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From: [c--am--r] at [optilink.dsccc.com] (Clayton Cramer)
Subject: The Racist Roots of Gun Control
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 17:25:16 GMT
Copyright 1993 Clayton E. Cramer All Rights Reserved
Electronic redistribution is permitted as long as no alterations
are made to the text and this notice appears at the beginning.
Print reproduction or for profit use is not authorized without
permission from the author.
The Racist Roots of Gun Control
The historical record provides compelling evidence that
racism underlies gun control laws -- and not in any subtle
way. Throughout much of American history, gun control was
openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics
"in their place," and to quiet the racial fears of whites.
This paper is intended to provide a brief summary of this
unholy alliance of gun control and racism, and to suggest
that gun control laws should be regarded as "suspect ideas,"
analogous to the "suspect classifications" theory of
discrimination already part of the American legal system.
Racist arms laws predate the establishment of the United
States. Starting in 1751, the French Black Code required
Louisiana colonists to stop any blacks, and if necessary,
beat "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a
cane." If a black refused to stop on demand, and was on
horseback, the colonist was authorized to "shoot to kill."[1]
Slave possession of firearms was a necessity at times in a
frontier society, yet laws continued to be passed in an
attempt to prohibit slaves or free blacks from possessing
firearms, except under very restrictively controlled
conditions.[2] Similarly, in the sixteenth century the colony
of New Spain, terrified of black slave revolts, prohibited
all blacks, free and slave, from carrying arms.[3]
In the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the slave
population successfully threw off their French masters, but
the Revolution degenerated into a race war, aggravating
existing fears in the French Louisiana colony, and among
whites in the slave states of the United States. When the
first U. S. official arrived in New Orleans in 1803 to take
charge of this new American possession, the planters sought
to have the existing free black militia disarmed, and
otherwise exclude "free blacks from positions in which they
were required to bear arms," including such non-military
functions as slave-catching crews. The New Orleans city
government also stopped whites from teaching fencing to free
blacks, and then, when free blacks sought to teach fencing,
similarly prohibited their efforts as well.[4]
It is not surprising that the first North American
English colonies, then the states of the new republic,
remained in dread fear of armed blacks, for slave revolts
against slave owners often degenerated into less selective
forms of racial warfare. The perception that free blacks
were sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved brothers,
and the dangerous example that "a Negro could be free" also
caused the slave states to pass laws designed to disarm all
blacks, both slave and free. Unlike the gun control laws
passed after the Civil War, these antebellum statutes were
for blacks alone. In Maryland, these prohibitions went so
far as to prohibit free blacks from owning dogs without a
license, and authorizing any white to kill an unlicensed dog
owned by a free black, for fear that blacks would use dogs
as weapons. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any
ownership of a dog by a black person.[5]
Understandably, restrictions on slave possession of arms
go back a very long way. While arms restrictions on *free*
blacks predate it, these restrictions increased dramatically
after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, a revolt that caused
the South to become increasingly irrational in its fears.[6]
Virginia's response to Turner's Rebellion prohibited free
blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any
military weapon, or any powder or lead..." The existing laws
under which free blacks were occasionally licensed to
possess or carry arms was also repealed, making arms
possession completely illegal for free blacks.[7] But even
before this action by the Virginia Legislature, in the
aftermath of Turner's Rebellion, the discovery that a free
black family possessed lead shot for use as scale weights,
without powder or weapon in which to fire it, was considered
sufficient reason for a frenzied mob to discuss summary
execution of the owner.[8] The analogy to the current
hysteria where mere possession of ammunition in some states
without a firearms license may lead to jail time, should be
obvious.
One example of the increasing fear of armed blacks is the
1834 change to the Tennessee Constitution, where Article XI,
26 of the 1796 Tennessee Constitution was revised from:
"That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to
bear arms for their common defence,"[9] to: "That the free
*white* men of this State have a right to keep and to bear
arms for their common defence."[10] [emphasis added] It is not
clear what motivated this change, other than Turner's bloody
insurrection. The year before, the Tennessee Supreme Court
had recognized the right to bear arms as an individual
guarantee, but there is nothing in that decision that
touches on the subject of race.[11]
Other decisions during the antebellum period were
unambiguous about the importance of race. In State v.
