Southern Racist Anti-Gun Laws

The Klu Klux Klan, founded in 1867, was disbanded by its founder in 1870. The Klu Klux Klan of modern times was founded in 1915. Night riders certainly existed, but a Congressional committee exonerated Nathan Bedford Forrest--founder of the early Klan--of any involvement with night riders. But is there any basis for a claim that blacks were armed by authority in the daytime and disarmed by night riders at night? David appears to be as dismally ignorant of history as he is of most subjects--which of course does not deter him.

That sounds like a provocation (tho less severe than those to which we have been accustomed from Setanta).
I will take a magnanimous vu, for the present.
I already knew what u posted about Forrest, a very colorful fellow, to be sure.

I have invited the expression of opinion
qua gun possession by blacks after the Civil War, as per the 2nd Amendment.

Feel free to opine about it.

The question about the claim that blacks were armed by authority in the day time and disarmed by night riders at night was rhetorical--therefore, i have already "opined" on the subject. More than that, a claim that gun control laws derive from the Reconstruction era, and spread from a racist South to the rest of the country is ludicrous, and is not sustained by the obscure references which you provide.

Is there a difference between the "politically correct" answer and the correct answer?

Who determines what is "politically correct"?

It's good to check these things out, so i did before posting this. In United States versus Cruikshank, 1876, the Court held that the first amendment provision for the right of assembly: "was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens." It further held that the second amendment "has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government."

Furthermore, on the subject of incorporation (something which the gun lobby are deliriously ranting about these days), the Court in Cruikshank held that the fourteenth amendments due process and equal protection provisions limit the states, and not individuals, stating: "The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another." All of their remarks were with regard to indictments handed down under the provisions of the 1870 Enforcement Act, which was effectively overturned.

There is no historical basis upon which to claim that gun control legislation was applied unequally on the basis of race, or that all gun control legislation derives from the racist policies of the states in the Old South during and after Reconstruction.

I agree with the idea of justice-- you can't allow everyone to have guns except for black people. The point is equality; any gun control laws should apply the same to everybody equally. Any gun control based on race is clearly un-American.

As to the idea of arming blacks-- you need to jump forward almost 100 years. In the 1960's there was a group called The Black Panthers that argued that black people had to be armed to defend themselves. I doubt you would have been fond of the Black Panthers. In spite of the fact they shared your view on guns, they were Marxists (i.e. real self-described Marxists). Things didn't turn out too well for the Black Panthers, and no one even considers them that significant.

The successful civil rights was won by a Martin Luther King -- a pacifist who preached non-violence.

superb post-kudos eric

My vu of it is that if a man is violent, with a gun or not, he shoud be held to account for his violence
and recidivistically violent criminals shoud be ISOLATED from the decent people, permanently
or for many decades. Don 't blame ballpoint pens for forgery, nor guns for robbery.



The situation of the 1860s n 1870s was unique n obsolete.




I did not think much of them.

We know that, but we don 't know Y there is a green hand by your name.
U r supposed to be BROWN, not green.



The law shoud be what is was: no law qua being armed, the same as for wearing socks on your feet.
It is expected, but not legally mandated.
Ultimately, everyone is responsible to himself for remaining intact and preserving his property.





Next time a criminal becomes violently aggressive with u,
u can explain that to him.

YES! ` Absolutely, there is !


I think thay r liberal theoreticians in academia.





David

Thank u for that contribution, Mr. Setanta.
Obviously, the USSC was following its 1833 precedent in BARRON v. BALTIMORE,
when it said that, but the author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment,
Representative John A. Bingham said on the floor of Congress
that he wrote the "privileges or immunities" clause and the "due process" clause to OVERTHROW
BARRON, thereby to curtail State jurisdiction,
protecting the freedoms of the Bill of Rights for all American citizens.

As my friend, Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook says in his book THAT EVERY MAN BE ARMED
(cited with favor by the United States Supreme Court in HELLER):
"In his concurring opinion in DUNCAN v. LOUISIANA 391 US 145 (1968)
Justice Black recalled the ... words of Senator Jacob M. Howard in
introducing the 14th amendment to the Senate in 1866:
'The personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution
such as . . . the right to keep and bear arms. . . .

The great object of the first section of this amendment is to restrain
the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect
these great FUNDAMENTAL guarantees.'...

The same two-thirds of Congress which proposed the 14th Amendment
also passed an enactment declaring that the FUNDAMENTAL rights of 'personal liberty'
and 'personal security' include 'the constitutional right to bear arms.'
Freedmen's Bureau Act §14,
14 Stat. 176 (July 16th, 1866)" [All emfasis has been added by David.]


I will add to that what the USSC said in HELLER
concernring its CRUIKSHANK precedent:

" Putting all of these textual elements together,
we find that they guarantee the individual right
to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.

This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background
of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always
been widely understood that the Second Amendment,
like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right.

The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes
the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.”
As we said in United States v.Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876),
“[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution.
Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.
The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed. . . .”
[All emfasis has been added by David.]

The US Supreme Court also said:
"With respect to Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation,
a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also
said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage
in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases."

U need not take a hint from that, if u don 't want to.






Yeah; we believe that freedom to defend your life
from predatory violence is a pretty important thing.




