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Unlike most answers, I do think we have some “good gun laws”. The problem is twofold; those laws don’t (can’t) go far enough in scope, and they’re not enforced until after much more heinous crimes have occurred as a result. And not even then; the Parkland shooter violated the Gun Free School Zones Act, but he’s not being charged with that offense, because the 17 counts of premeditated murder he racked up in the next few minutes afterward are being treated quite rightly with much higher priority by prosecutors. You’re typically only charged with these kinds of malum prohibitum crimes when the investigators and prosecutors can’t find anything else to charge you with, which literally makes the law a way to turn people with no intention of committing a violent crime into felons anyway.On the other hand, the great majority of the laws we have, Federal and State, are either so anachronistic they no longer make sense, or are feel-good measures that never made any sense to begin with. Case in point, the aforementioned GFSZA; who in their right mind ever thought that a sign would have deterred the Stockton shooter? Or the Columbine shooters? Sandy Hook? Parkland? Santa Fe? They all walked right past one of these:And nothing happened until they started shooting.So, this list is gonna piss everybody off at some point or another, in that it will, in one single argument, call for more and less gun laws than our current status quo. You have been warned:Universalize and streamline background checks using updated technology. When NICS was conceptualized in the early 90s, the Internet as a public resource was still very young, and most people and businesses didn’t have access to it. 20-ish years later in 2015, 77% of Americans live in a home with broadband, 75% have a smartphone or other Internet enabled mobile device, and Internet access is a practical must-have for any retail businesses to run credit/debit cards, so even if you happen to not have Internet access, your local gun store will.As such, there’s really very little reason for NICS to still be a call center, at least not one of its current size. We can do the same job with a secure web application handling the overwhelming majority of the traffic. That would additionally allow that app to be accessible to people besides FFLs, and would be the most convenient option available for universalizing background checks.That also creates other possibilities, such as streamlining the 4473. This is actually a virtual necessity if you’re going to universalize background checks without requiring an FFL to run the check; the information on a 4473 is identity theft on a silver platter, and you’re going to be expecting the average Joe to not only not misuse that data, but to safeguard it for however long you want the provenance chain to be traceable. The REAL ID Act gives us some possibilities for uniquely verifying identity without traditional identifying information; name, address and “document discriminator” aka audit number off of an RIA-compliant ID would be enough to get any other information needed as of time of sale, and when actually running the background check, all you’d actually need to input is the DD code and state of issue and the app could retrieve anything else needed.The questionnaire is little more than a trap, and we can get rid of it; the idea is that if you are a prohibited person and filled the questionnaire out such that the FFL actually bothered to call it in, and NICS denied you, you have just made a materially false statement on a Federal government form. However, the Brady Act itself makes trying to buy a firearm while knowingly prohibited a crime in itself, so either way the Feds have to prove the offence was committed knowledgeably. All we really need to give background checks “teeth” is a very obvious “click-wrap” disclosure in the app that states unambiguously that if you fall into one of the listed prohibited categories and submit the form, you are committing a crime. We can capture a signature image if you really want, but no handwriting analyst will ever swear on oath that your signature drawn on a tablet with a stylus would match a signature sample written on paper.Once the check comes back clean, you have to give the seller the ability to prove beyond any doubt that he ran the check. Since centralization of records of gun sales is an extremely touchy issue, not to mention illegal under the 1986 FOPA, the proof has to be self-contained in the paper record of sale. You can do that by encoding a “digital signature” on the paper document, such as in a QR code (it’d be a large one, but the spec allows for up to 4K of data to be encoded in one QR which would be enough). NICS basically receives all the information on the form, makes sure the background check on the listed individual passed, then strings it together in a known order, hashes it with a secure hash function, then encrypts that hash using an “asymmetric key” algorithm like RSA or ECC. You don’t have to know the technical details, just that this “hash and encrypt” signature system is the backbone of secure communications on the Internet that most major websites now use for all their traffic, and it’s worked for a couple decades now, failing only when the human side of information security does.So, to prove you ran the background check, you produce a copy of the record of sale, the QR code can be scanned into a mobile version of the NICS app along with the plain text data of the form, and the plain text data is hashed the same way as the signature originally was. Then, the app decrypts the signature with the public key of the keypair that initially encrypted it, and if the hashes match, whoever’s asking knows the record is authentic, and the guy on the form is the next guy they need to talk to about why that gun ended up at a crime scene. They know it’s authentic because only the information on that form, encrypted using a key known only within the NICS system as of the date of sale (they have a lifespan; NICS could generate a new keypair every couple years, and the app would know all public keys and the date range each one was valid for), could have produced the digital signature in the QR code, which means NICS vetted the exact data on the printed form. If you don’t have a record of sale or other proof of dispossession (i.e. police record of theft, loss or destruction) and your gun shows up at a crime scene, you’re now a POI and guilty of a crime in itself (failure to maintain required records).A system like this would allow UBCs to be performed by anyone with a laptop or smartphone, and it would even allow buyers to avoid the three-day delay on an in-person private meetup by vetting themselves and obtaining a “pre-authorization”. And it would do so without requiring an FFL (though you could still use one and they’d become the custodian of the record of sale), and without centralizing these records in government hands (a de facto registry of gun owners).Increase the Federal minimum age to purchase semi-automatic long guns to 21, alongside the minimum for handguns. Psychologists are pretty clear that puberty, and the host of chemical, physical and mental changes that occur during it, really doesn’t wind down until the mid-20s for the average man; maybe a year or two earlier for women. Auto insurance companies know this; you can be totally accident free your entire driving career since the age of 16, and they don’t consider you “low-risk” until you’re 25. On that note, we as society grant the rights and privileges (and responsibilities) associated with adulthood to young adults gradually; most religions have an informal age of majority (such as the Age of Reason in Christianity, around 12 or 13), then from a more legal standpoint you can drive at 16, you’re criminally and civilly liable for your actions at 17 (though this varies by state), you can vote and own most guns at 18, and drink at 21. So, the “eighteen means eighteen” argument that when you’re legally an adult, you’re a full adult, just doesn’t fly. Any SDI in boot camp will tell you their 18-year-olds are just as immature as any other, the main difference is that along with their service rifle (and long before they touch one), they get a no-nonsense introduction to following orders as given without argument or discussion, designed to condition them to do exactly that when lives are on the line.So no, I do not think that an 18 year old, simply by virtue of managing to not piss off their parents or teachers long enough to attain said age, should be able to walk up to the firearms counter of a sporting goods store and buy absolutely anything under the glass or on the back wall. There’s legal adulthood and there’s physical adulthood, and the medical consensus is that those are currently separated by about 8 years. At least give them the three extra that we already do for alcohol and handguns, for them to realize that life actually does get better in many ways after high school, before we allow them to purchase a rifle that can end a life for each wiggle of their pointer finger with no other action required. At 18, you can buy and own break-action and repeating-action long guns; for semi-automatics and revolvers, it should be 21.Temporary firearm restraining orders. Oh yeah, we’re going here too. “Red Flag laws” have been the subject of serious debate in the U.S., with arguments against ranging from “the police can already do this if there’s a credible threat to someone’s safety” to “this is just an end run around the rights of the accused allowing vindictive individuals to use the government to indefinitely suspend a person’s RKBA without the burden of proof required for a criminal conviction“.Personally, I think it’s a good idea that needs very careful attention paid to its implementation. Whether or not society needs an actual law detailing a new process, we shouldn’t have to wait for a potential, specific threat to public safety to become an actual specific threat to public safety before action can be taken. At the same time, I recognize the very serious potential