From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,soc.women
Subject: Re: Eva Clayton bio
Date: 11 Nov 92 17:58:33 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Nov10.154649.29316@rock.concert.net>, bing@jazz.concert.net (Carter E. Bing) writes:
> 	Her being elected "with the help of the
> rich-white-liberal Handgun Control, Inc" is nothing more than
> the NRA rhetoric that is common now. I find the arugment that "we
> have to protect our right to bear arms to be both flawed and funny.
> First the average citizen can`t purchase the hardware need to
> wage a war with a corrupt government and second the "right to

Oh?  You don't need aircraft and nuclear weapons to fight a
corrupt government, if enough people agree with you.

> bear arms" was in regards to rasing a state militia. This fact

Utterly false.  Every commentary on the Second Amendment, every
request from the various states for a Bill of Rights, every speech
and note made by James Madison, makes it clear that the right to
be protected was individual.  There is only one decision taking your
position from any court before the 20th century, and close to 
a hundred from the 19th century that argued that an individual
right was protected.

> 			Carter

As for the racist motivations for gun control laws, let me
quote from a Florida Supreme Court justice explaining why the
state passed a law licensing gun carrying: 

              I know  something of  the history  of this legislation.
              The original  Act of  1893 was  passed when there was a
              great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here
              for the  purpose of  working in  turpentine and  lumber
              camps.   The same  condition existed  when the  Act was
              amended in  1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose
              of disarming  the negro  laborers and to thereby reduce
              the  unlawful   homicides  that   were   prevalent   in
              turpentine and  saw-mill camps  and to  give the  white
              citizens in  sparsely settled areas a better feeling of
              security.  The statute was never intended to be applied
              to the  white population and in practice has never been
              so applied.  We have no statistics available, but it is
              a safe guess that more than 80% of the white men living
              rural sections  of Florida  have violated this statute.
              It is also a safe guess to say that not more than 5% of
              the men in Florida who own pistols and repeating rifles
              have ever  applied to the Board of County Commissioners
              for a  permit to  have the same in their possession and
              there has  never been,  within my knowledge, any effort
              to enforce  the provisions  of this statute as to white
              people, because it has been generally conceded to be in
              contravention of  the Constitution  and non-enforceable
              if contested.[Watson v. Stone, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941)]

-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Racism is "class struggle" applied to ethnicity.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:59257 ca.politics:9475