Racism and Gun Control.

To complement ArmedandSafe's post on the subject:

Alex T. Riley of Ceasefire PA has made the claim the the modern firearm rights movement started as a reaction to the race riots of the late Sixties and that those that support said rights do so in fear of blacks and hispanics. To counter this, I present the words of journalist Robert Sherrill, no friend of gun owners, from his book "Saturday Night Specials":

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns but to control blacks, and inasmuch as a majority of Congress did not want to do the former but were ashamed to show that their goal was the latter, the result was they did neither. Indeed, this law, the first gun-control law passed by Congress in thirty years, was one of the grand jokes of our time. First of all, bear in mind that it was not passed in one piece but was a combination of two laws. The original 1968 Act was passed to control handguns after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated with a rifle Then it was repealed and re-passed to include the control of rifles and shotguns after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy with a handgun....

Hmm. It would seem that the modern movement started as a reaction to a knee-jerk reaction. Did people purchase more firearms during the riots? I wouldn't doubt it. That is a well established trend following discord. That, however, does not a political movement make. Why would a movement to keep firearms need to be started unless legislatures were trying to take them away?

But I digress.

In 1988, the Chicago Housing Authority and CPD started the program known as "Operation Clean Sweep". This involved warrantless searches of homes,
mandatory sign in/out rosters, and visitor exclusion rules that included
family members and children. This resulted in the case Rose Summeries, et al. v. Chicago Housing Authority, et al. The CPD and CHA chose to limit their activities instead of going through the courts. Firearms, however, are still banned from CHA buildings.

Virginia courts have upheld a similar ban in the Richmond Housing Authority (Richmond Tenants Org. v. Richmond Dev. & Hous. Auth.) while Federal legislation (HR 3838) was proposed, along with the states Washington and Oregon, in 1994. Maine attempted to ban firearms in public housing in 1995 but this was struck down.

So not only are "gun control's" very origins rooted in racism and efforts to control what are deemed by them to be undesirable elements of the population, their efforts in the latter half of the 20th Century continue this oh-so-fine tradition. This is re-enforced by Obama touting his wife's words:

And by the way, Michelle, my wife, she was traveling up, I think, in eastern Iowa, she was driving through this nice, beautiful area, going through all this farmland and hills and rivers and she said 'Boy, it's really pretty up here,' but she said, 'But you know, I can see why if I was living out here, I'd want a gun. Because, you know, 911 is going to take some time before somebody responds. You know what I mean? You know, it's like five miles between every house.'

And then adding:

"So the point is, though, we should be able to do that, and we should be able to enforce laws that keep guns off the streets in inner cities because some unscrupulous gun dealer is, you know, letting somebody load up a van with a bunch of cheap handguns or sawed-off shotguns and dumping them and selling them for a profit in the streets."

In other words, it's alright for the rural folk but you can't trust those 'people' on the streets.

Now what demographics would fall under those brushes again?