psychologist who has claimed that firearms ownership is indicative of male sexual inadequacy.

Gun-control efforts through the centuries have been propelled by racist and elitist sentiments. Even though European aristocrats were members of a weapons-loving warrior caste, they did their best to keep the gun from becoming a weapon of war. It was certainly all right to kill with civilized weapons such as the sword, the battle ax, or the lance; these were weapons that the armored knights were trained to use and which gave them a tremendous advantage over commoners who didn't have the knights' training or possess their expensive weapons and armor. But guns, by virtue of being able to pierce armor, democratized warfare and made common soldiers more than a match for the armored and aristocratic knights, thereby threatening the existence of the feudal aristocracy.

As early as 1541, England enacted a law that limited legal possession of handguns and crossbows (weapons that were considered criminally dangerous) to those with incomes exceeding 100 pounds a year, though long-gun possession wasn't restricted--except for Catholics, a potentially rebellious minority after the English Reformation. Catholics couldn't legally keep militia-like weapons in their homes, as other Englishmen were encouraged to do, but they could legally possess defensive weapons--except, as Bill of Rights authority Joyce Lee Malcolm has noted in her essay "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: The Common Law Tradition," during times "of extreme religious tension."

According to Malcolm, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they were presented with a list of rights, one of which was aimed at staving off any future attempt at arms confiscation--"all Protestant citizens had a right to keep arms for their defence." England then remained free of restrictive gun legislation until 1920 when, even though the crime rate was very low, concern about the rebellious Irish and various political radicals ushered in today's draconian gun laws. (Colin Greenwood, former superintendent of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police, has discovered in his research at Cambridge University that the English gun crime rate is significantly higher now than it was before that nation's strict gun laws were enacted.)

Alas, the European aristocracy wasn't able to control gun use, and at least in part, the spread of effective firearms helped to bring down aristocracy and feudalism. By contrast, in 17th-century Japan the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate was able to to establish a rigidly stratified society that deemphasized the development of guns and restricted arms possession to a warrior aristocracy, the samurai. When Commodore Perry "reopened" Japan to the rest of the world, in the middle of the 19th century, few Japanese were familiar with guns (the sword was the most honored weapon of the samurai) and the most common guns were primitive matchlocks similar to those introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the middle of the 16th century. As post-Perry Japan modernized and acquired a modern military, it also quickly developed modern weaponry. But a citizenry without a gun-owning tradition was easily kept in place in a collectivist society where individuals were more susceptible to formal and informal social controls than are westerners.

The preceding are just samples of the political uses to which gun controls have been put throughout the world. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and South Africa are modern examples of repressive governments that use gun control as a means of social control. Raymond G. Kessler, a lawyer-sociologist who has provided some of the most sociologically sophisticated insights into the gun control issue, suggests in a Law and Policy Quarterly article that attempts to regulate the civilian possession of firearms have five political functions. They "(1) increase citizen reliance on government and tolerance of increased police powers and abuse; (2) help prevent opposition to the government; (3) facilitate repressive action by government and its allies; (4) lesson the pressure for major or radical reform; and (5) can be selectively enforced against those perceived to be a threat to government."

Of course, while many gun control proponents might acknowledge that such measures have been used in the ways Kessler lists, they would deny that the controls that they support are either racist or elitist, since they would apply to everybody and are aimed at reducing violence for everybody. Yet the controls that they advocate are in fact racist and elitist in effect, and only the naive or the dishonest can deny their elitist intent.

Kessler has also written that while liberals are likely to sympathize with the poor and minorities responsible for much of this nation's violent crime, when the are victimized themselves, "or when they hear of an especially heinous crime, liberals, like most people, feel anger and hostility toward the offender. The discomfort of having incompatible feelings can be alleviated by transferring the anger away from the offender to an inanimate object--the weapon."

