From The Federalist:

In the post-bellum South, Democrats prohibited blacks from possessing guns outright or imposed gun prohibitions selectively enforced against blacks, leaving them vulnerable to the Democrats’ Ku Klux Klan. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court noted that “Blacks were routinely disarmed by Southern States after the Civil War.” In U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), the court considered the convictions of white Democrats who had participated in the disarming and cold-blooded murder of at least 60 black Republicans in the infamous Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish, Louisiana.

In 1911 in New York, Democrats began requiring a selectively granted license to own a handgun, so the police could deny handguns to Italian immigrants in New York City. Not long thereafter came the most famous Democrat in history. As researchers Mark and Carol Leff described it, President Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned for the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) “with his characteristic flair for spotlighting the most sensational and villainous aspects of an issue.” Thus, when FDR claimed “Federal men are constantly facing machine gun fire in the pursuit of gangsters,” he was exaggerating.