From: jumper@fritz.catt.ncsu.edu (Michael Lanham)
Subject: Dred Scott and gun Control <was Eva Clayton bio>
Organization: North Carolina State University
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 01:46:28 GMT

meyers@leonardo.rtp.dg.com (Bill Meyers) writes:
>What irony.  Most black leaders (as distinct from rank-and-file blacks) are
>supporters, at least in public, of the gun control - really, prohibition -
>movement.  Do they realize that America's gun-control movement sprouted from
>the soil of Roger B. Taney, the racist chief justice who wrote the infamous
>DRED SCOTT decision of 1857?

>Under natural law, a freeman's right to obtain and maintain the implements of
>self-defense has always been sacred.  This right was restricted or prohibited
>for serfs, peasants and slaves.  Gun control was never an issue in America
>until after the Civil War when black slaves were freed.

Before, during and after the Civil War, there were states, counties, towns and
cities that controlled firearms.  Gun Control was definitely an issue in
several territories where marshall had to go in and "clean up" troublesom
towns.  Citizens were required to leave their firearms at the limits of the
town/city.  Hollywood has made several inflated histories of the era that show
this practice.  Books more accurately recounting the history do note the
phenomena.  "Gun Control" before the term was invented probably.

The Northeastern states had cities and towns that had forbidden the carrying
of firearms in public.  There was also a cultural shift away from packin.
Twas not civilized. 

>It was this change in the status of the black man, from slave to freeman, that
>caused racist elements in the country (North and South) to agitate for
>restrictions on guns - ignoring long-established customs and understanding of
>the Second Amendment.  The specter of a black man with rights of a freeman,
>bearing arms, was too much for the early heirs of Roger Taney to bear.

The above no doubt continues to play in the minds "Good Ol Boys" here in
Dixie. I have had the unfortunate experience of running into a few of them.
Oddly enough it was at a pistol range while I was target shooting.


>The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, along with the various
>Reconstruction civil rights acts, prevented gun prohibitionists from making
>laws that were explicitly racist and that would overtly deny black people the
>right to bear arms.  The end of Reconstruction signaled the return of Taneyism
>- overtly among the masses and covertly on the Supreme Court.  Gun-control
>legislation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, enacted at the state
>and local levels, were implicitly racist in conception.  And in operation,
>those laws invidiously targeted blacks.

In established areas of the nation, no doubt... I think it would be harder to
build that case in unsettled(by whites that is) areas.

>Of the 27,000 handgun carry permits in New York City, fewer than 2% are issued
>to blacks - who live and work in high-crime areas and really are in need of
>protection.

Dammmmmnnnnnn....Seems your comments above definitely applied to the East
Coast.  It is my impression that the Northeast is more beligerient towards
blacks than the south actually is. Comments from up north?  Further South?

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool;
and he who dares not is a slave.      --- Sir William Drummond

Michael Lanham       mjlanham@eos.ncsu.edu   &  jumper@catt.ncsu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american