A perfect example of this transference is provided by Pete Shields, the chairman of Handgun Control Inc., whose son was tragically murdered by one of San Francisco's Zebra killers--blacks who were killing whites at random in the early 1970s. This killing was carried out by a black man who was after whites--his own skin color and that of the victim were important to the killer--but in his grief, the white liberal father couldn't blame the criminal for this racist crime. So the gun was the culprit. The upshot is that we now have Handgun Control Inc., with its emphasis on the weapon used to commit a crime rather than the criminal. Yet blacks and minorities, who would be prevented from defending themselves, are likely to be harmed most by legislation proposed by Handgun Control Inc., the National Coalition to Ban Handguns, and other proponents of strict handgun controls.

Since the illegal possession of a handgun (or of any gun) is a crime that doesn't produce a victim and is unlikely to be reported to the police, handgun permit requirements or outright handgun prohibitions aren't easily enforced. And as civil liberties attorney Kates has observed, when laws are difficult to enforce, "enforcement becomes progressively more haphazard until at last the laws are used only against those who are unpopular with the police." Of course minorities, especially minorities who don't "know their place," aren't likely to be popular with the police, and these very minorities, in the face of police indifference or perhaps even antagonism, may be the most inclined to look to guns for protection--guns that they can't acquire legally and that place them in jeopardy if possessed illegally. While the intent of such laws may not be racist, their effect most certainly is.

Today's gun-control battle, like those of days gone by, largely breaks down along class lines. Though there are exceptions to the rule, the most dedicated and vociferous proponents of strict gun controls are urban, upper-middle-class or aspiring upper-middle-class, pro-big-government liberals, many of whom are part of the New Class (establishment intellectuals and the media), and most of whom know nothing about guns and the wide range of legitimate uses to which they are regularly put to use. Many of these elitists make no secret of their disdain for gun-owners. For instance, Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York recently dismissed those who are opposed to the Empire State's mandatory seat-belt law as "NRA hunters who drink beer, don't vote, and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend."

On the other hand, the most dedicated opponents of gun control are often rural- or small-town-oriented, working- or middle-class men and women, few of whom possess the means to publicize their views, but many of whom know a great deal about the safe and lawful uses of guns. To these Americans, guns mean freedom, security, and wholesome recreation. The battle over gun controls, therefore, has come about as affluent America has attempted to impose its anti-gun prejudices on a working-class America that is comfortable with guns (including handguns), seldom misuses them (most gun crime is urban), and sees them as protection against criminal threats and government oppression.

How right you are, General Laney. "All gun laws have been enacted to control certain classes of people...."

William R. Tonso is a professor of sociology at the University of Evansville and the author of Gun and Society.

[blugiant]

You have lost your mind...whites don't care what guns black people buy. Blacks are not a real threat to whites, but they are a real threat to each other. The stats of black on black crime and murder rate back up this fact. I told you before, I deal in facts, and you deal in your own little perverted, wacked out world of fantasy.

wat facts yu deal widd. de nile aff racism.

realitee iss dat even de nra iss racist

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. Before the Civil War, blacks in the South had never been allowed to possess guns. During the war, however, blacks obtained guns for the first time. Some served as soldiers in black units in the Union Army, which allowed its men, black and white, to take their guns home with them as partial payment of past due wages. Other Southern blacks bought guns in the underground marketplace, which was flooded with firearms produced for the war.

After the war, Southern states adopted discriminatory laws like the Black Codes, which among other things barred the freedmen from having guns. Racist whites began to form posses that would go out at night to terrorize blacks—and take away those newly obtained firearms. The groups took different names: the “Men of Justice” in Alabama; the “Knights of the White Camellia” in Louisiana; the “Knights of the Rising Sun” in Texas. The group formed in Pulaski, Tenn., became the most well-known: the Ku Klux Klan. Whites believed that they had to confiscate black people’s guns in order to reestablish white supremacy and prevent blacks from fighting back. Blacks who refused to turn over their only means of self-defense were lynched.


After the war, Southern states adopted discriminatory laws like the Black Codes, which among other things barred the freedmen from having guns. Racist whites began to form posses that would go out at night to terrorize blacks—and take away those newly obtained firearms. The groups took different names: the “Men of Justice” in Alabama; the “Knights of the White Camellia” in Louisiana; the “Knights of the Rising Sun” in Texas. The group formed in Pulaski, Tenn., became the most well-known: the Ku Klux Klan. Whites believed that they had to confiscate black people’s guns in order to reestablish white supremacy and prevent blacks from fighting back. Blacks who refused to turn over their only means of self-defense were lynched.

