Martin
Luther King, Jr., known for peaceful resistance, at the same time
recognized the importance of gun ownership for self defense. King
understood the risks involved in being an outspoken civil rights leader,
living in Jim Crow era Alabama, and took measures to protect himself,
his family and others around him.King was a gun owner. In fact, he had a few guns, one visitor to the King family home described King’s supply of weapons as an “armory.”
Additionally, William Worthy, a journalist who covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reported that he almost sat on a loaded gun while visiting King’s parsonage.
King had also applied for a concealed carry permit, but was turned down. According to John M. Snyder:
“At one time, King applied for a permit to
carry a concealed handgun, but was denied. He was concerned for his
personal safety, just as are a lot of law abiding American citizens. “
An example of discriminatory gun legislation, via Examiner.Com:
“This Reconstruction Era law in Louisiana is a perfect example:
No negro who is not in the military
service shall be allowed to carry fire arms, or any kind of weapons,
within the parish, without the special written permission of his
employers, approved and endorsed by the nearest and most convenient
chief of patrol.”
“UCLA Constitutional law professor Adam
Winkler, hardly likely to be mistaken for a fervent gun rights
advocate, readily acknowledges bigotry as the father of “gun control,” as
he explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:
In his research for ‘Gunfight,’ Winkler
also noted a close intersection between guns and racism. ‘It was a
constant pressure among white racists to keep guns out of the hands of
African Americans, because they would rise up and revolt.’ he said. ‘The
KKK began as a gun control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks
were never allowed to own guns. During the Civil War, blacks kept guns
for the first time, either they served in the Union army and they were
allowed to keep their guns, or they buy guns on the open market where
for the first time there’s hundreds of thousands of guns flooding the
marketplace after the war ends. So they arm up because they know who
they’re dealing with in the South.’”
“Among these laws, the forerunners of
so called ‘Saturday Night Special’ legislation, was Tennessee’s “Army
and Navy” law (1879), which prohibited the sale of any “belt or pocket
pistols, or revolvers, or any other kind of pistols, except army or navy
pistol” models, among the most expensive, and largest, handguns of the
day. (Such as the Colt Model 1960 Army, Model 1851 Navy, and Model 1861
Navy percussion cap revolvers, or Model 1873 Single Action Army
revolver.) The law thus prohibited small two shot derringers and
low caliber rimfire revolvers, the handguns that most Blacks could
afford.”
In the case of the Gun Control Act of 1968, one provision of the law was a ban on the importation of small, inexpensive handguns. It didn’t apply to domestically manufactured firearms, but at the time that market was served almost exclusively by imports. As noted by Roy Innis, of the Congress of Racial Equality, this law had the same malicious intent as its Reconstruction Era predecessor:
“To make inexpensive guns impossible to
get is to say that you’re putting a money test on getting a gun. It’s
racism in its worst form.”
“Outside the suburbs in the city, we have
control, but what the hell, in the suburbs, there are — you go out to
all around our suburbs and you’ve got people out there, especially the
non white, are buying guns right and left. Shotguns and rifles and
pistols and everything else. There’s no registration. … There’s no, and
you know, they’ve had trouble with this national gun law, but after the
president’s assassination, someone ought to do something.”
Cramer’s analysis, and this excerpt on the history of gun control, globally, both demonstrate that gun control isn’t about controlling guns. It’s about controlling people.
