THE FIRST NIGHT of the Democratic convention featured a
no-holds-barred attack on the Second Amendment. The Democratic women
members of the United States Senate led by Diane Feinstein denigrated gun
owners, self-defense, and, of course, the National Rifle Association (NRA).
The Atlanta Journal Constitution summarized the onslaught in these words:
?On the podium, on the airwaves, and on political buttons, the issue of guns
and children permeated the party’s national convention, including a
prime-time appearance by a parent who lost a child at last year’s Columbine
High School shooting in Littleton, Colo..?

As the cameras panned across the delegates on the floor of the Staples
Center, one saw them cheering Senators Feinstein, Boxer and Mikulski as
they excoriated Governor George W. Bush for signing a right-to-carry law in
Texas – a law which granted law-abiding and peaceable Texas citizens the
right to defend themselves outside their homes for the first time in over a
century.

Watching on television, I wondered if any of those folks in Staples Center
knew that the roots of gun control in the English-speaking world are deeply
buried in racist soil. Arms control has been a tool of the majority used against
vulnerable and weak minorities.

In 1181, the Jews in what is today Great Britain were disarmed and left
helpless against the pogroms waged against them. Five hundred years later,
in the colonies settled by men and women seeking religious and economic
freedom from the British crown, slaves were not allowed the use of arms.

Even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the victory of the Union over
the Confederacy, most legislatures in the defeated Southern states passed
laws denying blacks the right to own firearms. Although the U.S. Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868
in order to keep Southern legislatures from enacting “Black Codes,” it didn?t
stop the passage of bans on handgun sales in South Carolina or laws against
small, inexpensive, and easily concealed handguns – the nineteenth century
version of today?s ?Saturday Night Special? laws.

The Black Codes made it easy for the Klu Klux Klan to run rampant — burning
crosses, harassing, terrorizing, and killing blacks in their communities. In
Monroe, N.C., during the decade of the fifties, the Klan was still practicing
intimidation. They were driving through black neighborhoods terrorizing the
homes of the leaders of the Monroe chapter of the NAACP, especially the
home of the chapter vice president, Dr. Albert E. Perry.

In 1957, the Monroe chapter of the NAACP initiated their struggle for
self-defense. Sixty members of that chapter became affiliated with the
National Rifle Association.

Through the NRA, they received firearms training; training in safety and
responsibility that led to freedom. They became knowledgeable and proficient
in the use of their privately owned firearms. So when the Klan came driving
through the chapter vice-president?s neighborhood, they came face to face
with the true meaning of the Second Amendment: a color-blind right to
self-defense.

One of the members of the Monroe NAACP and an NRA Life member, Robert
Williams, wrote in his book, Negroes with Guns, “An armed motorcade
attacked Dr. Perry’s house. We shot it out with the Klan and repelled their
attack and the Klan didn’t have any more stomach for this type of fight. They
stopped raiding our community.”

The women Senators at the Democratic convention cheer for victims? rights,
but ignore the victim?s fundamental right to self-defense. They would deny
future generations of Americans the very right the Monroe chapter of the
NAACP exercised forty years ago. Those sixty members of the Monroe
NAACP would be the first to petition those Senators to fight for our right to
keep and bear arms.

Tanya K. Metaksa is the former executive director of the National Rifle
Association’s Institute for Legislative Action. She is the author of Safe, Not
Sorry, a self-protection manual, published in 1997. She has appeared on
numerous talk and interview shows such as “Crossfire,” the “Today” show,
“Nightline,” “This Week with David Brinkley” and the “McNeil-Lehrer Hour,”
among others.