Karl Frederick, the NRA’s president, helped draft the Uniform Firearms Act, model legislation that required a license to carry around a handgun. According to the law, only “suitable people” with a “proper reason” for being armed in public were eligible.

America’s most recent gun-control efforts, such as requiring federally licensed dealers to conduct background checks, aren’t designed to keep blacks from having guns, only criminals. Of course, the unfortunate reality is that the criminal population in America is disproportionately made up of racial minorities.

lonwolf yu fraid fe studee de truth weaken yuh argument ann raise qwestian bout yuh grasp aff realitee

[R_C]

By the NRA's reasoning (a) there weren't enough guns in this house or (b) there should be an armed guard in every household.

chicagotribune.com

5 dead in New Mexico shooting

1:22 PM CST, January 20, 2013
A teenage boy with several weapons including an assault rifle shot and killed five people, three of them children, at a house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, authorities said on Sunday.

Story

[blugiant]

By the NRA's reasoning (a) there weren't enough guns in this house or (b) there should be an armed guard in every household.

tink pon diss inn a latt aff blakk school deer iss armed policemen awlreadee. so wat dem reallee arguinn iss dat oyinbo peeps need fe be police just like blakks. nra ave a histaree aff racism but de irony iss dat defendinn blakk peeps rite inn de gun cantrol debate argument wey a gawn. banninn more gun lead to iigha rate aff incarceration fe blakks even iff oyinbo ar more likelee fe be armed.

were de guns legallee acquired by the teenager. gun control law ar being fe mekk itt harder fe peeps fe legallee acquire guns butt criminals acquire gun illegalleee.

to mii wat intarestinn iss dat many blakks ar now repeatinn de kkk racist argument bout disarminn blakks fe increase public safetee cah aff de fear aff blakk crime. oyinbo media have brainwashed manee blakk dat dem tart fe repeat racist argument

[WitchyOoman]

Jesus God!
Jesus God Almighty!!

Witchy and Mr Witchy agree 1000% with Blu on every blessed word he said in this thread!!!

Did the world come to an end, after all??? What happened?!

I missed making it here to J'com for a couple weeks due to family emergencies (I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, not breathing, blue... a few other things... OMG! Maybe... maybe turning blue made me like Blu? Wait, what?) and look what happened!


Register to buy a gun, and a wait period while they do a background check - each and every time you buy a gun. Even if you already had this done fifty times. If you buy a fifty-first gun, then you undergo the same procedure a fifty-first time. No matter what, no matter who you are.
No other registration necessary; you've already registered, haven't you? And had your background checked thoroughly.
Mandatory firearm safety course - yes.
I have NO problem with mandatory training on how to use, take apart & put back together, and basic gunsmithing of the firearm you are purchasing. Fine with me. Dunno how much it'll help, but it sure can't hurt.

If you are a rehabilitated criminal, and you wish to buy a gun, you must prove that you really are rehabilitated by waiting a set number of years in which you prove you can stay clean, out of trouble and jail, and after that, your right to own firearms should be restored. This, because, as Blu so correctly points out, we live under an institutionalized system of racism that is inherent in our society... SO inherent that most people don't even notice it fully.

[blugiant]

I missed making it here to J'com for a couple weeks due to family emergencies (I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, not breathing, blue... a few other things... OMG! Maybe... maybe turning blue made me like Blu? Wait, what?) and look what happened!


.

witchee glad fe ear yuh bettah. yuh affii tekk care aff yuhself cah yuh health iss becumminn an issue aff concern

[blugiant]

Jesus God!
Jesus God Almighty!!

Witchy and Mr Witchy agree 1000% with Blu on every blessed word he said in this thread!!!

Did the world come to an end, after all??? What happened?!

