Something modestly worthwhile (for once) fro the NRA:
Gun Rights are Equal Rights
by Nicholas Johnson - Friday, January 22, 2021
The lever-action rifle didn’t just change the West. The 16-shot Henry rifle (shown here), and other modern arms, were also used by newly freed blacks in the late 19th century to defend their freedom.
When looking at the struggle of black people in the United States for their natural rights—those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—the right to bear arms, and particularly those arms employing multi-shot technology, has been vital.
Opponents of the AR-15, America’s most-popular rifle, argue that its repeating capability is exceptional and that such a thing was not contemplated by the framers and ratifiers of the constitutional right to arms.
This is false.
Many versions of repeating firearms were available at the time of the framing. But the most-vivid demonstration that the right to arms was embraced with full appreciation for the capabilities of repeating firearms is the transformative post-civil war extension of federal constitutional rights as limitations on states through the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
The views of the drafters and advocates of the Fourteenth Amendment are plain. Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan introduced the proposal by explaining that “the great object” of the amendment is to “restrain the power of the states and compel them in all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees … secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as the right to keep and bear arms.”
The same congress that advanced the Fourteenth Amendment also abolished southern state militias, demonstrating a vision of the right to arms as an individual right, and not merely some federal protection of state prerogatives.
By 1868, the capabilities of repeating rifles were widely understood.* In 1861, B. Tyler Henry’s 16-shot, lever-action rifle already had powerful advocates in the Union Army. The Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton; Secretary of Navy, Gideon Welles; and President Abraham Lincoln all received gifts of presentation-grade Henry rifles. In May of 1862, the Henry was tested at the Washington Navy Yard, where one 15-shot magazine was fired in 10.8 seconds. A total of 1,040 shots were fired with hits made out to 348 feet on an 18-inch square target. This was done with .44-caliber cartridges firing 216-grain bullets.
Ida B. Wells was a journalist who exposed lynchings in the South in the late 19th century.
She wrote: “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.”
Commentary from the period highlights the acknowledged utility of the lever-action repeater in the context of civil unrest. In July 1862, George Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, said, “In these days when rebel outlaws and raids are becoming common in Kentucky. … Certainly the most effective weapon that could be used with the most tremendous results is the one that we have mentioned recently on two or three occasions, the newly invented rifle of Henry.” Prentice ultimately bought several hundred Henry rifles and resold them to loyal Union men.
After the war, the utility of the repeating rifle was abundantly clear to black people who plainly needed more than the parchment barriers of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect them against both private terrorism and the overtly hostile state and local governments.
The Black Codes of this era (local and state laws that aimed to reinstitute slavery in a different form) reflected the age-old wisdom that subjugation requires disarmament. The Freedmen appreciated instinctively that arms were vital to their survival. They defied local and state disarmament efforts and defended their neighbors, friends and selves. We know from newspapers of the day, petitions to Congress, and reporting of Freedman’s Bureau agents that the right to arms was a paramount concern for those newly freed in the territory where they were recently enslaved.
“The great object” of the amendment is to “restrain the power of the states and compel
them in all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees … secured by the first
eight amendments of the Constitution [including] the right to keep and bear arms.”
—Sen. Jacob M. Howard (1805-1871)
By the end of the 19th century, the importance of repeating rifles to black people was so well-established that storied anti-lynching advocate, Ida B. Wells, would declare, “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.”
Wells’ praise of the Winchester was not empty rhetoric, and her perspective was not just historical. She was referencing two recent episodes, one in Jacksonville, Fla., and one in Paducah, Ky., where well-armed black people thwarted lynch mobs.
Wells drew similar lessons from black people using repeating technology in self-defense in Oklahoma. Seven months before she arrived, black men wielding Winchester rifles defied a mob to rescue Edwin McCabe, the black founder of Langston, Okla., who had the grand vision of becoming governor. After mobs in Memphis had lynched her best friend and sacked her newspaper, Wells traveled there in search of a more hospitable environment where she might recommend black people to migrate.
Wells’ exhortation was heeded by countless men and women who faced petty tyranny and mobs during the first century of black citizenship in America. And hers was not an isolated voice. The commitment to armed self-defense and the deployment of multi-shot and multi-projectile firearms was common from the leadership to the grassroots.
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Originally Posted by Beetlegeuse
