Posts Tagged black codes

ACLU Rewrites History of Blacks and Guns

From FEE:

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 did use guns to free themselves and others. The most notable example of this was Harriet Tubman, who carried a 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.

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Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on Guns

From America’s First Freedom:

He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, an eloquent advocate of the right to arms. She exercised that right heroically, in armed missions to lead slaves out of bondage. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman exemplified the best of America—and fought against the worst. 

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Racist Gun Control Continues

From Page Two:

As Wells had pointed out, in 1892, armed black men in Jacksonville, Florida thwarted a lynch mob that was attempting to break into a prison in order to murder a black prisoner. In the next legislative session, the Florida legislature enacted a new gun control law. It required a license to carry or possess ‘‘a pistol, Winchester rifle or other repeating rifle.’’

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Illinois Introduces Bill To Fingerprint Anyone Who Wants To TOUCH A Gun

From The Truth About Guns:

The Illinois House Wednesday passed a bill to require the submission of fingerprints, along with higher fees in order to own, shoot or even handle a firearm or ammunition. Kathleen Willis’ Amendments to SB-1966 would also end private firearm transfers and even require immediate family members gifted a firearm to report themselves to the Illinois State Police under penalty of a felony.
The bill passed solely with Democrat votes, Democrats who claim to fight for poor, inner-city minorities. At least at election time. SB-1966, with its increased fees, has a guaranteed disparate impact upon poor people of color within the Land of Lincoln.

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The Gun Protected Blacks When Laws Wouldn’t

From The Federalist:

By the first post–Civil War election in 1868, some southern blacks had begun to arm themselves. In one incident in Tennessee, by brandishing his gun a black man fought off a mob of terrorizing Klansmen who dragged him from his house. “I prevented [one of them] by my pistol, which I cocked, and he jumped back,” the man explained. “I told them I would hurt them if they got away. They did not burn nor steal anything, nor hurt me.”

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The Atlantic: Gun Rights Are Racist

The Atlantic:

Public-carry advocates like to cite historical court opinions to support their constitutional vision, but those opinions are, to put it mildly, highly problematic. The supportive precedent they rely on comes from the antebellum South and represented less a national consensus than a regional exception rooted in the unique culture of slavery and honor. By focusing only on sympathetic precedent, and ignoring the national picture, gun-rights advocates find themselves venerating a moment at which slavery, honor, violence, and the public carrying of weapons were intertwined.

The NRA’s response:
The authors of this piece are correct in their sense that our current gun debate has its roots in the 19th-century American South—but they managed to get the true alignment of things completely backwards. It is the modern gun control movement that is absolutely a product of racist legislators trying to deprive black Americans of the ability to defend themselves.

When the Civil War ended and the Reconstruction Amendments freed the slaves and assigned them equal rights under the law, the white landowners at the top of the socio-economic ladder found themselves in a predicament. Not only were they deprived of their resource pool of unfree labor, but they now lived side by side with a black population that outnumbered them—and was about to enjoy equal access to both ballot boxes and firearms. These landowners acted swiftly to defend their dominant position. Encouraging poor whites to cling to a sense of racial identity and despise their black neighbors was part of their strategy. The other part was an explosion of new legislation that spat in the face of the Constitution’s clear intention to guarantee the rights of the former slaves.

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