From the New York Times:

Until around 1970, the aims of America’s firearms restrictionists and the aims of America’s racists were practically inextricable. In both the colonial and immediate post-Revolutionary periods, the first laws regulating gun ownership were aimed squarely at blacks and Native Americans. In both the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, it was illegal for the colonists to sell guns to natives, while Virginia and Tennessee banned gun ownership by free blacks.

Yet African-American activists typically refrain from involvement in the issue of gun rights. In October 2013, Shaneen Allen, 27, a black single mother of two, was arrested in New Jersey for carrying a firearm without a license (she was under the impression that her Pennsylvania concealed-carry permit was accepted across state lines), and threatened with a prison sentence of up to 11 years for her mistake.

But it was conservative publications, such as my own National Review, and the N.R.A. that came to her defense. The N.A.A.C.P. and the usual champions remained unusually quiet. (There was no news conference featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton.) They have been largely absent, too, from the case of Marissa Alexander, a black Florida woman given a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot near her abusive husband.