Huntly (1843), the North Carolina Supreme Court had
recognized that there was a right to carry arms guaranteed
under the North Carolina Constitution, as long as such arms
were carried in a manner not likely to frighten people.[12]
The following year, the North Carolina Supreme Court made
one of those decisions whose full significance would not
appear until after the Civil War and passage of the
Fourteenth Amendment. An 1840 statute provided:
That if any free negro, mulatto, or free person of color,
shall wear or carry about his or her person, or keep in
his or her house, any shot gun, musket, rifle, pistol,
sword, dagger or bowie-knife, unless he or she shall have
obtained a licence therefor from the Court of Pleas and
Quarter Sessions of his or her county, within one year
preceding the wearing, keeping or carrying therefor, he
or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be
indicted therefor.[13]
Elijah Newsom, "a free person of color," was indicted in
Cumberland County in June of 1843 for carrying a shotgun
without a license -- at the very time the North Carolina
Supreme Court was deciding Huntly. Newsom was convicted by
a jury; but the trial judge directed a not guilty verdict,
and the state appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Newsom's attorney argued that the statute requiring free
blacks to obtain a license to "keep and bear arms" was in
violation of both the Second Amendment to the U. S.
Constitution, and the North Carolina Constitution's similar
guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms.[14] The North
Carolina Supreme Court refused to accept that the Second
Amendment was a limitation on state laws, but had to deal
with the problem of the state constitutional guarantees,
which had been used in the Huntly decision, the year before.
The 17th article of the 1776 North Carolina Constitution
declared:
That the people have a right to bear arms, for the
defence of the State; and, as standing armies, in time
of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to
be kept up; and that the military should be kept under
strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil
power.[15]
The Court asserted that: "We cannot see that the act of
1840 is in conflict with it... The defendant is not
indicted for carrying arms in defence of the State, nor does
the act of 1840 prohibit him from so doing."[16] But in
Huntly, the Court had acknowledged that the restrictive
language "for the defence of the State" did not preclude an
individual right.[17] The Court then attempted to justify the
necessity of this law:
Its only object is to preserve the peace and safety of
the community from being disturbed by an indiscriminate
use, on ordinary occasions, by free men of color, of
fire arms or other arms of an offensive character.
Self preservation is the first law of nations, as it is
of individuals.[18]
The North Carolina Supreme Court also sought to repudiate
the idea that free blacks were protected by the North
Carolina Constitution's Bill of Rights by pointing out that
the Constitution excluded free blacks from voting, and
therefore free blacks were not citizens. Unlike a number of
other state constitutions with right to keep and bear arms
provisions that limited this right only to citizens,[19]
Article 17 guaranteed this right to the people -- and try as
hard as they might, it was difficult to argue that a "free
person of color," in the words of the Court, was not one of
"the people."
It is one of the great ironies that, in much the same way
that the North Carolina Supreme Court recognized a right to
bear arms in 1843 -- then a year later declared that free
blacks were not included -- the Georgia Supreme Court did
likewise before the 1840s were out. The Georgia Supreme
Court found in Nunn v. State (1846) that a statute
prohibiting the sale of concealable handguns, sword-canes,
and daggers violated the Second Amendment:
The right of the whole people, old and young, men,
women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear
arms of every description, and not such merely as are
used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed,
or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all of
this for the important end to be attained: the rearing
up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally
necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion
is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the
Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right,
originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under
foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and
successors, reestablished by the revolution of 1688,
conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and
finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna
Charta! And Lexington, Concord, Camden, River Raisin,
Sandusky, and the laurel-crowned field of New Orleans,
plead eloquently for this interpretation![20]
Finally, after this paean to liberty -- in a state where
much of the population remained enslaved, forbidden by law
to possess arms of any sort -- the Court defined the valid
limits of laws restricting the bearing of arms:
We are of the opinion, then, that so far as the act of
1837 seeks to suppress the practice of carrying certain
weapons secretly, that it is valid, inasmuch as it does
not deprive the citizen of his natural right of self-
defence, or of his constitutional right to keep and
bear arms. But that so much of it, as contains a
prohibition against bearing arms openly, is in conflict
with the Constitution, and void...[21]
"Citizen"? Within a single page, the Court had gone from
"right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and
boys" to the much more narrowly restrictive right of a
"citizen." The motivation for this sudden narrowing of the
right appeared two years later.
