The first gun control laws dealt with freed blacks not being allowed arms. During the reconstruction and Jim Crow era laws passed that didn’t signal race outright but had the same effect, they engineered the laws to only impact blacks and then enforced them only on blacks.
For example laws in some states that forbid carrying of any model pistol other than the most expensive ones were used to keep poor people- AKA newly freed blacks- from being able to to afford the only legal guns.
In NC they passed a law, still on the books today, requiring a permit from the sheriff to buy any handgun in 1918. It gave wide discretion to the Sheriff as to how they determined who was worthy, so minorities could be denied for everything from not passing a literacy test to not having good enough references. Growing up in the 80’s my dad had to go and get two white men to write him letters of reference to be able to get a permit to buy a handgun- as an immigrant who served his nation and gained his citizenship he still literally had to go out and get two white men to vouch for him before he could exercise his right.
Others have pointed out laws passed in California as a result of tension about blacks being armed during the civil rights movement.
Even the Gun Control Act of 1968, always heralded out as a great success and leap in the right direction by gun control advocates, was mostly a law aimed at making it harder for non-whites to buy guns in the aftermath of the race rights and racial tensions of the 1960’s. The excuse given was it was in response to the shootings of MLK and JFK, but the truth is nothing in it would have prevented that in any way, but virtually every aspect of it did impact the ability of minorities to own guns.
Among the things the GCA of 68 did- banned imports of cheap handguns, aka “Saturday Night Specials”, based on the notion that they were a preferred gun of minority criminals and using the tactic of pricing them out of the market. Even the term “Saturday Night Special” is racist in its origins. It was the first time a national law went into effect barring felons from owning guns, and that disproportionately affected minorities who were far more likely to have criminal records. It created the FFL system and mandated all guns be sold in licensed shops, no more mail order or small Mom and Pop shops having one or two- because they knew nobody was going to set up a licensed shop in minority neighborhoods in big cities and that down south shops were still segregated enough that they would deny sales to blacks. It prohibited buying guns across state lines unless from an FFL so that minorities subject to worse laws on the state level, like NC’s pistol purchase permit law, couldn’t get relief by shopping in another state.
Literally almost every provision in that law was made to very disproportionately impact minorities and prevent them from exercising their rights, while being much less of a barrier to whites.
And that is how most gun control laws have been through this nations history.
= new reply since forum marked as read
