Complete Colorado points out that the racist history of gun control is still being written, at the rate of a chapter a day at the present time. https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2020/06/09/kopel-gun-controls-racist-history-still-being-written/
This is close enough to the truth to “do for government work,” as the saying is, but is not the full story. The first gun control law was a total ban after a sporty kid playing with a gun shot his ruler’s favorite courtesan, and “muck marred her face.”
Catholics have often been the target of gun bans, and the “Puritans” who came over on the Mayflower were forced to give up their guns, only just managing to arm themselves during a sojourn in Holland .
And yes, Black slaves were forbidden to possess a firearm, except when under direct control of their “master.” The penalties of any slave caught with a gun was death, unless his “owner” could provide convincing evidence the slave was hunting with his knowlege and approval.
After the War Between the States the same people who had been fighting to retain slavery, feared the Freed Minn, and women, and imposed the notorious “black laws” feared a rebellion in the Freed People were allowed arms, and passed laws that included confiscation of any gun found in the possession of a Black person.
In Mississippi, an agreement between the Attorney General and the Sheriffs repquired gun storage to be in such fashion that an officer could see both sides at the same time, and enforcement was up to the individual Officer. And that was just one of many such “laws by agreement.”
In the 119330”s the Roosevelt administration set up relief stations so poor Black families could get food and clothing “from the government.” But Roosevelt and a Democratic contr Congress put the relief stations in cities such as St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia instead of Houston, Alexandria, Jacckson, Montgomery, Atlanta, and other cities where with the greatest need lived.
So tens of thousands of Black families migrated to the north, only to find local authorities resented the influx of the needy. And those officials reacted quickly to try to persuade the migrants to go back home. The first sign of that was a welfare rule that a woman could NOT get relief if her husband was living with her.
The idea was to force the men to pack their families back in the Model A and head back to cotton country – where no one could make a living on ten cents a pound cotton and then cents a pound pork. The result was predictable, the ruling split families and left women dependent on relief for he necessarily
This policy resulted in a great deal of tension in the Black neighborhoods, which resulted in riots in several cities, most notably Chicago during WWII. After the war, the pols looked at the Neighborhoods, where thousands of guns were left behind when the husband was forced out out of what should have been his home.
So the police department put on more men, patrolled the Black neighborhoods far more intensively, and kept things from getting out of hand. But in 11964 Hollywood’s gun ban campaign provided an excuse to discourage or entirely prevent legal gun ownership by Black Americans.
Illinois Firearms Owners Identification card system was Chicago’s answer to the “Guns in Black homes problem.”
The chart below shows what these Black Laws did to the crime rate in Chicago. The two peaks are first, the 1982 ban on guns unless you had clout enough to get a FOID card, and the second was the result of only criminals having guns and the CPD targeting the gang leaders who were enforcing a truce among gangs.
Clearly, on that basis alone, Black Americans have every reason to complain. Particularly since cities that do not restrict Black Americans gun rights have far lower crime rates than cities that want to do as Southern states did after the War Between The States.
Stranger