for evil, and it simply cannot be dismissed. Protective orders don’t require a unanimous jury verdict based on there being no reasonable doubt that one is needed. All the petitioner needs is to convince a judge it’s a good idea, and judges run the gamut on the topic, with most of the ones in New Jersey chomping at the bit to sign anything that comes across their desk that takes a gun away from a civilian.So, if we’re gonna use court orders to remove guns from a person who has not been convicted of any crime, we need to strike a very fine and specific balance between the law being too easily abused for government or personal gain, and the law being just as ineffective as waiting for a crime to be committed. There must be controls in place regarding who can “wave the red flag”, what criteria is valued in determining to grant the initial order, and a guaranteed maximum time for hearing the subject’s challenge to said order. In addition, a common criticism of the laws is that is that the restraining orders target the guns based on a need for mental health care, but don’t provide mental health care. If we’re really worried about someone’s mental state, that sounds like the obvious place to start. We can talk about these orders as an exception to being “involuntarily committed to a mental health institution”; if the care was the result of a temporary restraining order it doesn’t trigger the permanent Federal prohibition, provided the care has some measure of success (or doesn’t find a problem).I’ve also floated the idea of a “yellow flag”, an indication that someone is in need of a refresher on firearms safety due to demonstrated complacency or ignorance of basic safety rules, but is unwilling to get the training themselves. A court order to force the training based on a description of the unsafe behavior, in lieu of any possible criminal charges for said behavior, might have a significant effect on reducing negligent discharges and unintended access by children while protecting gun owners from rabid prosecution for first-time offenses. Similar safeguards would be needed to avoid this being used as a nuisance or a backdoor to indefinite loss of gun rights with no criminal conviction.Now, having agreed in a very big way to a few major recent demands of the myriad gun control groups, I must in all seriousness ask, what do gun owners get in return for being limited to single-shots and repeating-actions for three years, having to defend against repeated aspersions on our mental health from a vindictive ex-spouse or your in-laws, plus being required to Federally vet anyone they pass a gun to, and then maintain proof of that check for years or even indefinitely?While I think the conclusion of the “cake analogy” - “I want my whole damn cake back now” - is unhelpful and even counterproductive, the position is sound; gun owners have been agreeing to allow their right to keep and bear arms to be restricted in the name of public safety for over 80 years, and all that’s happened is that those who are against gun ownership in the first place come back wanting more restrictions.This is in fact the stated goal of gun control activists like Josh Sugarmann; to restrict, piece by piece, the RKBA in the U.S., like boiling a frog, until the 2A is effectively dead because those still willing to jump through the regulatory hoops are a superminority, and/or because the only weapons still available for civilian purchase have little practical use for self-defense (which is what 60% of gun owners give as a major reason they are gun owners, compared to just 36% for hunting). They get impatient from time to time and make big pushes, but after most of the major players favoring gun control “outed” themselves as to their end goal in the early 90s, resulting in the Republican Party’s first bicameral Congressional majority in 40 years, most have walked back their public positions. Can those new stated end goals for gun control be trusted? Only the GCAs really know for sure, but history is not on their side.So, if we’re going to call UBCs and an increased minimum age a “compromise”, it should fit the definition; both sides should leave the table angry with the agreement they reached. To that end, gun control advocates do not get it all their own way; policies proven to be counterproductive or ineffective since their passage need to be rolled back, along with additional measures that become possible once it’s that much more obvious that the guys who legally own guns are not the problem in our country:Repeal the Federal Gun-Free School Zones Act, and all government-level policies restricting the possession of guns on any publicly-owned or managed land or building where entry is not contingent on passing through an armed security checkpoint where all entrants are searched for weapons. If the government and/or property owner is serious about people not having guns in a particular place, you know it before you get five feet inside. We have the technology and the process. The question is whether it’s worthwhile to implement these in any given place. If it’s not, hanging up a sign forcing those breaking no other law to disarm not only doesn’t solve the problem, it makes it worse.I will, in this discussion, give private property owners the benefit of the doubt; its your property, you’re a legal entity just like I am, it’s your prerogative to restrict entry as you wish based on any fact not explicitly protected under Federal law. I personally like to at least know someone else in my home besides me has a gun, and I won’t begrudge you the same. But had you caught me on any other day I’d be insisting on landowner liability for owners/controllers of “places of public accomodation” posted as “no guns allowed” for victims of violent crime in such venues. You are imposing a restriction on my entry into your otherwise publicly-accessible place, which places me and everyone else there at any give time at greater risk of harm, and you take no additional steps to mitigate that risk; that makes your policy a contributing factor to any criminal violence I might become a victim of while on your property.Repeal the Hughes Amendment, and allow purchase and registration of new automatic firearms in the United States. Yeah, you heard me right. The NFA, in itself, was sufficient to virtually end the violence committed with legally-owned automatic weapons; it gave the precursor organizations to the BATFE and FBI the legal tools they needed to dismantle the Mafia gangs of the 1920s, and since it passed, not one violent crime was committed with a legally-owned, NFA-registered machine gun. The only two crimes committed with any legally-owned machine gun involved police-issue machine pistols, and the crimes that actually prompted the Hughes Amendment, mainly in the Miami area among rival drug gangs, were committed with illegal weapons smuggled into the country alongside the drugs. The most notable shootout involving automatic weapons since the passage of the NFA, the North Hollywood Shootout, happened 10 years after the passage of the Hughes Amendment, and involved illegally-modified AKMs that would have landed the robbers in prison for 20 years each even without the Hughes Amendment in effect.Once again, the law is only a restriction on those inclined to follow it in the first place. The Hughes Amendment was passed in response to a spate of crimes in Miami, representing less than 3% of the total homicide count in Miami-Dade County, committed with weapons the ATF didn’t even know about in the first place. The ability of people to legally buy machine guns didn’t figure into it in the slightest. The Hughes Amendment also gave us the current political climate regarding guns and any registration thereof; in 1986, the Feds proved that they were willing to use registration as a first step to an outright ban. It had been done at lower levels before (DC’s handgun ban dated to 1976 and was legislated a similar way; you had to register all firearms to possess them in DC, and beginning in 1976 you couldn’t register handguns unless they were already there), but the Hughes Amendment brought the tactic to national attention, poisoning any attempt at actual compromise ever since. If gun control advocates want gun rights advocates to ever sit down at a negotiating table and assume good faith ever again, this strategy needs to be demonstrably off the table as a gun control tactic.Deregulate suppressors and short-barreled firearms. The NFA was passed 80 years ago, and was originally intended to restrict access to “concealable” firearms by union labor protesters, while not being an insurmountable hurdle to the labor bosses putting down the strikes, nor the police who are specifically exempted by the law and for whom the factory or mine was the primary taxpayer in the locale. In the works for most of the Roaring 20s, the NFA finally passed early in FDR’s term, due to a combination of the increasing publicity of mafia violence in the media involving fully-automatic weapons, and an attempted assassination of then-President-elect Roosevelt making gun control an early personal priority of FDR’s.That was 84 years ago. In more recent times, we wear less clothing in general, making these same types of weapons harder to conceal, meanwhile even illegal use of weapons and devices subject to NFA restrictions (registered or otherwise) is very low. Hunters and homeowners want to use suppressors to save their hearing and reduce the disturbance inherent in a rifle shot to those nearby, and for proof they’re not dangerous in themselves, one only has to look at the UK, where they’re sold off the shelf in any sporting goods store, and hunters are encouraged by police to use one. Homeowners also want access to short-barreled rifles as home defense weapons, easier to aim than a handgun while easier to maneuver through a home than a 16″ barreled rifle. For both SBRs and SBSes, workarounds to the law have been found and vetted by the ATF, and have become very popular, making the additional NFA restriction of short-barreled weapons useless in practice.National carry permit reciprocity, and a Federal