About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

4 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 17 (1994-1995)
The Racist Roots of Gun Control

handle is hein.journals/kjpp4 and id is 169 raw text is: The Racist Roots of Gun Control Clayton E. Cramer The apparent goal of the gun control and vagrancy laws was to intimidate the freedmen into an economically subservient position. The historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws - and not in any subtle way. Throughout much of American history, governments openly stated that gun control laws were useful for keeping blacks and Hispanics in their place and for quieting the racial fears of whites. Racist arms laws predate the establishment of the United States. This is not surprising. Blacks in the New World were often slaves, and revolts against slave owners often degenerated into less selective forms of racial warfare. The perception that free blacks were sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved brothers and the dangerous example that blacks could actually handle freedom often led New World governments to disarm all blacks, both slave and free. Starting in 1751, the French Black Code required Louisiana colonists to stop any blacks and, if necessary, beat any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane.' If a black refused to stop on demand and was on horseback, the colonist was authorized to shoot to kill.2 In Louisiana, the fear of Indian attack and the importance of hunting to the colonial economy necessi- tated that slaves sometimes possess firearms. The colonists had to balance their fear of the Indians against their fear of their slaves. As a result, French Louisiana passed laws that allowed slaves and free blacks to possess firearms only under very controlled condi- tions.3 Similarly, in the sixteenth century the colony of New Spain, terrified of black slave revolts, prohibited all blacks, free and slave, from carrying arms.4 Often the relationship between racism and gun control was direct and obvious. On other occasions the connection was more complex. One example of a complex relationship between eco- nomic struggle, slavery, and possession of arms can be found in seventeenth-century Virginia. The aristocratic power structure of colonial Virginia confronted a political challenge from lower class whites. These poor whites resented how the men who controlled the government used that power to concentrate wealth into a small number of hands. These wealthy feeders at the government trough would have disarmed poor whites, but the threat of both Indian and pirate attack made this impractical; all white men were armed and had to be armed.5 Instead of empowering poor whites, blacks, who had occupied a poorly defined status between indentured servant and slave, were reduced to hereditary chattel slavery. In this way, poor whites could be economically advantaged without the upper class having to give up its privileges.6 In the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the slave population successfully threw off their French masters. As the Revolution degenerated into a race war, existing fears increased in the French Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a telecommunications manufacturer in Northern California and author of For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent & Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Winter 1995

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most