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WHILE TODAY’S NRA TAKES HARD-LINE POSITIONS AGAINST EVEN THE MOST MODEST GUN CONTROL MEASURES, THIS WAS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE. THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, THE NRA SUPPORTED GUN CONTROL, INCLUDING RESTRICTIONS ON GUN OWNERSHIP, AND WAS NOT FOCUSED ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

BUT THE ORGANIZATION HAD A CHANGE OF HEART IN THE 1970S WHEN THE BLACK PANTHERS ADVOCATED FOR AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. IRONICALLY, THE PANTHERS WERE THE FOUNDERS OF THE MODERN-DAY GUN RIGHTS MOVEMENT, WHICH BECAME THE PURVIEW OF PREDOMINANTLY WHITE, RURAL CONSERVATIVES.

The ambiguous reading of the Second Amendment notwithstanding, gun control is as old as the Republic, and the amendment was not interpreted as an absolute in the early days of the United States. There was a balance between individual rights and public safety.

For example…freed blacks were barred from gun ownership, reflecting fears that African-Americans would revolt. At the same time, the founders proscribed gun ownership to many whites, including those who would not swear their loyalty to the Revolution. And contrary to legend, the “Wild, Wild West” had the most severe gun control policies in America.

Meanwhile, the Black Codes of the post-Civil War South were designed to dis-empower blacks and reestablish white rule.

This included the prohibition on blacks possessing firearms - a law which was enforced by white gun owners such as the Ku Klux Klan, who terrorized black communities. The Northern framers of the Fourteenth Amendment and the first Civil Rights Act viewed gun rights as fundamental to upholding the constitutional protections of the freedmen.

WHEN PROHIBITION-ERA ORGANIZED CRIME LED TO THE ENACTMENT OF THE NATIONAL FIREARMS ACT OF 1934 - THE NATION’S FIRST FEDERAL GUN CONTROL LAWS - THE NRA NOT ONLY SUPPORTED RESTRICTIVE GUN CONTROL MEASURES, BUT DRAFTED LEGISLATION IN NUMEROUS STATES LIMITING THE CARRYING OF CONCEALED WEAPONS. WHEN NRA PRESIDENT KARL FREDERICK WAS ASKED BY CONGRESS WHETHER THE SECOND AMENDMENT IMPOSED ANY RESTRICTIONS ON GUN CONTROL, HE RESPONDED THAT HE HAD “NOT GIVEN IT ANY STUDY FROM THAT POINT OF VIEW.”

FREDERICK SAID HE DID “NOT BELIEVE IN THE GENERAL PROMISCUOUS TOTING OF GUNS. I THINK IT SHOULD BE SHARPLY RESTRICTED AND ONLY UNDER LICENSES.” HE HELPED DRAFT THE UNIFORM FIREARMS ACT, A MODEL LAW WHICH REQUIRED A POLICE PERMIT TO CARRY A CONCEALED WEAPON, A REGISTRY OF ALL GUN PURCHASES, AND A TWO-DAY WAITING PERIOD FOR FIREARMS SALES.

In the 1960s, the NRA continued to support gun control, a wave which was fueled by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the racial strife and violent uprisings in the nation’s urban centers.

THE NRA ACTIVELY LOBBIED IN FAVOR OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT OF 1968, WHICH BANNED GUN SALES BY MAIL, AND ENACTED A SYSTEM OF LICENSING THOSE PEOPLE AND COMPANIES WHO BOUGHT AND SOLD FIREARMS. Franklin Orth, then the executive vice president of the NRA, said that although certain aspects of the law “appear unduly restrictive and unjustified in their application to law-abiding citizens, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

DURING THAT TIME, THE NRA AND CONSERVATIVE POLITICIANS SUCH AS CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN SUPPORTED GUN CONTROL AS A MEANS OF RESTORING SOCIAL ORDER, AND GETTING WEAPONS OUT OF THE HANDS OF RADICAL, LEFT-LEANING AND REVOLUTIONARY GROUPS, PARTICULARLY THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY.
Responding to the perceived failures of the nonviolent civil rights movement, the Black Panthers took a more militant and uncompromising approach of the fallen leader Malcolm X. Led by figures including Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Panthers’ “by any means necessary” approach included a most aggressive gun ownership policy to protect their communities from police abuse.