pre-emption of “may-issue” permitting policies among State governments. Totally within the Feds’ purview under provisions of the Full Faith and Credit Clause (giving Congress the power to legislate the manner in which legal instruments of one state are to be recognized and honored by any other), Federally-enforced national reciprocity would force all 50 states, D.C. and all Federal territories to recognize a valid concealed-carry permit issued by any state - or the government-issued resident ID card of any state that does not require a permit - as if it were a valid concealed carry permit in their jurisdiction, subject to the laws of the state in which the person is currently located. So if it’s illegal to enter a bar in Texas with a concealed weapon (and it is, a felony in fact), it’s just as illegal to do so with a Tennessee permit as a Texas one. But, if it’s legal to walk around Central Park while strapped if you have an NYC carry permit, it’s just as legal to do it with a Texas permit, or a Tennessee permit, or a driver’s license from the State of Vermont.Now, national reciprocity, especially when it includes nonresident licenses, will accomplish an effective end to “may-issue” policies anyway, but I wanted to be explicit about this. The majority of the states in this country recognize a right to carry, typically subject to state regulation on the manner of the wearing of arms. As of 2018, the remaining few states that exercise subjective discretion in permitting, typically along the lines of requiring “good cause”, do so for the sole and express reason of limiting permits to a privileged few. It’s codified in Maryland’s version of the good cause requirement; applicants must have a reason to carry that “distinguishes the applicant from the general gun-owning public”; a desire to defend oneself is not distinguishing, as 60% of gun owners have their guns for that reason.This is unconstitutional, and to date the only credible reason SCOTUS has not heard a case on this topic is that the Court, and Roberts as Chief Justice, is unwilling to be seen as a tool to overturn state gun laws in a series of lock-step ideologically-polarized 5–4 decisions. They want the existing decisions in Heller and McDonald to be digested and mixed into lower court case law, and once that settles to a backwash of a few notable disagreements among Circuit Courts and State Supreme Courts, they’ll entertain the question. It’s well-known in legal circles that Gorsuch and Thomas are already chomping at the bit for another 2A case, but as of when Peruta was denied cert in 2016, the popular theory was that Alito and Roberts were unsure of Kennedy’s vote (on top of the whole “tool to overturn state laws 5–4” thing), and so took the out that with Moore v. Madigan not having been appealed by Illinois, there was no active Circuit Court split pending SCOTUS review.That’s compromise. I give you, you give me. Gun owners began the 20th Century with zero Federal restrictions on gun purchase or ownership, and many fewer State restrictions than most of the more problematic states for gun owners currently impose. The original position of this debate is that Americans have free and easy access to whatever firearms were available, and therefore “keeping some of my gun rights for now” is not a “compromise position”. That’s like me telling you “give me all the money you have now and all your future earnings”, you refusing, and then me saying “let’s compromise; you give me half of your money and 75% of your future earnings”.Would you agree to that “deal”? Yeah, didn’t think so.

The North's primary revenue source textiles depended on slave grown cotton. Free or not the Blacks were needed to grow the White Gold on which New England depended.Jim Crow Laws were imposed on the South to supply Massachusetts Mill's with cotton DURING the Civil War by the Union Army. The most egregious lie told about Reconstruction is that Jim Crow was created by resurgent Confederates to suppress and dominate Black people. A close examination shows this not only to be incorrect, but almost diametrically the opposite of what really happened.John D. Winters wrote "Civil War in Louisiana" in chronological fashion, without categorizing the many social political military or economic issues that he addresses. If you want to get to the good parts you have to wade through a lot of bake sales and sewing. Writing for the Centennial, he doesn't moralize or justify motives. To find the story of the Louisiana slavery, one must read the whole thing, because you can never tell where it might enter the narrative. This first story takes from PG106-110. Mainly Winters is talking about US Admiral Farragut, US Capt Porter, CSS Arkansas and the affairs of Generals Butler and Williams with General Halleck. ."In compliance with orders from General Butler , on June 27th (62) General Williams began work on a cutoff canal a mile and a quarter long across a neck of land on the Louisiana side....Twelve Hundred Negroes rounded up from nearby Plantations were rounded up and set to work..The Negroes laughed and shouted at their work thinking they were earning their freedom...Press gangs sent out by General Williams ranged up and down the River, stripping the all the able-bodied Negro men to work on the Canal. The Negro men, lured by promises of Freedom, gladly left their wives, children and friends for a life of hard labor and short rations with only the tree for shelter at night...The Negroes were urged to work faster but the the more the men worked the faster the River fell....At last even Williams despaired of success... General Williams reneged on his promise of freedom and deserted his Negro laborers. On July 24th Farragut's fleet acompanied by William's departed for the lower River.The abandoned Negroes gathered on the levee; their shrieks rang out over the water as the boats mover away,"This comes from PGs 207-8."The Contraband problem proved troublesome for Banks.Several large contraband camps were located at Camp Parapet above NOLA in January 63.From time to time military details were sent up River to collect Negroes.. and bring them back....In all the Camps. at first. the Negroes were allowed freedom of movement. Women and children were kept in separate camps from the men... Negro men working working on the fortifications visited their women....consequently white sentries were at the Engineer Camp were order to shoot any negro who tied to leave without a pass....As the task of feeding and controlling so many Negroes became more difficult...Banks made radical changes...the Negro could choose on what plantation he wished to work, but once he made his choice he had to remain one yr. If he ran away he could be returned by force....This labor system caused US Treasury Agent George Denison to charge Banks with re-establishing slavery, but it restored the labor supply and the prospects of a good crop (cotton), in 1863, in the vicinity of NOLA became much brighter."PG 310-11 (After Vicksburg fell)"The Lessee system, which had been tried in South Louisiana and proven successful, was imported to Northeast Louisiana...The long line of plantations was then leased by the Army and Treasury agents to Carpet Baggers...Many of the lessees showed far less regard for their hired Negro laborers than the most negligent planter has shown for his slaves. In 1863 few lessees pd their labor except in food and clothing...at the end of the yr the Negro was told nothing was due him. Some lessees realized up to $80,000 profits, paid the labor nothing, and boasted about their ability to swindle the Negro....Negro Labor was often hard to control...withholding food and docking pay helped to stabalize the Negro, but it was not a cure-all....soldiers had to be called in to restore order.or make the Negroes go back to work."PG 313"In order to give colored troops the best leadership possible General Andrews...created a school for the White officers and personally supervised the instruction...Despite the careful screening and retraining...some of the older officers in the Negro units continued to give trouble. One such officer was Lt Colonel Benedict of the 4th Corps d'e Afrique. From August to December this sadistic officer ruled over his Negro like an omnipotent tyrant, freely administering cruel and unusual punishment upon his naive charges. One fellow officer reported that he had frequently seen him at Ft St Phillip strike men with his fists and kick them because their brass was not bright and boots weren't shined. On another occasion, for an equally minor offense a black soldier was stripped and spread-eagled on the ground with his hand and feet tied to stakes. Molasses was then smeared on his face, hands and feet to at to attract ants. For two days this treatment was continued. On December 9...Benedict became angry with two drummer boys who had turned out without coats. He seized a mule whip and began to flog the two boys, The Negro troops watched the beating without moving, but as soon as Benedict left ...a shout went up ...and the men seized their weapons and began firing in the air, one man proposed to "kill all the damned Yankees" (Benedict survived as white troops rescued him)In my study of Louisiana Cavalry I found many instances of raids on the lessee plantations, Yankee accounts frequently lament the Freedmen being returned to slavery. But were they being captured or rescued?US Treasury Agent George Denison who earlier accused US General Banks of "re-instituting Slavery" reported that the delegates to the Unionist Constitutional Convention in 1864, "were making fools of themselves" in reference to voting themselves salaries and budgets, but also reported, "Prejudice against the colored people is exhibited continually-prejudice bitter and vulgar" and the whole policy respecting the Colored People is ungenerous and unjust." They did not even abolish slavery.Superintendent of the of the Freedmen's Bureau Thomas W Conway in Louisiana reported to US General Hurlbut in charge of Civilian affairs (after being removed in Memphis for his mishandling of military affairs in Tennessee, particularly at Ft