Libertarian Party Online
Original story: http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=74

Anti-gun lawsuit by the NAACP is really an attack on civil rights, say Libertarians
July 15, 1999
WASHINGTON, DC — The NAACP is making a “racist mistake” by filing a lawsuit against gun manufacturers — and is following in the shameful footsteps of the Ku Klux Klan, the Libertarian Party charged today.

“With this lawsuit, the NAACP is not only attacking the civil rights of African-Americans, but is also continuing the legacy of the KKK and other racist organizations that have historically tried to keep guns out of the hands of blacks,” said Steve Dasbach, the party’s national director.

“Politics makes strange bedfellows — and what could be stranger than the NAACP climbing into bed with the grand wizards of the KKK by supporting their racist agenda?”

This week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) announced at its national convention that it will file a federal suit in New York on Friday against 85 gun manufacturers for “dumping guns into black communities and turning them into war zones.”

The NAACP — which argued that “the illegal trafficking of firearms disproportionately affects minority communities” — wants the court to ban sales at gun shows and limit how many guns can be sold in one transaction.

But the reality is, the gun control measures endorsed by the NAACP will disproportionately affect minority communities, where people are exposed to higher crime rates and slower police response times, said Dasbach.

“The NAACP apparently wants to limit the ability of its members to defend themselves and their families against violent crime,” he said. “That’s shameful enough, but what’s even worse is that this lawsuit continues the disgraceful legacy of white racists who don’t think blacks can be trusted with guns.”

In fact, anyone who studies history knows that gun control laws have frequently targeted African-Americans, said Dasbach — going all the way back to the post-Civil War period, when Southern whites were determined to keep guns away from emancipated slaves.

According to Don B. Kates, an author who studied post-Civil War gun laws, a flurry of Southern states passed laws designed to ban or tax inexpensive handguns so poor blacks couldn’t afford them, including Tennessee (1870), Arkansas (1881), and Alabama (1893).

That trend continued into the 20th Century. In 1902, South Carolina banned the sale of handguns to everyone except “sheriffs and their special deputies: i.e., company goons and the KKK.” In 1911, New York City passed the Sullivan Law, which allowed police to screen handgun applicants — so they could reject blacks, eastern Europeans, and Jews.

And in 1968, Congress passed more gun control legislation, partly in response to the urban riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

“Given America’s shameful legacy of attempting to deprive African-Americans of basic civil rights — by denying them the right to exercise the Second Amendment — it’s baffling that the NAACP would join this attack,” said Dasbach. “This lawsuit is a betrayal of everything a civil rights organization should represent.”

Ironically, the NAACP itself has a history of using firearms to defend African-Americans from racists, he noted.

In Monroe, North Carolina in 1957, for example, 60 armed blacks from the local NAACP chapter were able to repel an attack from a KKK motorcade after the Klansmen shot at the house of Dr. Albert E. Perry, the NAACP vice president.

“It would be a shame if such despicable attacks against black Americans became more common in the future — because the NAACP had disarmed its members,” said Dasbach. “As that incident in Monroe proved, the best way to protect minority communities is by giving them the freedom to defend themselves.”