Clayton Cramer on the racist roots of California gun control
Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 11:13 pm
In the July 2011 edition of the NRA publication America's First Freedom, Clayton Cramer writes about the racist roots of California gun control.
California is one of six states that have no right to keep and bear arms in their constitution.
The first constitutional convention in California was held in 1849. During the debates, one delegate proposed a clause that was identical to those found in many other state constitutions: "Every person has a right to bear arms for himself and the State."
This clause contains no mention of the militia or other qualifications such as "free man" that many other states had or have in their constitutions.
The debate became bogged down in many digressions and amendments. One of the most notable is that a delegate, Winfield Sherwood, stated that denying an individual right to bear arms "would be null and void, inasmuch as it would be in opposition to the Constitution of the United States."
One of the delegates most opposed to adding an RKBA clause to the state constitution also proposed that blacks be banned from residence in the state. (Mr. Cramer uses the word blacks, but at the time more likely Negroes or colored would have been used.)
This was more than a decade before the War Between the States, long before the 14th amendment, guaranteeing equal protection, was ratified. At that time, one of the most contentious political issues was the spread of slavery to the territories. The Compromise of 1850 (passed in the U.S. Congress less than a year after these debates) admitted Texas as a slave state counterbalanced by California as a free state. (Otherwise California might have been admitted as two states, according to the Missouri Compromise.)
Mr. Cramer's article states that later legislation in California targeted Asians, Mexicans, and legal non-citizen immigrants with specific weapon laws. During that period, Asian and other non-white immigrants could never earn full citizenship.
The article is not online at this time.
- Jim
California is one of six states that have no right to keep and bear arms in their constitution.
The first constitutional convention in California was held in 1849. During the debates, one delegate proposed a clause that was identical to those found in many other state constitutions: "Every person has a right to bear arms for himself and the State."
This clause contains no mention of the militia or other qualifications such as "free man" that many other states had or have in their constitutions.
The debate became bogged down in many digressions and amendments. One of the most notable is that a delegate, Winfield Sherwood, stated that denying an individual right to bear arms "would be null and void, inasmuch as it would be in opposition to the Constitution of the United States."
One of the delegates most opposed to adding an RKBA clause to the state constitution also proposed that blacks be banned from residence in the state. (Mr. Cramer uses the word blacks, but at the time more likely Negroes or colored would have been used.)
This was more than a decade before the War Between the States, long before the 14th amendment, guaranteeing equal protection, was ratified. At that time, one of the most contentious political issues was the spread of slavery to the territories. The Compromise of 1850 (passed in the U.S. Congress less than a year after these debates) admitted Texas as a slave state counterbalanced by California as a free state. (Otherwise California might have been admitted as two states, according to the Missouri Compromise.)
Mr. Cramer's article states that later legislation in California targeted Asians, Mexicans, and legal non-citizen immigrants with specific weapon laws. During that period, Asian and other non-white immigrants could never earn full citizenship.
The article is not online at this time.
- Jim