as was documented in this amicus curiae brief filed in the Supreme Court for the District of Columbia v. Heller case.
The entire brief is very informative and well worth reading.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
The Petitioners recite a selective portion of the
history of gun control laws in the District of Columbia,
but omit portions of that history which demonstrate
that the Petitioners’ laws are deeply rooted in a
racist attempt to keep arms out of the hands of the
politically and economically disadvantaged. This brief
will explore the racist history of gun control in the
District of Columbia and throughout the country. It
also will show how the principles of black oppression
via gun control laws of yesterday are used to oppress
the politically weak today via those same, and additional,
laws.
***snip***
II. Gun Control in the United States
The history of gun control in the District of
Columbia closely parallels the experience of the
several states, particularly (though not peculiarly),
the southern states. Gun control was used as a tool to
subjugate blacks.
he simple truth-born of experience is that
tyranny thrives best where government need
not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our
own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament
was the tool of choice for subjugating
both slaves and free blacks in the South. In
Florida, patrols searched blacks’ homes for
weapons, confiscated those found and punished
their owners without judicial process.
In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised
their right to bear arms to defend against racial
mob violence. Chief Justice Taney well
appreciated, the institution of slavery required
a class of people who lacked the
means to resist.
***snip***
The history of gun control can be summarized as
consisting of four time periods: 1) pre-Civil War bans
either non-existent or applying only to slaves or free
blacks, accompanied by widely-held beliefs (and
appellate court opinions) that all (white) people had
the unrestricted right to keep and bear arms; 2)
immediate antebellum and early Reconstruction-era
civil unrest associated with armed, black self-defense
incidents, and court opinions reversing earlier expansive
views on the right to keep and bear arms; 3) late
Reconstruction/Industrial Age legislation that was
facially race-neutral, ostensibly restricting gun rights
for the first time for the population generally, but
with those restrictions commonly applied only to
black citizens; and 4) mid-20th Century expansion of
application of gun control laws to all citizens, accompanied
by stricter laws generally.
***snip***
CONCLUSION
American history, from colonial times to the
immediate past, is replete with evidence that gun
control has frequently been implemented with a
nefarious purpose of subjugating blacks and other
minorities. Even today’s gun control laws are often
vestiges of, or the continuation of, the nation’s Jim
Crow past. At best, many such laws have greater
effects on minorities and the economically disadvantaged.
As the parties and other amici no doubt will
argue, the Framers put into place a constitutional
guarantee that the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed. It clearly was the
intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment
to ensure that this guarantee applied to all people
and against the states as well as the federal government.
This Court should apply the Second Amendment
as it was intended, and eradicate any vestiges of Jim
Crow in the District of Columbia’s firearms laws.
Respectfully submitted,
JOHN R. MONROE*
*Counsel of Record
9640 Coleman Road
Roswell, GA 30075
(678) 362-7650
EDWARD A. STONE
Attorneys for Amicus Curiae
http://www.gurapossessky.com/news/parker/documents/07-290bsacGeorgiaCarry.pdf