Negroes and the Gun (69 page)

CHAPTER 8: PIVOT

1
. Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr., “Handgun Control: Constitutional and Critically Needed,” 8
N. C. Cent. L. J.
(1976) at 189;
District of Columbia v. Heller
, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).

2
. Roy Wilkins,
The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins: Standing Fast
(1963) at 341; Robert Sherrill,
The
Saturday Night Special
(1975) at 23;
Kellogg v. City of Gary
, 562 N.E.2d 685, 688 (Ind. 1990). Rep. Major Owens (D–Brooklyn, NY) proposed repeal of the Second Amendment at 102d Cong. 2nd Sess., H.J. Res. 438; 139 Cong. Rec. H9088 at H9094, Nov. 10, 1993; Illinois congressman Bobby Rush proposed gun confiscation at Evan Osnos, “Bobby Rush; Democrat, U.S. House of Representatives,”
Chicago Tribune
, December 5, 1999;
Archer v. Arms Technology
669 N.W.2d 845, 854–55 (Mich. Ct. App. 2003).

3
. “Rev. Jesse Jackson Arrested at Gun Shop Protest,” Associated Press, Sunday, June 24, 2007;
NAACP v. AccuSport, Inc.
; Michael B. de Leeuw, “Ready, Aim, Fire?
District of Columbia v. Heller
and Communities of Color,”
Harv. Blackletter L. J.
(2009) at 133, 137.

4
. Doug McAdam,
Freedom Summer
(1988) at 90; Doug McAdam,
Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency
(1982) at 153-154, 183-185.

5
. Akinyele O. Umoja, “The Ballot and the Bullet: A Comparative Analysis of Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement,” 29
Journal of Black Studies
(1999) at 558, 568.

6
. Ibid., at 568.

7
. Michael Levine,
African Americans and Civil Rights: From 1619 to the Present
(1996) at 198-208. See also Umoja, at 563.

8
. Doug McAdam,
Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency
(1982) at 183. “We Love Everybody Who Loves Us,” youtube.com/watch?v=Cz3isgUZe5Y, uploaded April 9, 2007, by “Malcolm X,”
http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/
; “The Complete Malcolm X.”

9
. This conflation was evident in Malcolm X's declaration that “the biggest criminal against whom Blacks need to defend themselves [was] Uncle Sam.” Ultimate assessment of Malcolm X is complicated by the evident shift in his outlook after his pilgrimage to Mecca. After a fiery speech in Selma, Alabama, Malcolm whispered to Coretta King, “will you tell Dr. King that I'm sorry I won't get to see him? I had planned to visit him in jail, but I have to leave. I want him to know that I didn't come to make his job more difficult. I thought that if the white people understood what the alternative was, that they would be willing to listen to Dr. King.” Henry Hampton
and Steve Fayer,
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s
(1990) at 221-222.

10
. Simon Wendt, “The New Black Power History, Protection or Path Toward Revolution? Black Power and Self-Defense,”
Souls
, October-December 2007, at 320, 328.

11
. Hampton and Fayer,
Voices of Freedom
, at 327-328, 515- 516.

12
. Strain, “Civil Rights & Self-Defense: The Fiction of Nonviolence, 1955–1968,” PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkley (2000) at 164; Bobby Seale,
Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton
(1968) at 71, 116-117.

13
. Strain, “Civil Rights,” at 172; Don Cox, in “The Black Panther Party: Its Origin and Development as Reflected in Its Official Weekly Newspaper
The Black Panther Black Community News Service
,” Staff Study by the Committee on Internal Security, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, 91st Congress, Second Session, October 6, 1971 at page 26.

14
. Kenneth O'Reily,
Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972
(1989) at 321.

15
. Wilkins,
Standing Fast
, at 325; Strain, “Civil Rights,” at 215.

16
. Hugh Pearson,
The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America
(1994).

17
. Wilkins,
Standing Fast
, at 314; Hampton and Fayer,
Voices of Freedom
, at 298.

18
. Some people who were there say it was SNCC staffer Willie Ricks who said it first, but one account indicates that it was already sufficiently in use that to Ricks's shouted question “What do you want?” the crowd was already primed to demand “Black Power!” Joanne Grant,
Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
(1999) at 193.

