From: meyers@leonardo.rtp.dg.com (Bill Meyers)
Subject: Re: Melvin Watt (bio)
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 18:58:22 GMT
Organization: N/I

In article <1992Nov4.155215.16482@rock.concert.net> bing@jazz.concert.net (Carter E. Bing) writes:
[ ... ]
>	Melvin Watt, 47, Charlotte, attorney, democrat.
[ ... ]
>	On the Issues:
[ ... ]
>	Gun Control: Supports five-day waiting period for
>handgun purchases as outlined in Brady bill.


reprinted without permission from the Wall Street Journal 11/21/91

GUN CONTROL SPROUTS FROM RACIST SOIL

by Roy Innis

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?

In the early part of the 19th century, Dred Scott, a black slave, had been
taken by his owner from Missouri, a slave state, to Illinois, a free state.
From there he was taken into the Wisconsin territory, free territory above
the 36 30' latitude of the Missouri Compromise.  After living in free
territory for a while, he returned with his owner to Missouri.

When his owner died in 1846, Scott sued in the state courts of Missouri for
his freedom, on the ground that he had lived in free territory.  He won his
case, but it was reversed in the Missouri Supreme Court.  Scott appealed to
the federal courts, since the person he was actually suing, John Sanford, the
executor of the estate that owned Scott, lived in New York.

It was in that setting that Chief Justice Taney made his infamous rulings:

1. That black people, whether free or slave, were not citizens of the U.S.;
therefore, they had no standing in court.
2. Scott was denied freedom.
3. The Missouri Compromise was ruled unconstitutional.

Well known to most students of race relations is the former attorney general
and secretary of the Treasury's pre-civil war dictum that black people "being
of an inferior order" had "no right which any white man was bound to respect."
Much less known are his equally racist pronouncements denying black people,
whether slave or free, specific constitutional protections enjoyed by whites.

In DRED SCOTT Chief Justice Taney, writing for the court's majority, stated
that if blacks were "entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens...
[i]t would give persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in
any one state of the union, the right... to keep and carry arms wherever they
went.  And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the
same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and
insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the
state..."

Although much of Justice Taney's overtly racist legal reasoning was repudiated
by events that followed - such as the Civil War and Reconstruction - the
subliminal effects were felt throughout that era.  In the post-Reconstruction
period, when the pendulum swung back to overt racism, Justice Taney's
philosophy resurfaced.  It was during this period that racial paranoia about
black men with guns intensified.  It was potent enough to cause the infringe-
ment of the Second Amendment to the Constitution's "right... to keep and
bear arms."

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.

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 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.

With the influx of large numbers of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants into
the country, gun laws now also targeted whites from the underprivileged classes
of immigrants.  Eventually these oppressive gun laws were extended to affect
all but a privileged few.  Throughout the history of New York state's
Sullivan law, enacted at the start of the 20th century, mainly the rich and
powerful have had easy access to licenses to carry handguns.  Some of the
notables who have received that privilege include Eleanor Roosevelt, John
Lindsay, Donald Trump, Arthur Sulzberger, Joan Rivers and disk jockey Howard
Stern.

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.

And what of the origins of the National Rifle Association, which is wrongly
viewed as a racist organization by the black supporters of gun prohibition?
It was inspired and organized by Union Army officers after the Civil War.

Mr. Innis is national chairman of the New York-based Congress of Racial
Equality.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american