{"id":70491,"date":"2021-08-04T10:45:58","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T15:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=70491"},"modified":"2021-08-04T10:46:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T15:46:30","slug":"70491","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=70491","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The ‘epidemic’ is not that there are committees of vigilance<\/em> roaming the streets – a blatant canard since, if true, would likely reduce<\/em> crime – but that there are criminal street gangs<\/em> roaming the streets of major metropolitan cities, shooting up each other’s members (as well as a lot of unintended targets) with the membership demographic causing the majority of this; black men, ages 14 to 35.<\/p>\n

The ACLU Claims the Second Amendment Is Racist, But Gun Control Has the Real Record on Systemic Oppression<\/a>
\nTo date, black Americans are more likely than any other group to suffer the adverse impacts of gun control laws.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The ACLU fired shots on Twitter last month, claiming that the Second Amendment is \u201cracist\u201d alongside an article<\/a>\u00a0and podcast episode that posed the question \u201cDo Black People Have the Right to Bear Arms?\u201d<\/p>\n

The article, written by Ines Santos, claimed that gun violence in America \u2014 which she labeled an \u201cepidemic\u201d caused by widespread \u201cvigilante\u201d firearm ownership \u2014 negatively impacts black people because of racially discriminatory policing. \u201cWhat is absent in the intense debates on gun rights in America is the intrinsic anti-blackness of the unequal enforcement of gun laws,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Santos went on to say that racism determined the Second Amendment’s inclusion in the Bill of Rights.<\/p>\n

These are hefty charges worth examining. Let\u2019s break down the claims made here and review the history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Claim:<\/strong>\u00a0“What is absent in the intense debates on gun rights in America is the intrinsic anti-blackness of the unequal enforcement of gun laws.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Second Amendment has indeed been selectively upheld throughout our nation\u2019s history, with\u00a0gun control<\/a>\u00a0frequently being used to block black Americans from accessing their right to self-defense. Additionally, enforcement of gun control laws has been discriminatory, and the rhetoric around guns has often framed black people as a threat.<\/p>\n

But to leave the narrative there ignores a rich history of black people using guns to free themselves from oppression. Let\u2019s review.<\/p>\n

Before the Civil War ended, black people were prohibited from owning guns under the \u201cSlave Codes\u201d and \u201cBlack Codes.\u201d For example, under the\u00a01806 Louisiana Black Code, Chapter 33, Section 19<\/a>\u00a0statute, slaves were banned from using firearms or any other \u201coffensive weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the\u00a01819 Acts of South Carolina<\/a>, slaves without the company of white people or a slave master\u2019s written permission were prohibited from using or carrying firearms \u201cunless they were hunting or guarding the master\u2019s plantation.\u201d<\/p>\n

These laws were put into place to hinder black people from using arms to rise up and break the shackles of slavery. But throughout the history of American chattel slavery, black heroes\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0use guns to free themselves and others. The most notable example of this was Harriet Tubman, who\u00a0carried<\/a>\u00a0a pistol on her missions to free slaves as well as a sharp-shooting rifle during the Civil War. Mary Fields (better known as Stagecoach Mary) was a former slave and one of the first two black women to serve as a “star route” mail carrier. She famously used two guns to defend herself and the mail from thieves along her route.<\/p>\n

The Freedmen\u2019s Bureau Bill of 1865, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Civil Rights Act of 1870, and the Fourteenth Amendment \u2014 ratified in 1868 \u2014 knocked down the overtly racist Slave Codes and should have made the Second Amendment applicable to all citizens. However, in the 1870s, racists in power turned to the use of \u201cfacially neutral laws\u201d to continue blocking black people from gun ownership. These laws did not explicitly state that black people were the target, but the end result was the same.<\/p>\n

How did they achieve this? They used things like police-issued licenses, permit laws, and business and transaction taxes on guns that disproportionately affected black people, thus successfully disarming them. One of the first major examples of these laws was the 1870 Tennessee “An Act to Preserve the Peace and Prevent Homicide<\/a>,\u201d which banned the sale of all handguns except the expensive “Army and Navy model handgun” which was more affordable to white people.<\/p>\n

In the early 1900s, racially charged acts of mass atrocity such as the\u00a0Tulsa Race Massacre<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Atlanta Massacre<\/a>\u00a0caused leaders in the black community to organize for self-defense, continuing the rich and powerful history of black people arming themselves to rise up against their oppressors.<\/p>\n

In subsequent decades, as cracks began to show and eventually break Jim Crow in the South, the armed resistance of black Americans grew more organized.<\/p>\n

The Deacons for Defense and Justice were formed in 1965 to fight against white supremacist terrorism in Louisiana and Mississippi with .38 special revolvers. When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the \u201cMeredith March Against Fear\u201d for black voter registration in Mississippi, they provided the security. Their presence in the deep South also deterred the Ku Klux Klan from attacking the black community in many instances.<\/p>\n

This exercise of the black community\u2019s Second Amendment rights led to and helped ensure the success of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

But the history doesn\u2019t stop there. In response to racially discriminatory policing in California, the Black Panthers began armed patrolling in black neighborhoods to \u201ccopwatch\u201d in the late 1960s. In 1967, the Mulford Act, named after Republican Assemblyman Don Mulford, was signed into law by then-Governor Ronald Reagan to stop the Panthers from armed protesting. The bill was supported by both parties in the state House, as well as the NRA, according to\u00a0History.com<\/a>. The policy effectively banned open carry in California, and it stemmed directly from the Black Panthers embracing their Second Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

By no means was this the\u00a0end<\/a>\u00a0of discriminatory gun control laws or enforcement in our country.<\/p>\n

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To date, black Americans are more likely than any other group to suffer the adverse impacts of gun control laws. Urban cities with concentrated black populations have the strictest gun laws, and black people are more likely to be convicted of and subjected to a firearms offense carrying a mandatory minimum. In addition, stop-and-frisk, infamous for its role in the police harassment of black Americans, was employed to enforce gun control measures.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To conclude, the ACLU is correct in its allegations that gun control has at times been racially written and enforced. But abundant historical evidence shows that Second Amendment rights, when firmly asserted, have been crucial to black Americans in their fight against oppression and white supremacy.<\/p>\n

Finding:\u00a0<\/strong>TRUE<\/p>\n