The leadership of the not too distant National Rifle Association’s (NRA) past, in partnership with their revered Republican leader, Ronald Reagan, wrote, supported and passed stiff federal gun control policy in the 1960’s--known as the Mulford Act. Why, you may be asking, would the NRA leadership or Reagan support any kind of gun control? The ugly reason is Reagan and the NRA passed the Mulford Act to prevent specifically Black people from bearing arms to protect themselves from the oppression of the government. Today, to act like they never supported any kind of gun control under no reason, not even in response to innocent assault gun massacred Americans, is simply hypocritical.
Freelance writer, Edward Wyckoff Williams, says the Oakland Black Panther Party of the 1960’s responded to racial violence perpetrated by local California police departments by patrolling black neighborhoods brandishing guns. “It’s ironic that the modern-day argument for citizens to arm themselves against unwarranted government oppression—dominated, as it is, by angry white men—has its roots in the foundation of the 1960’s Black Panther movement.”
Author and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler writes in his book, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, " (Black leaders like) Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. Like many young African Americans, (the young leadership of the Black Panther Party) were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. In their opinion, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect the public: the police."
Williams continues, “The fear of black people with firearms sent shockwaves across white communities, conservative lawmakers immediately responded with gun-control legislation.” The lauded leader of modern conservatism, Ronald Reagan, in making a case for federal gun control told the media back then, “There is no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” He went on to say that the Mulford Act “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.”
Here we are in 2013, and the NRA, largely made up of conservative gun owners, argue against what their party and Reagan did in the 1960’s. No matter what they say, the NRA is having a hard time justifying being against any kind of reasonable control in light of their history. Today, they look and sound like a bunch of hypocrites.
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