Liberty Alone

One of the points I’ve come across whilst reading around the Heller vs DC gun control case* is that the first gun control laws were brought in after the US Civil War.

They were brought in, not to protect ordinary people, but to prevent black people and former slaves from having weapons. That is to remove the ability of blacks to defend themselves against their former owners and to entrench racist politics in the former slave states.

Its like the gun control laws in the UK which were originally brought in to prevent the working class from gaining access to them to try and ensure the dominance of the political classes over them.

The origins of weapons control were not about protecting people but about keeping power over people. That is the effect the laws have today. Ensuring the coercive classes have control over the productive classes, whether the coercive classes be the state or the criminals of the ‘red market’.

As for the decision in Heller, its a step in the right direction, the court has decided that there is a constitutional right for the individual to possess arms, kept in a usable state, for self defense, but it stops short of affirming an absolute right to bear arms and the decision will be used to justify new restrictions.

(* most of this comes from the radical left who oppose gun control).

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