Griper Blade: The Difference Between 'Gun Grabbing' and 'Common Sense Policing'? Skin Color.

Way back when, the National Rifle Association was for gun control. Of course, that was back when the Black Panthers were "patrolling" the streets with loaded weapons. California Gov. Ronald Reagan was alarmed by the Panther's armed patrols and their increasingly bellicose rhetoric about using their Second Amendment rights to fight an oppressive government (sound familiar?) and passed the Mumford Act, which prohibited carrying loaded weapons in public -- with the NRA's help and blessing. That's right, the NRA helped make concealed carry illegal in California.

But of course, it was because of the scary black people that guns needed to be controlled. Once the anti-government armed-militia talk shifted from urban blacks to rural whites, it also went from dangerous sedition to admirable patriotism. In fact, in the years since, the NRA has used the spectre of street crime and gang violence to frighten whites into buying guns. They never really dropped the scary black people messaging, it just shifted from "they shouldn't have guns" to "they have guns, so you need them too." This idea is so ingrained in gun culture that ads and articles in gun magazines seem to assume that "legitimate" gun owners are white...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]