19
.
Meet the Press
transcript, August 21, 1966, at 10- 26.

20
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 145; Herbert Haines,
Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream 1954–1970
(1988) at 84; Manfred Berg, “Black Power: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Resurgence of Black Nationalism during the 1960s,” in
The American Nation-National Identity-Nationalism
(Knud Krakau, ed., 1997) at 235-262. (“Almost quadrupling its income between 1966 and 1968, the NAACP undoubtedly benefited from its adamant opposition to the new slogan.”) Id. at 239.

21
. Wilkins,
Standing Fast
, at 316.

22
. Ibid., at 317.

23
. Roy Wilkins, “Whither Black Power,”
Crisis
, August-September, 1966, at 353- 354; Wendt,
Spirit
, at 141-146.

24
. Wendt,
Spirit
, at 144; Martin Luther King Jr.,
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
(1967) at 54; David Garrow,
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(2004) at 490.

25
. Juan Williams,
Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
(1998) at 334.

26
. Sherrill, at 283-295; Nicholas J. Johnson et al.,
Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy
(2012) at 731.

27
.
Meet the Press
, Sunday, July 16, 1967, at 9; Sherrill, at 283-295.

28
. Michael L. Levine,
African Americans and Civil Rights: From 1619 to the Present
(1996) at 193, 211; “Progress Report 1967: Political Victories Climax Year of Strife and Explosion in Nations Black Ghettos,”
Ebony
, January 1968 at 118-122; Charles Evers,
Have no Fear: The Charles Evers Story
(1996) at 241-243, 256, 263-264. Coleman Young of Detroit was an outlier, declaring “I'll be damned if I'm going to let them collect guns in the city of Detroit while we're surrounded by hostile suburbs and the whole rest of the state who have guns, and where you have vigilantes practicing Ku Klux Klan in the wilderness with automatic weapons.” Bill McGraw,
The Quotations of Mayor Coleman A. Young
(2005) at 29.

29
. See, for example, the incidents recorded by the Southern Poverty Law Center at
http://www.splcenter.org/get-involved/stand-strong-against-hate
.

30
. Nicholas J. Johnson, “Self Defense,”
J. L. Econ. & Pol'y
(2006) at 187. Nicholas J. Johnson, “Principles and Passions, the Intersection of Abortion and Gun Rights,” 50
Rutgers L. Rev.
(1997) at 97-197.

31
. I address the objection that opposition to gun control is the cause of this government failure in Nicholas J. Johnson, “Imagining Gun Control in America: Understanding the Remainder Problem,” 43
Wake Forest L. Rev.
(2008) at 837.

32
. Emma Lou Thornbrough, “T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Editor in the Age of Accommodation,” in John Hope Franklin and August Meier,
Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century
(1980) at 22-23.

33
. Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ida B. Wells Barnett,
Southern Horrors and Other Writings
(1997) at 70.

CHAPTER 9: THE BLACK TRADITION OF ARMS AND THE MODERN ORTHODOXY

1
. Benjamin C. Zirpursky, “Self-Defense, Domination and the Social Contract,” 57
U. Pitt. L. Rev.
(1996) at 579, 605. See also critiques of the utilization of principles of self-defense to expand rights on the progressive agenda, in Nicholas J. Johnson, “Principles and Passions: The Intersection of Abortion and Gun Rights,” 50
Rutgers L. Rev.
(1997) at 97-197; Nicholas J. Johnson, “Self-defense?” 2
Geo. Mason J. L., Econ. & Pol.
(2006) at 187; Nicholas J. Johnson, “Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons and the Attitudinalist Critique,” 60
Hastings L. J.
(2009) at 1285.

2
. Robin L. West, “The Nature of the Right to an Abortion,” 45
Hastings L. J.
(1994) at 961, 964-965.

3
. Alex P. Kellogg, “Black Flight Hits Detroit,”
Wall Street Journal,
June 5, 2010; “Crime-ridden Camden, N.J., Cuts Police Force Nearly in Half,” January 18, 2011, by the CNN
Wire Staff,
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/18/new.jersey.layoffs/index.html
(last accessed October 1, 2013).

