Gun Control Sprouts From Racist Soil ---- By Roy Innis
When his owner died in 1846, Scott sued in the state courts of Missouri for his freedom, on the ground that he had lived in free territory. He won his case, but it was reversed in the Missouri Supreme Court. Scott appealed to the federal courts, since the person he was actually suing, John Sanford, the executor of the estate that owned Scott, lived in New York. It was in that setting that Chief Justice Taney made his infamous rulings: 1. That black people, whether free or slave, were not citizens of the U.S.; therefore, they had no standing in court. 2. Scott was denied freedom. 3. The Missouri Compromise was ruled unconstitutional. Well known to most students of race relations is the former attorney general and secretary of the Treasury's pre-civil war dictum that black people "being of an inferior order" had "no right which any white man was bound to respect." Much less known are his equally racist pronouncements denying black people, whether slave or free, specific constitutional protections enjoyed by whites. In Dred Scott Chief Justice Taney, writing for the court's majority, stated that if blacks were "entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, . . . {i}t would give persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one state of the union, the right . . . to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the state. . . ." Although much of Justice Taney's overtly racist legal reasoning was repudiated by events that followed -- such as the Civil War and Reconstruction -- the subliminal effects were felt throughout that era. In the post-Reconstruction period, when the pendulum swung back to overt racism, Justice Taney's philosophy resurfaced. It was during this period that racial paranoia about black men with guns intensified. It was potent enough to cause the infringement on the Second Amendment to the Constitution's "right . . . to keep and bear arms." Under natural law, a freeman's right to obtain and maintain the implements of self-defense has always been sacred. This right was restricted or prohibited for serfs, peasants and slaves. Gun control was never an issue in America until after the Civil War when black slaves were freed. It was this change in the status of the black man, from slave to freeman, that caused racist elements in the country (North and South) to agitate for restrictions on guns -- ignoring long established customs and understanding of the Second Amendment. The specter of a black man with rights of a freeman, bearing arms, was too much for the early heirs of Roger Taney to bear. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, along with the various Reconstruction civil rights acts, prevented gun prohibitionists from making laws that were explicitly racist and that would overtly deny black people the right to bear arms. The end of Reconstruction signaled the return of Taneyism -- overtly among the masses and covertly on the Supreme Court. Gun-control legislation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, enacted at the state and local levels, were implicitly racist in conception. And in operation, those laws invidiously targeted blacks. With the influx of large numbers of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants into the country, gun laws now also targeted whites from the underprivileged classes of immigrants. Eventually these oppressive gun laws were extended to affect all but a privileged few. Throughout the history of New York state's Sullivan law, enacted at the start of the 20th century, mainly the rich and powerful have had easy access to licenses to carry handguns. Some of the notables who have received that privilege include Eleanor Roosevelt, John Lindsay, Donald Trump, Arthur Sulzberger, Joan Rivers and disk jockey Howard Stern. Of the 27,000 handgun carry permits in New York City, fewer than 2% are issued to blacks -- who live and work in high-crime areas and really are in need of protection. And what of the origins of the National Rifle Association, which is wrongly viewed as a racist organization by the black supporters of gun prohibition? It was inspired and organized by Union Army officers after the Civil War. --- Mr. Innis is national chairman of the New York-based Congress of Racial Equality.
dred scott;black people;racial paranoia;infamous rulings;gun control;second amendment