Beginning in 1966, the Panthers carried out police patrols, in which they rushed to the scene of an arrest with their loaded weapons publicly displayed, and notified those being arrested of their constitutional rights. CALIFORNIA STATE LEGISLATOR DON MULFORD INTRODUCED A BILL TO REPEAL THE STATE LAW ALLOWING CITIZENS TO CARRY LOADED GUNS IN PUBLIC IF THEY WERE OPENLY DISPLAYED. MULFORD HAD THE PANTHERS IN MIND WITH THIS LEGISLATION.

On May 2, 1967, a group of Black Panthers protested the bill by walking into the California State Capitol Building fully armed. In response, the legislature passed the Mulford Act. And Gov. Reagan, who was a major proponent of disarming the Panthers, signed the bill into law, effectively neutralizing the Panther Police Patrols…

IN 1977, HARLON CARTER AND HIS FACTION STAGED A COUP WITHIN THE NRA, AGAINST AN ESTABLISHMENT THAT WANTED TO SHIFT AWAY FROM GUN CONTROL AND CRIME IN FAVOR OF CONSERVATION AND SPORTSMEN’S ISSUES.

WITH THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY AND OTHER LEFT WING GUN CONTROL FOES OUT OF THE PICTURE, THE NEW HARD-LINE NRA FEARED THE GOVERNMENT WOULD SIMILARLY TAKE AWAY THEIR GUNS. FURTHER, THESE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE AND CONSERVATIVE GUN RIGHTS ADVOCATES IN THE NRA SHARED THE PANTHERS’ DISTRUST OF THE POLICE.

Ironically, Ronald Reagan - who had signed the Mulford Act to disarm the Black Panther Party - changed his stance and advocated for guns as a defense against state power.

“So isn’t it better for the people to own arms than to risk enslavement by power-hungry men or nations? The founding fathers thought so,” Reagan said in a radio commentary in 1975.

In 1980, the NRA endorsed Reagan for president, the first such endorsement by the group. Less than a year later, President Reagan and three others were shot and injured by John Hinckley, Jr., 25, outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.

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ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto

Would the NRA change it's tune if every Black and Hispanic in the United States legally bought a AR-15 and carried it with them into White neighborhoods or into White-owned businesses?

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ORIGINAL: lovmuffin

Yep, gun control had racist origins. It started in the south with laws preventing blacks from being armed. The NRA has evolved since then for the better IMO.


I can't remember the individual but there was this black guy on death row some years back. The execution was controversial, especially among blacks. The Black Panthers showed up, about 20 of them I think, outside of the prison along with other protesters. They were openly armed with all kinds of different firearms. No one tried to disarm them as I believe to do so would have meant killing them all and creating a racial incident. I was surprised to see all those guys showing up armed like that. I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if they were white guys.

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ORIGINAL: lovmuffin

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ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto
Would the NRA change it's tune if every Black and Hispanic in the United States legally bought a AR-15 and carried it with them into White neighborhoods or into White-owned businesses?

If they did that walking around with them the police would be all over them like flies on shit. However the NRA would be fine with every black and Hispanic owning an AR 15 or similar weapon and using them legally. Your analogy is absurd.

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ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto

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ORIGINAL: lovmuffin

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ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto
Would the NRA change it's tune if every Black and Hispanic in the United States legally bought a AR-15 and carried it with them into White neighborhoods or into White-owned businesses?

If they did that walking around with them the police would be all over them like flies on shit. However the NRA would be fine with every black and Hispanic owning an AR 15 or similar weapon and using them legally. Your analogy is absurd.

Then why weren't the police "all over the Tea Party people like flies on shit" when they entered the Boston Common two years ago carrying their AK-47's and Ar-15's?

Could it have been that the armed people at the Tea Party rally were all White?

IMO, my analogy was not "absurd" - just an illustration of hypocrisy. Non-Whites with guns - BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID. Whites with guns - nothing to worry about, they're just exercising their "2nd Amendment rights".

The present powers that be at the NRA want to scare as many people as possible to get bigger kickbacks from the gun and Ammo manufacturers. They'll use racial fears, fears of crime, fears of black helicopters and U.N. troops - if they could, they'd try to scare people about the pending invasion from Martians or Venusians if it would sell more guns and ammo. The more guns and ammo sold - the more pay-offs the leadership of the NRA get from the guns and ammo manufacturers.

Not the NRA I was once a member of.

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ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael

Gun control is ALWAYS about power.

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British gun control was in response to Bolshivism and the Troubles.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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British gun control was in response to Bolshivism and the Troubles.

That's an interesting datum, Michael, but it doesn't answer my questions.

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"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." -

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I wasnt responding to you...

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for many cowards and governments, guns are about power.

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Hunting for many isnt about power.

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Using a gun in self defense isnt about power.