Pillow) that the Bureau that there had been 1500 "Plantations under cultivation under military orders" and 50K Freedmen on the Plantations "managed by the Bureau." He further reported he, "found it necessary...in order secure payment of wages, to make seizures either of produce or other property" He seized over $22K.The Superintendent reported that the "Old Planters,...pd more promptly, more justly and apparently with more willingness, than the Lessees from other parts of the country." Governor Hahn,who instituted laws that prohibited Blacks from Voting, was elected to the US Senate and was replaced by Lt Governor J. Madison Wells in March 65, who promptly earned the enmity of US General Banks (Massachusetts) by appointing Southerners to office, Banks complained bitterly to Washington, but US General E.S. Canby, now in full military command replaced Banks and sided with Wells, because the Scalawags caused him less problem than the Carpet Baggers.Hulburt issued orders Feb 4 1865 that "All Freedmen being care for by the Government, who were able to work, be forced to sign labor contracts" All Labor contracts were to be supervised by the Freedmen's Bureau or his agents. The Lessees complained about the regulations and "Red Tape" taking up too much of their time "negotiating labor contracts" with Federal Agents" but "part of the delay was occasioned by the fact that the Negroes were dissatisfied with the payments of the last yr." On April 14th 1865 Alexander Pugh wrote, "I have agreed with the Negros today to pay them monthly, It was very distasteful to me, but i could do no better."Besides admitting to Orville Browning that the Blacks were not receiving the "desired benefit of Union occupation, " Lincoln was terribly concerned with the state of affairs in Louisiana and wrote General Canby, “Frequent complaints are made to me that persons endeavoring to bring in cotton in strict accordance with the trade regulations of the Treasury Department, are frustrated by seizures of District Attorneys, Marshals, Provost-Marshals and others, on various pretenses, I wish, if you can find time, you would look into this matter within your Department, and finding these abuses to exist, break them up, if in your power, so that fair dealing under the regulations, can proceed.”General Canby and Superintendent Conway did an excellent job trying to be fair to all, but Canby was removed in 1866, and there was little Conway could do alone with the dozen or so teachers who remained. Northern economic considerations trumped Black suffrage in the South, Jim Crow was born in a Massachusetts Cotton Mill."Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1865-1876"By Jason Phillips.This angry article is typical of the nonsense we read condemning the Ex-Confederates, but he slipped up and included this, without explaining it was AFTER the Unionist Government was enacted."In 1865 deep prejudice appeared in Mississippi’s notorious Black Codes enacted in late November by the newly elected Mississippi Legislature. One of the first necessities of Reconstruction was to define the legal status of former slaves. Instead of embracing change Mississippi passed the first and most extreme Black Codes, laws meant to replicate slavery as much as possible. The codes used “vagrancy” laws to control the traffic of black people and punished them for any breach of Old South etiquette.""Louisiana's Black Heritage" we learnthe American Missionary Society sent 20 teachers for the 50K Freedmen.Union General Banks promised to assist the 20 teachers, but reneged on his promises. The Gens de Couleur Libres provided the vast majority of what little education the Freedmen received."Louisiana's Black Heritage" published by the Louisiana State Museum, in 1979, was written and edited by Black Scholars, yet it qualifies for The Dunning School of historiographical thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history (1865–1877), which we are assured by Wikipedia was guilty of "supporting conservative elements against the Radical Republicans who introduced civil rights in the South."PG 126 "free Colored Leaders first began discussing the question of Suffrage in the final months or 1862....L'Union Newspaper boldly announced "Our population, so respectable in many ways and composed largely of landholders who by their large taxes aid in the maintenance of the State and city, dares today, encouraged by its loyalty and patriotism, to claim its right ...to demand finally a place at at the banquet which the Unionists ...are now preparing." The editor made it clear that "our population included only free men of color and that Unionists were not being asked to grant political equality to slaves."PG 128The Unionist, like James MCkaye, answered "The Gens de Couleur Libres must "Get rid of their own prejudices against those of their race who had been slaves." Jordan Noble, who had fought in the Battle of New Orleans (1815),proceeded to lecture McKaye ...stating,"There were two classes introduced here, one, the slaves from the the wilds of Africa, an ignorant, degraded people and the other an intelligent, educated and wealthy class from the Caribbean."McKaye was persuaded. "Their case is a peculiar one," he wrote "and is to be judged on its own grounds. There is no other such body of people in the United States. The question of granting them political rights has nothing to do with the propriety of justice of conferring these right at once on the whole body of emancipated slaves. There is no parallel between them." Banks on the other hand was unconvinced and the state elections on February 22 1863 were restricted to White voters.Pg 129Barely two weeks later Jean B Roudanez and E. A. Bertonneau arrived in Washington. They brought with them a petition signed by a thousand Gens de Couleur Libres, including 27 veterans of 1815, which requested, "That all citizens of Louisiana of African descent, born free before the rebellion, may be, by proper orders, directed to be inscribed in the registers, and admitted to the rights and privileges of electors." Roudanez recorded "Lincoln was sympathetic, but said he could not aid us on moral grounds but only as a military necessity." Upon returning to NOLA they learned that the State Constitutional Convention (Unionist) ...of March 22 had not only refused to write free Colored suffrage into the the new Constitution but also prohibited the State Legislature from ever passing "any act authorizing free Negroes to Vote."PG 130James H Ingraham bitterly observed before a mass meeting of Free Blacks," We were never slaves until General Banks came here" Five days later L'Union suspended publication never to reappear. (Only one of 300 Newspapers closed by the Union Army for sedition)PG 153The Federal Army was the most insurmountable obstacle encountered by Black students ....In early January 1864 General Banks had cheerfully promised facilities, rations and shelter the teachers needed.... but promises made were more common than promises kept.... Planters (Unionists) opposed the plan and Banks capitulated to Planter pressure. Hubbs (Missionary association) complained that on the Plantations Blacks were "Maltreated and defrauded... abused by Northern men...murdered by our soldiers ...put in prison for entering complaints...and the robbed by the jailers who frightened them into silence."This all fits perfectly with Winters " The Civil War in Louisiana" 1963 which is disregarded by "Pious Cause Pseudo-Historians."From Rod O'Barr,Dr. C. Vann Woodward, former Professor of History at Yale, points out the following comparison between the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction and the old former slave owners:Regarding the Left leaning Radical Republicans whom he calls “false friends of the freedmen:”“They were false friends not only because of an error of judgement but also out of baseness of motive; for they had used their pretended friendship to advance selfish ends of party advantage and private gain.”Regarding the old slave owners after the war Woodward quotes the following 1879 editorial:“The old slave owner feels no social fear of negro equality... He feels no desire to maltreat and brow-beat and spit upon the colored man. He feels no opposition to the education and elevation of the black man in the scale of civilized life.” (The Strange Career of Jim Crow, p. 48, 49)Of relevance is the fact that Confederate V.P. Alexander Stephens paid the college tuition of one of his former slaves.Woodward represents yet another refutation of the mythical pejorative “Lost Cause School.” The claims of benevolent masters and good race relations in the antebellum South was NOT a Lost Cause myth. It was witnessed reality, and carried over into the post-Reconstruction years in spite of efforts by the Radical Republicans to destroy race relations in the South. As long as the old antebellum Southerners were alive, the detrimental introduction of the Northern Black Codes into the South were to a large degree restrained.Part 2: I am currently taking another look at a book I had read years ago. C. Vann Woodward, Professor of History at Yale, wrote THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW, a series of lectures he delivered in 1954. The first thing that strikes me is how honest and frank he was able to be at a time before the PC thought police overran our institutions of higher learning! He could not write the same book today without jeopardizing his career as a professional historian. The holier-than-thou would not permit such credible history to expose their false narrative.In a prior post on my current re-read, I pointed out some interesting comments he made about Reconstruction. Perhaps the most important takeaway from that topic is his frank admission that, “One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force.” He points out that its first introduction in the South came at the hands of the provisional Reconstruction governments.Tonight I re-read chapter two. He deals with the period in the South after Northern troops pulled out in 1877. Here are some fascinating takes:He first mentions a couple of writers, one from