The Racist Origin of America's Gun Control Laws
Press Release
America's First Racist Gun Control Laws
The very first gun control laws in America were slave codes that banned African-Americans from owning or bearing arms. As early as 1640, the Virginia legislature passed an ordinance stating that African-American slaves -- then numbering fewer than 300 in the British colony -- would be exempt from mandatory militia service. The Virginia slave code of 1680 made disarmament of all black people mandatory, ruling, "It shall not be lawfull for any negroe or other slave to carry or arme himselfe with any club, staffe, gunn, sword or any other weapon of defence or offence," a prohibition repeated in the 1705 Virginia slave code, written in more modern language, requiring that "no slave go armed with gun, sword, club, staff, or other weapon."
The prohibition against slaves owning or carrying guns or other weapons in Britain's American colonies preceded other gun control laws across the British empire, including the penal laws against the Irish, which in 1695 required that "All papists [Catholics] within this kingdom of Ireland shall before the 1st day of March, 1696, deliver up to some justice of the peace or corporation officer where such papist shall dwell, all their arms and ammunition, notwithstanding any licence for keeping the same heretofore granted."
The rules against owning guns were aimed not just at those nominally deemed "slaves" in America; they were aimed at all subjected peoples. The text of Virginia's first slave code applied the same restriction to "free" blacks and indentured servants (mostly Irish Catholics and Scotch Presbyterians, but also criminals). Nearly all other Southern slave-holding states copied Virginia's lead, passing laws banning the ownership of guns for both slave and free African-Americans. These laws stayed in effect and were updated after independence from Britain. Georgia's 1833 slave code required that "the free persons of color, so detected in owning, using or carrying fire-arms, shall receive on his bare back, thirty-nine lashes." Alabama's 1833 slave code was nearly identical, with exactly the same punishment. North Carolina's 1855 slave code simply stated: "No slave shall go armed with gun, sword, club or other weapon, or shall keep any such weapon." The state omitted the mention of free blacks, largely because North Carolina had so few free African-Americans.
"In the history of gun control elsewhere across the globe, there have been many examples of genocide where the victim race or ethnic group has been disarmed before the genocide took place. One particularly valuable scholarly analysis of this trend was the 1994 bookLethal Laws by Jay Simkin, Alan Rice, and Aaron Zelman, which analyzed the gun control laws of six national genocides. In each of the six cases, from the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians to the Nazi annihilation of the Jews to the Rwandan Hutus killing the Tutsis, strict gun control laws were in place for the victim populations before the genocide. America avoided genocide, but historically its gun control laws served a similar racist purpose by subjugating African-Americans legally and leaving them to the ravages of terrorist organizations such as the Red Shirts and the Ku Klux Klan."
Hitler and Stalin were masters at gun control. "Trust me, I'm from the government," the Man says. According to a novel read to me, Nicolai Lenin once commented, "One man with a gun can control a hundred men without guns." Communism is minority government. If you want government run by an oligarchic minority, then vote for gun control. Kenneth Stepp opposes gun control, whether it be laws against the German Jews, the Armenian Christians, the American Southerners (black or white) , or the Tutsis. The Establishment would reduce your gun-owners' rights, but not Kenneth Stepp. Kenneth Stepp favors gun owners' rights and Second Amendment rights. STEPP FOR CONGRESS!
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