Liberal Blog Injects Race Into Court Ruling
SoonerThought, a lightly-read blog with a listed address of origin in Kansas City, Missouri, introduced race into the U. S. Supreme Court's 2nd Amendment ruling today.
The blog ridicules the ruling under the headline "Okay, Mr. Saturday Night Special. Feel Better About Yourself Now?"
The post is typical of the historically-uninformed who try to class every firearm into a pejorative collective heap and mistakenly believe the term "Saturday Night Special" somehow encompasses most firearms manufactured and sold today.
The unidentified writer (whom we have identified as someone named Alex Greenwood in Kansas City, MO) obviously is ignorant of the fact that "Saturday Night Special" refers to inexpensive firearms that white nightriders wanted to keep out of the hands of Southern blacks in the years after the Civil War. Blacks and poor whites could not afford more expensive firearms to protect themselves, so they purchased the inexpensive weapons they could afford. The primary targets of laws in the South prohibiting ownership of such firearms were blacks; armed nightriders, most of them wearing white sheets or black and white robes, wanted their prey unarmed and defenseless. Three such opponents of the right to keep and bear arms are pictured.
The earliest law prohibiting inexpensive handguns, or "Saturday Night Specials," was enacted in Tennessee, in the form of the "Army and Navy" law, passed in 1879, shortly after the 14th amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1875; previous laws invalidated by the constitutional amendment had stated that black freedmen could not own or carry any manner of firearm.
The Army and Navy law prohibited the sale of "belt or pocket pistols, or revolvers, or any other kind of pistols, except army or navy pistols," which were prohibitively expensive for black freedmen and poor whites to purchase.
Because the price of a firearm helps to determine who is able to buy it, the elimination of inexpensive firearms has a direct effect upon those of lesser means.
Roy Innis, president of the activist group Congress on Racial Equality, said, "To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form." (The Congress on Racial Equality filed as an amicus curiae in a 1985 suit challenging Maryland's Saturday night special/low-caliber handgun ban.)
The Wright and Rossi National Institute of Justice study (p.238) concluded: "The people most likely to be deterred from acquiring a handgun by exceptionally high prices or by the nonavailability of certain kinds of handguns are not felons intent on arming themselves for criminal purposes (who can, if all else fails, steal the handgun they want), but rather poor people who have decided they need a gun to protect themselves against the felons but who find that the cheapest gun in the market costs more than they can afford to pay. Sources: Wikipedia, NRA, GOA, CORE.
The blog ridicules the ruling under the headline "Okay, Mr. Saturday Night Special. Feel Better About Yourself Now?"
The post is typical of the historically-uninformed who try to class every firearm into a pejorative collective heap and mistakenly believe the term "Saturday Night Special" somehow encompasses most firearms manufactured and sold today.
The unidentified writer (whom we have identified as someone named Alex Greenwood in Kansas City, MO) obviously is ignorant of the fact that "Saturday Night Special" refers to inexpensive firearms that white nightriders wanted to keep out of the hands of Southern blacks in the years after the Civil War. Blacks and poor whites could not afford more expensive firearms to protect themselves, so they purchased the inexpensive weapons they could afford. The primary targets of laws in the South prohibiting ownership of such firearms were blacks; armed nightriders, most of them wearing white sheets or black and white robes, wanted their prey unarmed and defenseless. Three such opponents of the right to keep and bear arms are pictured.
The earliest law prohibiting inexpensive handguns, or "Saturday Night Specials," was enacted in Tennessee, in the form of the "Army and Navy" law, passed in 1879, shortly after the 14th amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1875; previous laws invalidated by the constitutional amendment had stated that black freedmen could not own or carry any manner of firearm.
The Army and Navy law prohibited the sale of "belt or pocket pistols, or revolvers, or any other kind of pistols, except army or navy pistols," which were prohibitively expensive for black freedmen and poor whites to purchase.
Because the price of a firearm helps to determine who is able to buy it, the elimination of inexpensive firearms has a direct effect upon those of lesser means.
Roy Innis, president of the activist group Congress on Racial Equality, said, "To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form." (The Congress on Racial Equality filed as an amicus curiae in a 1985 suit challenging Maryland's Saturday night special/low-caliber handgun ban.)
The Wright and Rossi National Institute of Justice study (p.238) concluded: "The people most likely to be deterred from acquiring a handgun by exceptionally high prices or by the nonavailability of certain kinds of handguns are not felons intent on arming themselves for criminal purposes (who can, if all else fails, steal the handgun they want), but rather poor people who have decided they need a gun to protect themselves against the felons but who find that the cheapest gun in the market costs more than they can afford to pay. Sources: Wikipedia, NRA, GOA, CORE.
Labels: 2nd Amendment, Alex Greenwood, Saturday Night Specials
posted by Mike McCarville @ 12:21 PM
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