the North and the other British, who toured the South to see how blacks were now being treated. In 1878 Northerner (former militant abolitionist) Col. Thomas Higginson, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, toured three Southern States expecting to find the blacks horribly treated with the absence of Federal troops. Higginson was quite surprised by what he found. “He compared the tolerance and acceptance of the Negro in the South... with attitudes in his native New England and decided that the South came off rather better in comparison.” It was better “in granting rights and privileges to the colored race.”In 1789 Parliamentarian Sir George Campbell traveled a large part of the South to study race relations. “He was impressed with the freedom of association between whites and blacks, with the frequency and intimacy of personal contact, and with the extent of Negro participation in political affairs...’on terms of perfect equality, and without the smallest symptom of malice or dislike on either side.’”Woodward presents testimony after testimony of others experiencing the same racial harmony. One black Boston newspaper writer states, “I think the whites of the South are really less afraid to have contact with colored people than whites of the North... I can be more politely waited on than in some parts of New England.” Woodward also reveals two former Confederate soldiers who wrote books during 1885 and 1889 calling for the equal treatment of all their black neighbors, one stating, “In all things and in all places he (blacks) must, unless we wish to clip his hope and crush his self-respect, be treated precisely like the whites, no better, but no worse.”Woodward adds, “A frequent topic of comment by Northern visitors was the intimacy of contact between the races in the South, an intimacy sometimes admitted to be distasteful to the visitor... white babies suckled at black breasts, white and colored children playing together, the casual proximity of white and Negro homes... The same sights and stories had once been topics of comment for carpetbaggers and before them abolitionists, both of whom expressed puzzlement and sometimes revulsion.”Then Woodward concludes with the following frank admission: (emphasis mine)“WHAT THE NORTHERN TRAVELER OF THE ‘EIGHTIES TOOK FOR SIGNS OF A NEW ERA OF RACE RELATIONS WAS REALLY A HERITAGE OF SLAVERY TIMES, OR, MORE ELEMENTALLY, THE RESULT OF TWO PEOPLES HAVING LIVED TOGETHER INTIMATELY FOR A LONG TIME...”Indeed once the yankees had given up on Reconstruction and left, race relations returned to the more harmonious norm that characterized the South before Lincoln’s war and subsequent Reconstruction. As long as the old antebellum Southerners were still alive, those egregious Northern Black codes introduced during the war and Reconstruction would be held at bay by a heritage of caring for all men regardless of color. A heritage rooted in a Christian ethic that permeated Southern culture. One can only imagine how much better race relations would have been in the long run without Northern interference in the South.There is no way Woodward would be allowed to expose these historical truths today, because they do not fit the Righteous Cause narrative, or the Marxist style analysis that needs victimization as leverage for Leftist political power. The PC thought police would destroy him.”Part 5: More from Harrison Berry in his book SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM, AS VIEWED BY A GEORGIA SLAVE. Here he contrasts black subordination in the North to black subordination in the South. You want find this information in UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. Yet CABIN, written by a white woman who had never witnessed slavery first hand, is preferred in academia to a book written by a black man who was an actual slave. It makes you wonder why the latter is suppressed and the former championed? Is the historical narrative being distorted? Hear from Harrison as he writes to his fellow slaves about abolitionists:“But, perhaps, some of you may say, that, in case they should succeed in getting off with you, you would be free. Just let me say to you, that as soon as you were landed on free soil, your pretended friend would have nothing more to do with you. He would tell you to go to work; but after you had tried in vain to get something to do, and failed, you would, perhaps, hunt him up, and tell him that you were without money, and could not get anything to do. He would point out some other place, and send you there; but after you had tried all over that neighborhood, and were told that they did not employ negroes while there was so many white men, with families, needing work; and that you had better go back to the man that brought you there; then you would begin to think that you had better staid where you had some one to give you plenty of work to do, and plenty of victuals to eat. And, more especially, would you feel the truth of what I say, when you went back to the man that had decoyed you off, and he being tired of your troubling him, mightbring you a piece of meat and bread to the door, and handing it to you, drive you away from his house. Such treatment might do for those poor colored people there, who never knew any better, but it would not do for a Slave of the South, accustomed to being treated as a human being. So, whenever one talks to you about being free, tell him that you had rather stay where some one is compelled to take care of you, than to go where no one is, and where you are equally as subordinate as you would be where you had some one to protect you. In fact, I hold that the subordination of the poor colored man North, is greater than that of the Slave South.”Harrison BerryA serious study of Blacks from the Civil War era such as H. Ford Douglas, Harrison Berry, George Washington Williams, Mississippi Legislator J F Harris, US Senator Revels, The Publishers of L'Union Newspaper, Antoine Metoyer and Frederick Douglass, make it clear that the North invaded for cotton and tariffs not to do Blacks any favors.Intelligent and insightful Blacks are either ignored or heavily edited to present a version of events that deifies Lincoln to forward the Pious Cause Political agenda. Slaves in the North were still slaves, but free Blacks in the North did not have a fraction of the economic opportunity Southern Free Blacks had.I have been accused of saying Slaves in the South were better off than Free Blacks of the North, I never said that. I have said as a group all Blacks in the South had more legal protection than any Black in the North. But Mr Berry, who was there, then, suggests that Slaves were better off than Free Blacks in the North. Slavery is morally reprehensible compared to Citizenship and equality, but compared to expulsion and the elimination suggested by Abolitionists, it looks pretty good.From Kev Flynn,African American Abolitionist John Rock.The Liberator,” published 2/14/1863 by the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.John S. Rock was born in Salem Massachusetts. He provided some insight to the differences between the North and the South regarding race. I have made summary comments for those who will not take the time to read them. If you would like to read the speech in its entirety, go here:http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1862/02/14/the-liberator-32-07.pdfIn this he points out that the “deep and cruel prejudice” is more abundant in the North than in the South. He says it is found in the higher and lower classes of the North, and among the poor in the South. Northern rich see abolition as a threat to their livelihood in that it would dry up the Southern slave produced staples that supply his business. Now we know why no major political party called for emancipation. There was too much profit being made off of Southern slavery. The major concern was keeping slavery out of the territories so that agrarian minded citizens would not populate the territories and swing the balance of political power South. This was coupled with a Northern racism that wanted to preserve the territories for whites only. The Northern and Southern poor hate the free black because he is competition for jobs. He concludes, “The rich and poor are both prejudiced from (self) interest, and not because they entertain vague notions of justice and humanity.”Here he begins to chastise Lincoln and his cronies who “advocate emancipation as a military necessity.” The question then becomes “what is to be done with the slave, if he is set at liberty.” This question was echoed in Northern newspapers of the day, “What shall we do with the negro?” Lincoln and most in the North had long planned on colonization. Rock fires back that this hypocrisy is why the North is frowned on in Europe. He points out the North takes “away the rights of those whose color differs from your own.” He indicts the Northern businessman who, if he cannot profit from the slave, “you will banish him!”Here he begins to chastise Lincoln and his cronies who “advocate emancipation as a military necessity.” The question then becomes “what is to be done with the slave, if he is set at liberty.” This question was echoed in Northern newspapers of the day, “What shall we do with the negro?” Lincoln and most in the North had long planned on colonization. Rock fires back that this hypocrisy is why the North is frowned on in Europe. He points out the North takes “away the rights of those whose color differs from your own.” He indicts the Northern businessman who, if he cannot profit from the slave, “you will banish him!”Next he points out that Southern “slaveholders are not the men we dread. They do not desire to have us removed. The Northern pro-slavery men have done the people of color ten-fold more injury than the Southern slave holders.” He contrasts Southerners with Northerners by saying, “There is no prejudice against color among the slaveholders.” He believes they are only motivated by money. Root then makes the point that if the slaves were emancipated, they would want to remain in the South because they are more valued in the South. He