I 'm satisfied with that.
We will defend our guns from common street criminals.
We just want all GOVERNMENTS to get off of our backs.
This statement addresses the State governments.
HELLER addressed the federal government.
Next Tuesday, oral arguments will be heard on McDONALD v. CHICAGO qua incorporating the 2 A,
with a decision expected before July; that 's good enuf for me.






Cruikshank & friends (KKK) were indicted and CONVICTED of lynching some blacks.
Murder was not a federal crime, so the KKK was prosecuted for
violating the blacks' freedom of assembly and for stealing their guns.


There certainly IS plenty of historical basis of that fact. It is very, very widely known
that leading Confederate war veterans became law enforcement officers, sheriffs, deputies, mayors,
councilmen who were intensely interested in management of the newly emancipated population.
Many of the gun control laws were FACIALLY racial, in addition to being extra-legally enforced (KKK).
Indeed, our own black Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told of her father using a gun to defend
their home from racist attacks.
This sort of thing was common knowledge for a long time.

Here is some "historical basis upon which to claim that
gun control legislation was applied unequally on the basis of race";
this is taken directly from the USSC in the HELLER decision.
I posted most of it to u yesterday:

Blacks were routinely disarmed by Southern States
after the Civil War. Those who opposed these injustices
frequently stated that they infringed blacks’ constitutional
right to keep and bear arms. Needless to say, the claim
was not that blacks were being prohibited from carrying
arms in an organized state militia.



A Report of the U.S. Commission of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866
stated plainly:
“[T]he civil law [of Kentucky] prohibits the colored man
from bearing arms. . . . Their arms are taken from them
by the civil authorities. . . . Thus, the right of the people to
keep and bear arms as provided in the Constitution is infringed.”
H. R. Exec. Doc. No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 233, 236.

A joint congressional Report decried:
“in some parts of [South Carolina], armed parties are,
without proper authority, engaged in seizing all firearms
found in the hands of the freemen. Such conduct
is in clear and direct violation of their personal
rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United
States, which declares that ‘the right of the people to
keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’
The freedmen of South Carolina have shown by their
peaceful and orderly conduct that they can safely be
trusted with fire-arms, and they need them to kill
game for subsistence, and to protect their crops from
destruction by birds and animals.” Joint Comm. on
Reconstruction, H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st
Sess., pt. 2, p. 229 (1866) (Proposed Circular of Brigadier
General R. Saxton).

The view expressed in these statements was widely
reported and was apparently widely held. For example,
an editorial in The Loyal Georgian (Augusta) on February 3, 1866,
assured blacks that “[a]ll men, without distinction of color,
have the right to keep and bear arms to defend their homes,
families or themselves.” Halbrook 19.

Congress enacted the Freedmen’s Bureau Act on July 16, 1866.
Section 14 stated:
“[T]he right . . . to have full and equal benefit of all
laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty,
personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and
disposition of estate, real and personal, including the
constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to
and enjoyed by all the citizens . . . without respect to
race or color, or previous condition of slavery. . . . ” 14 Stat. 176"177.



The understanding that the Second Amendment gave
freed blacks the right to keep and bear arms was reflected
in congressional discussion of the bill, with even an opponent
of it saying that the founding generation “were for
every man bearing his arms about him and keeping them
in his house, his castle, for his own defense.” Cong. Globe,
39th Cong., 1st Sess., 362, 371 (1866) (Sen. Davis).
Similar discussion attended the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1871 and the Fourteenth Amendment.
For example, Representative Butler said of the Act:
“Section eight is intended to enforce the well-known constitutional
provision guaranteeing the right of the citizen to ‘keep and
bear arms,’ and provides that whoever shall take away, by
force or violence, or by threats and intimidation, the arms
and weapons which any person may have for his defense,
shall be deemed guilty of larceny of the same.” H. R. Rep.
No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 7"8 (1871). With respect
to the proposed Amendment, Senator Pomeroy described
as one of the three “indispensable” “safeguards of liberty
. . . under the Constitution” a man’s “right to bear arms for
the defense of himself and family and his homestead.”

Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1182 (1866).
Representative Nye thought the Fourteenth Amendment
unnecessary because “[a]s citizens of the United States [blacks]
have equal right to protection, and to keep and bear arms
for self-defense.” Id., at 1073 (1866).
It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress
that the Second Amendment protected an individual
right to use arms for self-defense.

[All emfasis has been added by David.]





David

Prolonged ranting, and the silly use of larger fonts and bold-faced fonts doesn't make your point.

I was addressing your concerns
and indicating the more significant points within the writing.


It cannot be ranting
when it is not my writing, but rather
quoting America 's highest Court, at some length.

I only used a larger font ONCE,
which was to accentuate YOUR writing.


I take it that u did not read my answers to u,
as u did not yesterday.





David

Oh, i've read your posts, but they don't make your point. Perhaps you have forgotten what your point is.



This was your opening statement. It's an obvious ploy to suggest that gun control only exists because of racist attitudes. You have failed to sustain your point. Barron is pre-civil war. The post civil war decisions of the Court, Cruikshank and Presser, found that the second amendment binds the national government, but not the states; you provide no evidence that the Court ever found that gun control was odious, and especially that it was odious on the basis of racial discrimination. Quite apart from that, you have failed to show that state laws prohibited gun ownership solely on the basis of race.

I see this as a feeble attempt to discredit gun control, just as is the silly claim that people who favor gun control "hate freedom." You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but if you claim you have an historical basis for your contention, yet you fail to demonstrate such a case, i am entitled to challenge you on that basis.