The racist, elitist nature of gun control is an indelible part of American history. Why, then, is the Democrat Party so heavily invested in advancing these laws to their logical conclusion?
The historically racist origins of gun control are hardly a topic for debate. As noted by Cato Institute’s David Kopel, the matter of arming blacks in America was the subject of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision; with one Supreme Court justice warning about the rights of free blacks “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Kopel also notes that as a part of the Black Codes passed in the South during the early post-Civil War Reconstruction, free blacks were required to secure permission from police in order to carry firearms.
From Harriet Tubman, who carried a pistol with her during the heroic rescues of slaves, to abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who quipped “a man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box” — there is perhaps no other group in American history whose members understand intimately the “right to self-preservation” embodied in the Second Amendment than black Americans.
It is therefore more than a little curious as to why Democrats continue to push gun control measures that are inherently, historically, and intentionally designed to disenfranchise minority groups from their Second Amendment rights.
In spite of a downward trend of gun violence in America, even as gun ownership soars, Democrats contend there is both an “epidemic” of gun violence sweeping the country, and that access to firearms is the culprit. This mindset guides virtually every part of the Democrats’ gun control agenda; with no apparent regard to who actually is or will be impacted the most by their plans.
Carried to its natural end, the philosophy of gun control virtually ensures the only people left with firearms in a Democrat-controlled America are cops, affluent whites, and criminals.
– Bob Barr in The ‘Soft’ Racism of Gun Control