Register to buy a gun, and a wait period while they do a background check - each and every time you buy a gun. Even if you already had this done fifty times. If you buy a fifty-first gun, then you undergo the same procedure a fifty-first time. No matter what, no matter who you are.
No other registration necessary; you've already registered, haven't you? And had your background checked thoroughly.
Mandatory firearm safety course - yes.
I have NO problem with mandatory training on how to use, take apart & put back together, and basic gunsmithing of the firearm you are purchasing. Fine with me. Dunno how much it'll help, but it sure can't hurt.

If you are a rehabilitated criminal, and you wish to buy a gun, you must prove that you really are rehabilitated by waiting a set number of years in which you prove you can stay clean, out of trouble and jail, and after that, your right to own firearms should be restored. This, because, as Blu so correctly points out, we live under an institutionalized system of racism that is inherent in our society... SO inherent that most people don't even notice it fully.

de ting iss peeps fe cumpare gittinn a gun to gittinn a car even dough cars ar more dangerous. yuh doan need fe register a caar iff yuh natt goinn to drive itt pon de road. still owninn a gun iss a constitutional rite butt dem puttinn more restrictinn pon owninn a gun dan a caar.

tink pon diss, oyinbo technicaleetee, mlk was a canvicted criminal and accardinn to oyinbo injustice system not worthy to own a weapon ann natt qualify to carry a conceal weapon. imagine racist peeps tellinn mlk fe wait a number aff ears, prove dat yuh can stay out aff chubble ann jail. in addarwurds, stapp mlk civil rites activities fe a number aff ear ann dat wood mekk imm worthy inn oyinbo eyes. nra argue a great pint dat dem disarmed de jews beefore dem rund dem upp fe concentration camps. jamaica ave sum aff de strictesst gun laws ann de result iss dat criminals can buy guns ann itt veree hard fe law abidinn jamaicans fe but guns. lonwolf luv fe use chicago iigh murder rate fe chatt bout blakks killinn blakks butt imm ignore de racist histaree aff chicago ann oww dat cantribute to sum aff de strictess gun cantrol laws dat disarmed law abidinn blakks

dem disarminn blakks furst ann den dem usinn de same laws pon adder racial groups. fe sum reason diss remind mii aff de seyinn dat dem came fe jews furst ann deer wass silence..................

[blugiant]

mii wander iff dem read jam.com



It may seem hard to believe, but the modern-day gun-rights debate was born from the civil rights era and inspired by the Black Panthers. Equally surprising is that the National Rifle Association -- now an aggressive lobbying arm for gun manufacturers -- actually once supported, and helped write, federal gun-control laws.

In light of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children as well as escalating violence in cities like Chicago, which saw 500 homicides in 2012 alone, President Barack Obama recently unveiled his plan for stricter gun control. The proposal calls for a universal background check and a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, along with 23 executive orders. But these efforts -- no matter how reasonable -- are not without their critics.

In a statement released last week, the NRA expressed its disappointment that "the task force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearm owners." Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) went so far as to threaten impeachment if President Obama used executive action. The conservative entertainment complex -- from Fox News and the Drudge Report, which likened gun control to Nazi Germany, to talk-radio host Alex Jones, who invoked the Tea Party insurrection of 1773 -- employs propaganda tactics to convince Americans that Obama wants to take away their guns. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the history of this debate is a curious one.

It is ironic that the modern-day argument for citizens to arm themselves against unwarranted government oppression -- dominated, as it is, by angry white men -- has its roots in the foundation of the 1960s Black Panther movement. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale became inspired by Malcolm X's admonishment that because government was "either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property" of African Americans, they ought to defend themselves "by any means necessary."

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler explores this history in his 2011 book, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. "Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement," Winkler writes. In their opinion, "the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect the public: the police." Winkler goes on to say, "Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms." Guns became central to the Panthers' identity, as they taught their early recruits that "the gun is the only thing that will free us -- gain us our liberation."

The Panthers responded to racial violence by patrolling black neighborhoods brandishing guns -- in an effort to police the police. The fear of black people with firearms sent shockwaves across white communities, and conservative lawmakers immediately responded with gun-control legislation.