4
. Robert Cooper, in
Youth of the Rural Organizing Cultural Center. Their Minds Stayed on Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Rural South, an Oral History
(1991) at 93.

5
. Melissa Isaacson, “One Tough (But Sweet) Mother,”
ESPN Chicago.com
(January 14, 2010).

6
. William Oliver, “The Structural-Cultural Perspective: A Theory of Black Male Violence” in
Violent Crime: Assessing Race and Ethnic Differences
(Darnell F. Hawkins, ed. 2003).

7
. Project of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva,
Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns in the City
(2007) at 47-51. Nicholas J. Johnson, “Imagining Gun Control in America: Understanding the Remainder Problem,” 43
Wake Forrest Law Review
(2008) at 847-860.

8
. For a full discussion, see Johnson, “Imagining Gun Control,” at 837.

9
. David Feith, “William Bratton: The Real Cures for Gun Violence, William Bratton, the Once (and Possibly Future) New York Police Commissioner, on the President's Gun-Control Plans and the Need for ‘Certainty of Punishment,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 18, 2013; Johnson, “Imagining Gun Control,” at 851-856. There is no precise count of firearms in America. Estimates of the gun stock proceed based on surrogate information. In 2012, my coauthors and I calculated approximately 323 million. See Johnson, et al.,
Firearms Law
, chapter 12 (online). There is general agreement that the number exceeds 300 million. William Bratton's estimate of 350 million firearms is on the high end of the spectrum. It also accounts for record levels of gun buying over the last several years in response to gun-ban proposals.

10
. The affiliated position of spot firearms bans only for beleaguered black communities is also a demonstrably failed experiment. The proffered excuse for that failure, and for the extraordinary levels of gun violence in rare places that banned guns, was that criminals were getting guns from other jurisdictions. The solution, proponents said, was to extend stringent gun restrictions to neighboring jurisdictions. But it was never realistic to expect the extraordinarily restrictive policies of a handful of municipalities to catch hold nationwide. And even if a national gun ban were enacted, the words would not make more than 300 million guns disappear but would instead send a large fraction of them into the black market.

11
.
Pew Research Center Publications, Views of Gun Control—A Detailed Demographic Breakdown
(January 2011).

12
.
Pew Research Center, Public Divided over State, Local Laws Banning Handguns
(March 2010).

13
. Paula D. McClain, “Firearms Ownership, Gun Control Attitudes and Neighborhood Environment,” 5
Law & Policy Quarterly
(1983) at 299-300, 304-308.

14
. Pauline Brennan, Alan Lizotte, and David McDowall, “Guns, Southerness and Gun Control,” 9
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
(1993) at 289, 304.

15
. Harold M. Rose and Paula McClain,
Black Homicide and the Urban Environment
, Final Report, Grant #5 RO1 MH 29269-02, Submitted to Center for Minority Group Mental Health Programs, National Institute of Mental Health (January 1981) at 174-175.

16
. Ibid., at 175.

17
. Marvin E. Wolfgang,
Patterns in Criminal Homicide
(1958) at 31-37, 40-45, 84, 90-95.

18
. W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study
(1889) at 97, 311, 318; David Levering Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
(1993) at 206.

19
. W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Souls of Black Folk
, in
Three Negro Classics
(1999) (1965) at 241, 249, 259, 284-94, 297.

20
. Du Bois,
Philadelphia Negro
, at 235-268.

21
. Lewis,
Du Bois
, at 186-187; W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of its First Century
(1962) at 195, 241, 249, 259, 284-94, 297; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Notes on Negro Crime Particularly in Georgia: A Social Study Made under the Direction of Atlanta University by the Ninth Atlanta Conference. Ed.” (1904).

22
. Linda O. McMurry,
To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells
(1998) at 294; Alfreda M. Duster,
Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
(1970) at 301-302.

23
. David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito,
Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power
(2009) at 67-68, 73.

24
. Roy Wilkins,
Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins
(1982) at 65. Wilkins was fully committed to the idea of black criminals being apprehended and punished in accordance with the law but was militantly opposed to mobbing that scooped up innocent men and punished anyone without a proper finding of guilt. This is an interesting contrast with some modern critiques arguing that punishment of black criminals at current rates is inherently problematic. See, Michelle Alexander,
The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
(2012).