California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the entire United States. There are no provisions on the California state constitution that guarantees an individual’s rights to keep and bear arms. The California Supreme Court has utilized this lack of a guarantee for the rights of private citizens to purchase, possess, or carry firearms to declare California’s gun laws as being constitutional. However, since the Supreme Court of the United States has established that the Second Amendment applies to all states within the Union in both District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, many of California’s restrictive laws are being challenged in federal court.
“All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy,” as delineated by Article 1, Section 1 of the California Constitution.
Despite all of this, gun control activists often point to California’s laws as a shining beacon of how to best limit the American citizen’s exercise of the Second Amendment right. This is somewhat ironic, given the fact that these mostly left-leaning activists are applauding gun laws that are firmly rooted in racist laws instituted to prevent black men from being armed during the tumultuous Civil Rights period in which American citizens weren’t allowed to attend the same schools or utilize the same bathrooms as their white counterparts.
“There is no reason why, on the street today, a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons. Guns are a ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will,” Ronald Reagan once said while governor of California.
On May 2, 1967, a group of Black Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol building with loaded weapons and read a prepared statement: “The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.” The terror to which they were referring was not only the most basic human rights being denied black people across the United States, but police brutality on those who dared speak out against this injustice. This was the original Black Lives Matter movement, one that was actually concerned with equality in an age where there was none; much like the Black Lives Matter movement of today, the early Black Panther movement was not yet corrupted by violence and a willingness to commit acts of terror. This was a movement where black men had decided they would no longer let the government come into their neighborhoods and inflict tyranny on its inhabitants. They began carrying weapons openly and patrolling their neighborhoods, “copwatching,” and ensuring that law enforcement was being conducted in a legal manner.
“The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched,” recorded Ida B. Wells, journalist and civil rights activist in 1892.
The audacious move to “invade” the capitol building was met with panic. In 1967, the Mulford Act repealed an already existing law that allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms. This was the first step in the long march to strip residents of California of their basic Constitutional rights. Have no misunderstanding of this situation. California lawmakers went into full reactionary mode, with the sole intention of ensuring that black men would no longer be able to legally carry weapons openly in public. Just like other “progressive” movements such as Planned Parenthood, this all was born out of a desire to leverage actual white supremacy upon people of color.
