Yesterday's landmark Supreme Court decision overturning the blanket handgun ban in Chicago continues the legacy of the civil rights movement, some commentators argue.
Within the text of the 214-page Supreme Court ruling on gun rights is a history lesson on how Americans’ right to keep and bear arms was a major issue in the struggle for black civil rights in the South after the Civil War. To wit, Southern resisters, black codes and lawless lawmen attempted to disarm freedmen (usually in order to make them more vulnerable to racist terrorism), and the federal government came to their rescue by protecting their 2nd Amendment rights.
The quotations and detailed references leave absolutely no question that Congress and the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment viewed it — and accompanying post-war civil rights legislation — as a safeguard against state infringement of the 2nd Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. It’s not a part of our history that the Left has much stomach for, but fewer people argue against the obvious now that the Democratic Party has all but conceded the gun issue.
What do you think? Is gun control a civil rights issue, or is this blogger muddying the waters? Follow the link above for a more complete history lesson.
