This too, I shall defend.
Amazing.
What is unamazing is that you cannot debate the facts.
Everything I said was perfectly true.
Extreme actions tend to precipitate extreme overreactions. What they did was not right but it was understandable under the circumstances.
Reagan was a lot of things but he was never a lover of the 2nd Amendment.
I had heard that many gun control laws had started to disarm black people. (White deputies could, of course keep their guns.)
I don’t really actually really understand what the Black Panthers were complaining about though.
If they were legally armed with rifles and shotguns, what more did they want? Scary-looking weapons?
Read up on the movement, they were a terrorist organization hell bent on the violent overthrow of the gov’t and the creation of a black separatist state.
Yes, it is all true. And not one bit of it changes the fact that millions of people had their Constitutionally recognized rights violated out of fear of black skin.
I meant what guns were disallowed that caused
“one of the armed men began a harangue about “gun control.” Speaking to the TV cameras, he denounced “the racist California Legislature” for “keeping the black people disarmed and powerless.”
What crime did they commit that day?
It wasn’t fear of their skin, it was fear of their professed desire for violent revolution as a group.
I’d need more context to comment intelligently on it.
The event that triggered the change in law was them marching on the capitol armed. Their professed intent was well known as were the many terrorist acts they had threatened and committed.
Of course it was.
That was at best questionable which is why the law was changed.
If that were true the law would have been passed decades earlier.
They didn’t.
Article point is gun control was passed to disarm black people.
I note that the legally-armed protesters were protesting the fact that some guns, were already illegal. Appo they were protesting to relegalize those other guns.
My question is “Which guns were already illegal?”
Of course it was. They even passed such laws on the East Coast reference Italians because they weren’t white.
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Basically that would be NFA firearms on a federal level and you’d have to look back at whatever statutes were on the books in CA at the time to see what was illegal under state law.
I’m thinking it went some mething like this:
- California outlaws scary looking weapons or zip guns or something else.
- Black Panthers declare disarming the ghetto a racist plot and march in a legal protest openly carrying legal ioen-carry weapons.
- In a possibly racist response, scared Californians of both parties expand California gun control.
Sound likely?
It’s interesting they decided to run this story as I’m sure the paper supports gun control as currently practiced in that state.
Wonder what the motive is.
I’m not inclined to speculate without reading up on it again.
We had major federal gun control legislation passed in 38 and again I think in 68 and I’m’ not sure about California statutes in that era, it’s just not something I’ve ever spent much time on.
In general gun control laws have been written primarily to limit access to them by the poor and to keep the wealthy surrounded by armed security both here and abroad.
Gee, what a great question.
Neener Neener. I’ve got the correct answer.
Ahem
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The article continues
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But the Black Panther Party, founded the year before in Oakland, was engaged in perfectly legal, if unorthodox, lobbying. Its leaders, including Seale and Huey Newton, openly carried loaded guns to protect black people from racist police. In response, Oakland’s Republican Assemblyman Don Mulford had proposed a measure abolishing open carry in California. He called it the “Panther Bill.”
As it turned out, the Panthers’ opposition was a dismal failure. The “Panther Bill” — gun control that it was — had the support of the National Rifle Association of the day. The 120-member Legislature (with six blacks, three women, and all the rest white men) overwhelmingly passed the measure. Reagan signed it into law saying, “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
Today, the NRA advocates guns in all kinds of public places. But open carry is still illegal in California. Now as then, the real issue is not the guns being carried but, rather, who does the carrying. . . . .
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