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Gun control, Eric Holder, and racism
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(Photo courtesy of Oleg Volk)
Recently, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said we are “cowards” for not facing racism:
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been and we – I believe continue to be in too many ways essentially a nation of cowards," Holder told Department of Justice employees at an event Wednesday celebrating Black History Month.
He said that Americans are afraid to talk about race, adding that "certain subjects are off-limits and that to explore them risks at best embarrassment and at worst the questioning of one's character."
Holder said we must become “honest.”
Holder – who said that he wants to "revitalize the Civil Rights Division" at the Justice Department – said Wednesday that he wants to start a new conversation.
"I think if we're going to ever make progress, we have to have the guts. We have to have the determination to be honest with each other," he said.
According to AG Holder’s criteria, it’s time for an honest discussion about America’s racist history of gun control.
Colonial law and Indians
American colonists faced a major obstacle in New World: People already lived here, and there were more of “them” than there were colonists. One proven method of shifting the balance of power is to use a technological advantage; the colonists ensured this through gun control. For example, in 1629, the Massachusetts Colony banned the selling of “munitions, guns, or other furniture, to arm the Indians against us, or teach them the use of arms.” Spreading disease, playing one tribe against another, and gun control led to dominance––and land––for the White settlers.
Black disarmament and White terrorism
A recent article cited an example of laws enacted in the antebellum South, banning free Blacks from owning firearms in order to ensure White supremacy. Racial prejudice prevailed up to the highest levels of the federal government. In 1856, the Supreme Court of the United States concluded in the Dred Scott case that Blacks were not citizens:
It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased…to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public…to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State. [Emphasis added]
Black disarmament continued during Reconstruction under the Black Codes:
The various Black Codes adopted after the Civil War required blacks to obtain a license before carrying or possessing firearms or bowie knives…These restrictive gun laws played a part in provoking Republican efforts to get the Fourteenth Amendment passed. Republicans in Congress apparently believed that it would be difficult for night riders to provoke terror in freedmen who were returning fire.
Southern states found loopholes by gradually constraining the right to bear arms. Though these laws were written to appear race-neutral, there was racist intent:
[T]o intimidate the freedmen into an economically subservient position. By making the freedmen defenseless, employers could be more confident that intimidation would keep their hired hands "in line."
Along with systematic Black disarmament, “White Leagues” marauded through Black neighborhoods. These terrorist activities persuaded the federal government to “reconcile” with the South, enabling southern Whites to regain the position of power they enjoyed before the Civil War. Of course, Blacks were abandoned and returned to quasi-slavery, the hope given them by “Father Abraham” Lincoln destroyed.*
Japanese internment
Early in 1942, the United States War Department implemented plans to exclude and relocate “enemy aliens” from strategically sensitive areas like the West Coast, which was placed under the command of General John L. DeWitt. All of Northern California was declared a “strategic area,” and the evacuation of “Axis aliens” to internment camps began.
General DeWitt issued a proclamation reported by the San Francisco News:
The proclamation also extended the ban on possession of firearms, war materials, short-wave radio receiving and transmitting sets and other contraband to Japanese-Americans. Enemy aliens already had been forbidden to have such articles. [Emphasis added]
Once again, a particular demographic was ostracized, disarmed, and stripped of their rights. Found guilty without trial and unable to defend themselves, Japanese Americans were easily herded into prison camps.
In all three examples, the duly appointed GOVERNMENT, enacting laws backed up by superior force, perpetrated legalized oppression, terror and murder on disarmed minorities.
Is Eric Holder willing to accept this truth?
References
* James M. McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP, Princeton University Press, 1975.
For in-depth analysis of the racist history of gun control, read Four Hundred Years of Gun Control: Why Isn’t It Working?, which deconstructs the gun control agenda and motivates more people to support our civil right of self-defense.
Check out other Gun Rights Examiners:
- Charlotte: What is your state's Freedom Index?
- Cleveland: 'Shoot first' legislation and the concept of fair play
- DC: Georgia legislator introduces bill to repeal permit requirement to open carry handguns!
- Denver: Keep them guessing
- Los Angeles: Take Heart, Part IV: Explaining it to the Republicans
- Minneapolis: An open letter to Senator Jim Webb and pro-gun democrats
- National: New Black Panthers demonstrate responsible gun use?
- Seattle: At it again: Anti-gunners trying to demonize yet another class of firearms
- St. Louis: Decorated Marine, disarmed by law
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