We Really Need To Talk More About Gun Control’s Racist Past

By Tom Knighton Bearing Arms

A handful of years ago, there was a strange obsession that took hold in this country. People were tripping over themselves to remove anything that anyone might possibly find a link to racism, slavery, or anything of the sort.

Now, I’m not going to pretend racism or slavery were good things. They weren’t and aren’t. However, we watched as statues of our Founding Fathers were toppled all across the nation simply because they weren’t adherents of our current thoughts on the subject.

Anything that could be linked to racism had to go.

Well, almost everything.

Gun control was still broadly supported by all of those same people, and as John Stossel notes in his latest piece, its roots are most definitely racist as hell.

[Maj] Toure says, “All gun control is racist!”

All?

“It was literally started to stop Black people from having the means to defend themselves.”

He’s right. In the 1600s, American colonies had rules against Blacks owning guns.

“It’s a good thing we don’t like being told what human rights we have,” says Toure. “I’m an American. I go by the Constitution.”

Few Americans know that anti-slavery hero Harriet Tubman carried a gun most of the time.

“She needed to,” says Toure. “If it wasn’t for strong women like Harriet Tubman, liberty-minded people saying, nah, (slavery) is not cool, not OK, a contradiction of the Founding Fathers, what they wrote down (not what they all did, but what they wrote down). She wouldn’t have had the bravery to oppose that during a time when opposition meant death. More people should think about that right.”

What about today? I ask, “Is gun control still racist?”

“Absolutely!” he says. “Look at the outcome. Take California … (you have to get) a state-issued license to carry. If you live in Oakland, Compton, in Los Angeles County, the chances of you getting a license, even though the Second Amendment is clear, it’s very little. But if you live in Brentwood, Orange County, Beverly Hills, the issue rate for that license to carry goes up. Which one of those areas is more predominantly Black and brown people?”

Similarly, “Who’s arrested more for firearms possession? Black and brown folks … the outcome being this group of people being disproportionately impacted by the racist practice of gun control.”

It’s been funny watching people try to distort history to somehow make the argument that the Second Amendment is what’s really racist, all while completely ignoring the fact that the infringement of that right only targeted non-white people.

Even today, as Toure points out, we routinely see the impact of gun control laws disproportionately hitting black and brown men and women. They’re the ones being arrested, they’re the ones being denied.

If we’re going to purge all vestiges of racism and slavery from our nation, then clearly we should focus on gun control, especially as the claims of systemic racism everywhere is more apparent in gun law enforcement than pretty much anywhere else.

Of course, if we’re not going to address that, then I’m not sure just what else we can talk about, because it’s pretty clear that Democrats aren’t serious about combatting what they routinely call systemic racism, even in a place where they could probably get broad support for eliminating the issue.

But that’s because it’s not about racism. It’s about leverage. They’ve used racism as a way to pressure opponents to remain silent on various things out of fear of being labeled a racist. They don’t actually want to do away with that history, especially on infringement to our liberty they actually like.

Find the original article on Bearing Arms.

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