echoes Northern travel writer Frederick Olmsted regarding how much better free blacks are treated in the South, “Many of you are aware that Southerners will do a favor for a free colored man, when they will not do it for a white man in the same condition in life.”He asks incredulously, “Why is it that the free people from all other countries are invited to come here, and we are asked to go away?” He then continues in a heartbreaking and credible point of how the black man has earned a right to be here just as much as the white. And then answers why the North wants him gone, stating that “because the nation has robbed us for nearly two and a half centuries, and finding that she can no longer do it and preserve her character among nations, now out of hatred, wishes to banish, because she cannot continue to rob us.” This is yet another indictment of the kind of abstract anti-slavery motive we see in Lincoln. For so many in the North the a motive was not a humanitarian concern for the well-being of the slave. The concern was how America would look to the eyes of the world when proclaiming the right to “liberty” while keeping the black enslaved. Lincoln hated the idea of living with blacks, and his anti-slavery was driven by this racist attitude coupled with the abstract notion of slavery as a violation of liberty that stained America’s reputation. The problem then was what to do with blacks once freed? The answer for Lincoln up until the week he died was colonization. Rock then concludes this clipping by refuting the other Anti-slavery solution. There were Northern voices like Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed if cut off from the welfare of the master the black man would eventually “die out.” This threat was used as a means to persuade free blacks to colonize out of a country that is to them an inhospitable climate. Rock refutes this claim, “The free people of color have succeeded, in spite of every effort to crush them, and we are today a living refutation of that shameless assertion that ’we can’t take care of ourselves’ in a state of freedom.”Here Rock points out that in the Northern mind the the negro is tolerable as long as he is a slave. He can live in close intimacy with the master in the South, but as soon as he is free, he is “fit only to be colonized... eternally banished from the presence of all civilized beings.” Rock points out that it isn’t the Southern slave that the North wants to colonize, rather “it is the emancipated slave and the free colored man whom it (the North) is proposed to remove.” He concludes, “this country and climate are perfectly adapted to negro slavery; it is the free black that the air is not good for.”In this clip Rock points out that “a great many simple-minded” colored folk have been persuaded to leave the North for Liberia and Hayti. But the “more intelligent“ black folk will choose to remain here. Why? He continues with a scathing indictment of a Lincoln idea that the “negroes have Natural Rights, although they cannot enjoy them here.” Lincoln said the black man can only exercise his natural rights “upon his own soil” in Africa. To this Rock exclaims, “not because we prefer being oppressed here to being freemen in other countries, but we will remain because we believe our future prospects are better here than elsewhere.” Rock’s article is an excellent treatise on what was meant by anti-slavery in the North. The term was devoid of any moral content, and would better be stated as “anti-black” than “anti-slavery.” Spending time in the primary sources will reveal this suppressed truth.http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1862/02/14/the-liberator-32-07.pdfJohn Rock, (October 13, 1825 – December 3, 1866) was an American teacher, doctor, dentist, lawyer and abolitionist. Rock was one of the first African-American men to earn a medical degree. In addition, he was the first black person to be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Any responses expressing disdain for those who would attempt to deprive law abiding U.S. citizens of ANY Constitutionally enumerated and protected civil liberty, especially any attempt by elected Federal government representatives, who are strictly prohibited from interfering with ANY civil liberty of the people enumerated in and protected by the Constitution of the United States of America are completely justified. I will illustrate precisely why in this answer to the OP’s question.Until the Constitution is amended to allow elected officials to interfere with the rights of the people as enumerated in the Constitution any interference from representatives elected to Congress is illegal according to the supreme law of the land (the U.S. Constitution).Your constitution (yes, it’s yours as an individual, and as a member of the group it refers to as ‘the people’) is a simple document, one that is both easy to read and easy to understand. It is law. It is the highest law in the United States of America. It is the Supreme Law of the Land here in the U.S.. It supersedes all laws passed by both Federal and state legislatures wherever powers are specified or limited therein. If you are not familiar with your Constitution you should take the time to read and understand it. Without it you have no protected right to speak your mind freely, to practice whatever faith you may wish to, no right to defend your own life with equal force presented by a lethal threat (and no means to stand against tyranny if necessary), no right to protection from unlawful search and seizure, no right to decline to self incriminate, no right to the full due process of law, and so on. You cannot assert a right you neither know nor understand.Further, if you do not understand how this works you’re not likely to understand legislation that contradicts the law that protects your rights and it will be too late once a right has been taken from you. Additionally, once a precedent has been set your legislatures will feel empowered to do so again when it suits them. Without our vigilance this can and ultimately will happen. We have already begun to approach this slippery slope.Because the Second Amendment to the Constitution is at the core of the OP’s question I will post a link to a primer on this Constitutionally enumerated and protected right. The information in the link below is far more concise, thorough, and easy to understand than I believe I would be able to provide. The following was authored by another Quora participant named Franklin Hammack:David Franklin Hammack's answer to What do the terms ‘arms’, ‘well regulated’, and ‘militia’ mean in the Second Amendment?Knowledge is power. Educate yourself.Regarding elected officials (not limited to Democrats) trying to ‘take away guns’ (read: interfere with the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as enumerated in the Bill of Rights, Second Amendment to the Constitution), there’s more than enough evidence to show that this is a real and present philosophy for many elected officials, supported both in what they say and what they do (meaning the introduction of bills that seek to interfere with this protected right, support for such proposed legislation, or enacting such legislation). Here is a short list of the most egregious abuses of power in the form of unconstitutional legislation that directly interferes with the right of the people to keep and bear arms:1934 - National Firearms Act (NFA)1938 - Federal Firearms Act (FFA)1968 - Gun Control Act1986 - Firearm Owners Protection Act1993 - Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act1994 - Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection ActI would also encourage anyone still reading to do just a bit of research on the laws listed above so that you are aware of what limits have been unlawfully placed on one’s Second Amendment rights with each law.These laws directly infringe upon the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. This is not up for debate. Neither Congress nor the President have any such authority. Claiming such authority is both an illegal abuse of power and a breach of the oath for the office that every elected official involved with the introduction of, support for, and participation in passing of each of these laws, along with a long list of lesser laws that too interfere with this essential liberty of the people as enumerated in the Constitution. ALL elected officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution before taking office. Any elected official who supports the interference of a Constitutionally protected right of the people, be it in word or deed, has broken their oath of office, and are thus unfit to hold that officeRegarding expressed support for any such legislation by elected officials, the list of quotes that clearly show support for legislation that would either infringe upon, or completely remove the right of the people to keep and bear arms is simply too long to provide an exhaustive list in a Quora post. I will, however, provide a short list to illustrate this reality:“I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” - President Barack Obama, January 12, 2016.“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them; “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,” I would have done it.” - Senator Dianne Feinstein, February 5th, 1995.“We’re bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns.” - White House Chief Of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, December 22, 2008.“We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.” - President Barack Obama, October 1, 2015.“Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.” - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, November 18, 1993.“We cannot let a minority of people—and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people—hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” - Hillary Clinton, June 17, 2014.“When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.” President Bill Clinton - April 19th, 1994.