Honor Martin Luther King by defeating racism inherent to 'gun control'

One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let us never forget that even now, Jim Crow lives on, in all its hideous "glory." Some of the most egregious of such laws were those intended to mandate disarmed defenselessness for African-Americans and other "undesirable" minorities.

That the history of American "gun control" is rooted in racial prejudice cannot be credibly disputed. We have talked about that before. This Reconstruction Era law in Louisiana is a perfect example:

No negro who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of weapons, within the parish, without the special written permission of his employers, approved and endorsed by the nearest and most convenient chief of patrol.

Another example would be this one, in Mississippi, from the same dark era:

No freedman, free Negro, or mulatto not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry firearms of any kind...

Even UCLA Constitutional law professor Adam Winkler--hardly likely to be mistaken for a fervent gun rights advocate--readily acknowledges bigotry as the father of "gun control," as he explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:

In his research for “Gunfight,” Winkler also noted a close intersection between guns and racism. “It was a constant pressure among white racists to keep guns out of the hands of African-Americans, because they would rise up and revolt.” he said. “The KKK began as a gun-control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks were never allowed to own guns. During the Civil War, blacks kept guns for the first time – either they served in the Union army and they were allowed to keep their guns, or they buy guns on the open market where for the first time there’s hundreds of thousands of guns flooding the marketplace after the war ends. So they arm up because they know who they’re dealing with in the South.

This was, predicatably, met with shrieking (if not particularly coherent) outrage by the Coaltion to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), who, finding themselves unable to deny the sordid history of oppressive gun laws, responded, in effect, with, "So what?" to Professor Winkler's admonishment that we must acknowledge that foul history:

Why? If African-Americans have moved beyond the past and strongly support contemporary gun control proposals (which even Winkler acknowledges are not motivated by race), why should it be an issue?

We are, apparently, supposed to just "get over" the evil of racially motivated forcible citizen disarmament. CSGV is quite fond of the assertion that contemporary restrictive gun laws are not motivated by race--making that argument in their Twitter feed just last Friday:

There are no modern examples of discriminatory gun violence prevention laws.

That's a difficult case to make, too. New York's "Sullivan Act," which mandates a burdensome "May Issue" licensing process for merely possessing (let alone carrying) handguns, was intended to disarm immigrants, and is still in effect today--and does anyone think the NYPD is now above enforcing the law discriminatorialy? Laws that force up the price of guns or their use ("Saturday Night Special" bans, "microstamping," expensive permits, etc.) disarm the poor--a group, not very coincidentally, that is disproportionately composed of ethnic minorities--a poll tax analog, in other words.

In Illinois, the Firearm Owners ID (FOID) requirement, and Chicago's restrictive gun laws, were directly motivated by former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's fear of "non-whites":

Outside the suburbs in the city, we have control, but what the hell, in the suburbs, there are — you go out to all around our suburbs and you've got people out there, especially the non-white, are buying guns right and left. Shotguns and rifles and pistols and everything else. There's no registration. … There's no, and you know, they've had trouble with this national gun law, but after the president's assassination, someone ought to do something.

"Gun control" is really about people control, and those doing the controlling very often select those being controlled on the basis of ethnicity.

We shall overcome.