Then Gov. Ronald Reagan, now lauded as the patron saint of modern conservatism, told reporters in California that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons." Reagan claimed that the Mulford Act, as it became known, "would work no hardship on the honest citizen." The NRA actually helped craft similar legislation in states across the country. Fast-forward to 2013, and it is a white-male dominated NRA, largely made up of Southern conservatives and gun owners from the Midwest and Southwestern states, that argues "do not tread on me" in the gun debate.

part 1

https://www.theroot.com/views/fear-black-gun-owner

[blugiant]

Fear of a Black Gun Owner
Ironically, the NRA used to support gun control -- when the Black Panthers started packing.

http://www.theroot.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/blog-image-full/huey_newtown_black_panthers_12313-575bj.jpg

The gun-rights movement has been co-opted in the post-civil rights era. Loud voices both inside and outside the NRA use the claxons of government tyranny and fear of supposed "street thugs" to justify deregulation. The Second Amendment text that calls for a "well-regulated militia" is often ignored in favor of the ambiguous phrase, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The framers never could have imagined the sophisticated artillery available in 21st-century America, yet despite military-style assault weapons being used by the likes of Jared Loughner in Tuscon, Ariz.; James Holmes in Aurora, Colo.; or Adam Lanza in Newtown, Conn., the gun lobby and their most ardent supporters remain obstinate.

It seems the arguments and the players have been reversed. At its founding in 1871, the NRA was an organization dedicated to promoting marksmanship, firearms-safety education and shooting for recreation. Today it promotes utter irresponsibility and unfettered access to deadly weapons.

In just a few short decades, what was once a reasonable debate in Washington has become corrupted. In 1989, Republican President George H.W. Bush issued an executive order banning the importation of semiautomatic weapons. Bill Clinton followed suit in 1998 and, in 2001, banned the importation of assault pistols. Today the inmates are in control of the asylum, with Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee refusing to entertain any civilian restriction to military-style assault rifles.

But unlike Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the NRA and their GOP allies find it hard to justify unbridled support of gun ownership and access. As MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry brilliantly described in a recent segment, the Black Panthers may not have been what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they described "a well-regulated militia" taking up arms against the tyranny of the state, but that is exactly what they represented.

The Panthers sought to protect themselves and other law-abiding citizens against indiscriminate violence perpetrated by police forces. But firepower in the hands of black men was -- and still is -- seen as dangerous and wildly inappropriate. Unless, of course, that violence is intraracial. When black males from Baltimore to Chicago shoot each other, policymakers hardly notice. Apathy breeds inaction, and big business encourages that the status quo be maintained.

The justified anger that informed decisions by the likes of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to fully embrace their Second Amendment rights has been bastardized by contemporary arguments for lax gun control. And as money continues to corrupt, it only gets worse.

Last week, just one month after the Newtown massacre, the NRA released an iPhone app that teaches children age 4 and up how to shoot at targets. With gun sales at record highs, the NRA and its client roster profit at the cost of innocent lives. This prize of profits over people should make Obama's decision to bypass Congress and issue gun restrictions by executive order all the easier.

As arguments over gun rights continue and the debate about what constitutes "well-regulated" becomes clearer, perhaps history will inform policy and remind Americans of a time when the tyranny wasn't colorblind.

Edward Wyckoff Williams is a contributing editor at The Root.

http://www.theroot.com/views/fear-black-gun-owner?page=0,1

[lonewolf]

ar da stats flawed? usinn flawed stats fe raise issue ann mislead iss y sum peeps chatt bout damm statistics

You may be able to sell this nonsense to those that are uneducated and stupid, but the body count is real.
Which leads me to believe that you are either part of a radical racist organization, and are a plant, with an obvious agenda, or you live a priviledged life, and don't live in or near any LARGE US CITY.
We that live, work and play in and around areas such as Detroit, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Washington DC etc...We see the carnage with our own eyes...I've spent the last 33 years as a Baltimore City firefighter and see death and murder on a daily basis. So, don't urinate down my back and tell me it's raining.

[lonewolf]

By the NRA's reasoning (a) there weren't enough guns in this house or (b) there should be an armed guard in every household.

I'm not a memeber of the NRA, but I think you are way off base on this...there were not enough adults in the house. That was and is the problem in most households...people know how to reproduce, but they don't know how to be responsible parents.