“If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.” - President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993."I believe all handguns should be abolished." - Senator John Chafee, 1/9/January 9th, 1997."If it were up to me, We'd ban them all." - Representative Mel Reynolds, November 9th, 1993."Ultimately, I would like to see the manufacture and possession of handguns banned except for military and police use." - Representative Bobby Rush, December 5th, 1999."We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases." - Representative William Clay, May 8th, 1993."If it was up to me, no one but law enforcement officers would own hand guns." - Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, November 13th, 1998."We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights or ordinary Americans to own firearms ... that we are unable to think about reality." - President Bill Clinton, March 1, 1993."We are going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!" - Representative Chuck Schumer, December 8th, 1993."Mr. President, what is going on in this country? Does going to school mean exposure to handguns and to death? As you know, my position is we should ban all handguns, get rid of them, no manufacture, no sale, no importation, no transportation, no possession of a handgun. There are 66 million handguns in the United States of America today, with 2 million being added every year." - Senator John H. Chafee, June 11th, 1992."Mr. speaker, we must take swift and strong action if we are to rescue the next generation from the rising of tide armed violence. That is why today I am introducing the Handgun Control Act of 1992. This legislation would outlaw the possession, importation, transfer or manufacture of a handgun except for use by public agencies, individuals who can demonstrate to their local police chief that they need a gun because of threat to their life or the life of a family member, licensed guard services, licensed pistol clubs which keep the weapons securely on premises, licensed manufacturers and licensed gun dealers." - Representative Stephen J. Solarz, August 12th, 1992."Indeed, that the Second Amendment poses no barrier to strong gun laws is perhaps the most well-settled proposition in American constitutional law. Yet the incantation of this phantom right continues to pervade Congressional debate." - Erwin N. Griswold, Solicitor General, November 4th, 1990.In addition to elected officials there are other groups of activists in the courts, the media, in higher education, and elsewhere who express support of, and often push for, legislators to pass unconstitutional laws that infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Here are just a few examples:Journalists/Media:"My personal opinion is that guns kill people." - Sam Donaldson, ABC News Primetime Live, 2/22/90."We will never fully solve our nation's horrific problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture and sale of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons." - USA Today, Dec. 29, 1993."Twenty years ago, I asked Richard Nixon what he thought of gun control. His on-the-record reply: 'Guns are an abomination.' Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles. - William Safire, LA Daily News, 6/15/99."Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Fayetteville, Tennessee; Springfield, Oregon -- all towns that live in infamy because a troubled teenager with access to a deadly gun went on a killing spree. There are no panaceas to stop such violence but there are too many guns and too many teenagers have too easy access to them. It is an outrage to deny that as too many politicians in the back pocket of the National Rifle Association are too wont to do." - CNN Capital Gang, 5/23/98."Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed by sister democracies such as Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily." - Charles Krauthammer, columnist, "Disarm the Citizenry"."We are inclined to think that every firearm in the hands of anyone who is not a law enforcement officer constitutes an incitement to violence. Let's come to our senses before the whole country starts shooting itself up on all its Main Streets in a delirious kind of High Noon." - Washington Post, 8/19/65."By a curiosity of evolution, every human skull harbors a prehistoric vestige: a reptilian brain. This atavism, like a hand grenade cushioned in the more civilized surrounding cortex, is the dark hive where many of mankind's primitive impulses originate. To go partners with that throwback, Americans have carried out of their own history another curiosity that evolution forgot to discard as the country changed from a sparsely populated, underpoliced agrarian society to a modern industrial civilization. That vestige is the gun - most notoriously the handgun, an anachronistic tool still much in use." - Time, 4/13/81."As you probably know by now, Time's editors, in the April 13 issue, took a strong position in support of an outright ban on handguns for private use." - Time Magazine, Letter to NRA, 4/24/81."The only way to discourage the gun culture is to remove the guns from the hands and shoulders of people who are not in the law enforcement business." - New York Times, 9/24/75."Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership? Because it's the only alternative to the present insanity. Without both strict limits on access to new weapons and aggressive efforts to reduce the supply of existing weapons, no one can be safer." - Editorial, Los Angeles Times, 12/28/93."No presidential candidate has yet come out for the most effective proposal to check the terror of gunfire: a ban on the general sale, manufacture and ownership of handguns as well as assault-style weapons." - Guns Along the Campaign Trail, Washington Post, 7/19/99."There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. I used to think handguns could be controlled by laws about registration, by laws requiring waiting periods for purchasers, by laws making sellers check out the past of buyers. I think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns." - Michael Gartner, President, NBC News, in USA Today, 1/16/92."Whatever is being proposed is way too namby-pamby. I mean, for example, we're talking about limiting people to one gun purchase, or handgun purchase a month. Why not just ban the ownership of handguns when nobody needs one? Why not just ban semi-automatic rifles? Nobody needs one." - Jack E. White, Time national correspondent, Washington Times, 5/8/99."The great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment ... I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles and shotguns, and I think we're prepared to get rid of the damned things entirely - the handguns, the semis and the automatics." - Roger Rosenblatt, Time Magazine, 8/9/99."I don't understand why we're piddling around. We should talk about getting rid of guns in this country." - Juan Williams, Washington Post, on Fox News Sunday, 5/23/99."Repealing the Second Amendment is no cause for the faint-hearted, but it remains the only way for liberals to trigger an honest debate on the future of our bullet-plagued society. So what if anti-gun advocates have to devote the next 15-20 years to the struggle? The cause is worth the political pain. Failing to take bold action condemns all of us to spend our lives cringing in terror every time we hear a car backfire." - Walter Shapiro, USA Today columnist, 9/17/99."Get rid of the guns. We had the Second Amendment that said you have the right to bear arms. I haven't seen the British really coming by my house looking for it. And besides, the right to bear arms is not an absolute right anyway, as New York's Sullivan Law proves. We talk about ourselves as a violent society, and some of that is right and some of it is claptrap. But I think if you took away the guns, and I mean really take away the guns, not what Congress is doing now, you would see that violent society diminish considerably." - Roger Rosenblatt, PBS NewsHour essayist, 5/20/99.Organizations:"We urge passage of federal legislation - and meanwhile, in its absence, the partial remedy of state law - to prohibit, with few and narrowly drawn exceptions, the private ownership and possession of handguns, much the way existing laws prohibit machine guns, grenades and cannons." - ACLU Board of Directors, adopted September, 1976."The Union agrees with the Supreme Court's longstanding interpretation of the Second Amendment that the individual's right to keep and bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a 'well-regulated militia'. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected." - ACLU policy statement #47 (1986)."The League, therefore, supports a ban on the further manufacture, sale, transportation and importation for private ownership of handguns and their parts." - League of Women Voters of Illinois Gun Control Position-in-Brief."I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than the police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ... no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun." - Dean Morris, Director, LEAA."Firearms are currently exempt from the health and safety laws that apply to every other consumer product in America, from toasters to teddy bears. Applying those same standards to guns is the real key to reducing firearm death and injury in America. Under these standards, handguns would be banned because of their high risk and low utility." - Violence Policy Center, 3/16/99.Others:"[T]he Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms." - U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals, Silveira v Lockyer, 12/5/02"[The] National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is the people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding. - Robert H. Bork, former Federal Appeals Court Judge (Distinguished Lecture Series, UC Irvine, 3/14/89)"Since the Second Amendment ... applies only to the right of the State to maintain a militia and not to the individual's right to bear arms, there can be no serious claim to any express constitutional right to possess a firearm." - U.S. v Warin (6th Circuit, 1976)"There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police." - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Adams v. Williams, 1972 (dissent)"Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you're gonna have. It's pathetic. It really is pathetic. It's sad. We're living in the Dark Ages." - Sylvester Stallone."To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes." - Sarah Brady, Tampa Tribune, 10/21/93."My own view on gun control is simple. I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns, would be banned." - Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health."Mutual protection should be the aim of citizens, not individual self-protection. Until we are willing to outlaw the very existence or manufacture of civilian handguns we have no right to call ourselves citizens or consider our behavior even minimally civil." - Garry Wills, historian/writer, John Lennon's war, Chi. Sun-times, 12/12/80."We are beyond the stage of restrictive licensing and uniform laws. We are at the point in time and terror when nothing short of a strong uniform policy of domestic disarmament will alleviate the danger which is crystal clear and perilously present. Let us take the guns away from the people. Exemptions should be limited to the military, the police and those licensed for good and sufficient reasons." - Patrick V. Murphy, NYC Police Commissioner, 12/7/70."I would have preferred to invent something which helps people and makes life easier for farmers. A lawnmower, for example." - Mikhail Kalashnikov, 82, inventor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle."Sorry, it's 1999. We have had enough as a nation. You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison." - Rosie O'Donnell, talk show host."I believe, very strongly, that handguns should be banned and that there should be stringent, effective control of other firearms." - William Buchmeyer, Judge, Patterson v Gesellschaft, 1206 F. Supp. 1206, 1216 (N.D. Tex. 1985)."Guns are evil." - Natalie Merchant, 10,000 Maniacs Concert, 1993."The existence of a gun factory is an absurd. That's the interruption of Mankind's evolution. It interrupts the evolution of Mankind. It's an absurd Man making firearms." - Helio Luz, former Chief of Police, Rio de Janeiro, 3/17/1997."Guns and violence -- an American dyad. The US has more firearms per capita in civilian hands than any other country in the world. Those opposing gun control say, "Guns don't kill people, people do." But people with guns kill and maim other people MORE OFTEN, MORE QUICKLY, and MORE EFFICIENTLY than people using any other means. To me and just about every pediatrician I know, the answer to preventing children using or being shot by guns is to KEEP CHILDREN AND GUNS APART." - Dr. Marilyn Heins, M.D. F.A.A.P."I have the right, when navigating the streets of Philadelphia - thoroughfares supported by my taxes - to drive, walk, or ride Septa unmolested by criminals carrying handguns. The streets of Philadelphia belong to the citizens, and we would all be safer if handguns were not allowed in these public spaces. The collective rights of the community to live free of widespread handgun violence outweighs the rights of individuals to carry defensive handguns against unknown enemies. The idea that disallowing handguns in public spaces will lead to a generalized loss of freedom is a fiction created by the gun industry out of economic necessity." - Kip Leitner, Philadelphia Enquirer, 2/26/99The notion that our elected officials would like to severely restrict or do away with altogether the right of the people of the United States of America to keep and bear arms is not some fringe conspiracy theory. It is a verifiable fact that efforts have been made to infringe upon this essential civil liberty, some resulting in unconstitutional laws passed to this end, and support has been provided for the same by elected officials, all of whom are explicitly prohibited from doing so by the Constitution itself.The Constitution itself provides two - and only two - legal means by which to amend the Constitution. Legislative efforts to side-step these specific processes are strictly prohibited under Constitutional law.Conspiracy theories are mere supposition supported by unverifiable ‘evidence’. A real conspiracy can be verified through relevant data/evidence.Efforts to infringe upon or eliminate altogether the right of the people to keep and bear arms may or may not be a conspiracy. It’s status as a conspiracy is irrelevant. Such efforts by elected officials, and support for these efforts by the same, are illegal under Constitutional law - period. It’s potential status as a conspiracy doesn’t matter. The elected officials who participate in such efforts are nothing but common criminals according to the supreme law of the land in the United States of America. This is what matters, and we the people shouldn’t tolerate such criminal activity. If they are successful in severely limiting or eliminating this right through legislation a precedent will be set that Constitutionally protected rights may be severely restricted or eliminated without amending the Constitution, thereby rendering the U.S. Constitution a useless piece of paper, and nothing more.If you don’t believe this to be true then I would urge you to read carefully through the many proposed state ‘red flag’ laws and passed state laws, as well as proposed ‘red flag’ Federal legislation, which would allow the government to seize firearms (read: private property) from an individuals person and their home if someone (a family member, a current or past roommate/housemate, a neighbor, a police officer - each dependent upon the law as written in various jurisdictions) reports said individual as being a danger to themselves or others, an accusation for which no verifiable justification is required. This is allowed to happen without a trial and subsequent conviction, without the opportunity for said individual to face their accuser or to defend their innocence in a court of law. These laws are a hard bypass on our right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure and our right to be afforded the full due process of law as protected under the Fourth and the Fourteenth amendments to our Constitution.If you think this bypass of your aforementioned Constitutionally protected Fourth amendment and Fourteenth amendment rights will remain limited to the confiscation of an individuals firearms and the removal of their Second Amendment rights then you’re simply fooling yourself.Gun Control is not about guns - it’s about Control.Most of the calls for strict limitations on private gun ownership, bans on private ownership of certain types of firearms in common lawful use, and prohibition on private ownership of firearms are coming from wealthy people who can afford to hire armed professionals to see to their own security. and many of them do just that. Those elected officials pushing for the same are afforded such armed protection on the taxpayers dime. As such these people have no personal need for the right to keep and bear arms, thus their push for ever more restrictive limitations on the right of the people to keep and bear arms will have no meaningful impact in their lives.Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.Power is given, not taken.Our elected representatives have become used to wielding power not afforded them by the Constitution (wherein their powers are explicitly enumerated and limited) and we have allowed this to happen through I attentiveness, apathy, and laziness. The U.S. Federal Government is OUR government. We are tasked with governing through our elected officials, and the removal of those representatives who do not act in accordance of the will of their constituency by voting in a new representative at the end of their term, or by recalling those representative if deemed necessary. Voting participation among those eligible to vote is very low, and often voters either cast votes by name recognition or along party lines without researching the history and known record on the important issues that they will encounter as a member of congress. We cannot govern that which we do not understand. Additionally, it is impossible for the people to retain this power to govern through their representatives without the means to defend that power from those who would take it from us. That means is provided through the right of the people to keep and bear arms. I will reiterate:Gun Control is not about guns - it’s about Control.Without a clear understanding of the purpose of the Second Amendment I suppose it’s easy to support Federal gun control efforts. We are tasked with defending our Constitution from enemies, both foreign and domestic. The Constitution cannot stand under tyranny. Therefore the Constitution must be invalidated for tyranny to truly take hold in the U.S.. The Second Amendment affords the people the people to guard against tyranny and defend the Constitution. The need for this deterrent has never been as valid, and necessary, as it is now. It’s easy to control an unarmed people. So long as the people of the United States remain armed a sufficient deterrent to tyranny exists in the U.S.. One more time:Gun Control is not about guns - it’s about Control.Voting is how we keep Congress in check. Educated decisions in voting allow for positive change in Congress where we deem it necessary. Corresponding with our representatives when proposed legislation is up for vote allows us to communicate clearly how we wish for them to represent us - how we want them to vote on proposed laws. How they respond, and how they vote tells us how well or poorly they are representing their constituency, which in turn should affect how we vote at election time.Vote. Vote defensively. Vote to defend your rights as you would your children. Our future as a nation hinges on the balance of power defined in the Constitution. Stay informed. Never trust any one news source, check anything you read against multiple sources. Do your best to separate fact and opinion in the ‘news’. Do your best to pass on to the next generation a better America.Knowledge is power. Educate yourself.