The decision Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah (1848) was
not, principally, a right to keep and bear arms case. In
1839, the city of Savannah, Georgia, in an admitted effort
"to prevent the increase of free persons of color in our
city," had established a $100 per year tax on free blacks
moving into Savannah from other parts of Georgia. Samuel
Cooper and Hamilton Worsham, two "free persons of color,"
were convicted of failing to pay the tax, and were jailed.[22]
On appeal, counsel for Cooper and Worsham argued that the
ordinance establishing the tax was deficient in a number of
technical areas; the assertion of most interest to us is,
"In Georgia, free persons of color have constitutional
rights..." Cooper and Worsham's counsel argued that these
rights included writ of habeas corpus, right to own real
estate, to be "subject to taxation," "[t]hey may sue and be
sued," and cited a number of precedents under Georgia law in
defense of their position.[23]
Justice Warner delivered the Court's opinion, most of
which is irrelevant to the right to keep and bear arms, but
one portion shows the fundamental relationship between
citizenship, arms, and elections, and why gun control laws
were an essential part of defining blacks as "non-citizens":
"Free persons of color have never been recognized here as
citizens; they are not entitled to bear arms, vote for
members of the legislature, or to hold any civil office."[24]
The Georgia Supreme Court did agree that the ordinance
jailing Cooper and Worsham for non-payment was illegal, and
ordered their release, but the comments of the Court made it
clear that their brave words in Nunn v. State (1846) about
"the right of the people," really only meant white people.
While settled parts of the South were in great fear of
armed blacks, on the frontier, the concerns about Indian
attack often forced relaxation of these rules. The 1798
Kentucky Comprehensive Act allowed slaves and free blacks on
frontier plantations "to keep and use guns, powder, shot,
and weapons, offensive and defensive." Unlike whites,
however, a license was required for free blacks or slaves to
carry weapons.[25]
The need for blacks to carry arms for self-defense
included not only the problem of Indian attack, and the
normal criminal attacks that anyone might worry about, but
he additional hazard that free blacks were in danger of
being kidnapped and sold into slavery.[26] A number of states,
including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin,
passed laws specifically to prohibit kidnapping of free
blacks, out of concern that the federal Fugitive Slave Laws
would be used as cover for re-enslavement.[27]
The end of slavery in 1865 did not eliminate the problems
of racist gun control laws; the various Black Codes adopted
after the Civil War required blacks to obtain a license
before carrying or possessing firearms or Bowie knives;
these are sufficiently well-known that any reasonably
complete history of the Reconstruction period mentions them.
These restrictive gun laws played a part in the efforts of
the Republicans to get the Fourteenth Amendment ratified,
because it was difficult for night riders to generate the
correct level of terror in a victim who was returning fire.[28]
It does appear, however, that the requirement to treat
blacks and whites equally before the law led to the adoption
of restrictive firearms laws in the South that were equal in
the letter of the law, but unequally enforced. It is clear
that the vagrancy statutes adopted at roughly the same time,
in 1866, were intended to be used against blacks, even
though the language was race-neutral.[29]
The former states of the Confederacy, many of which had
recognized the right to carry arms openly before the Civil
War, developed a very sudden willingness to qualify that
right. One especially absurd example, and one that includes
strong evidence of the racist intentions behind gun control
laws, is Texas.
In Cockrum v. State (1859), the Texas Supreme Court had
recognized that there was a right to carry defensive arms,
and that this right was protected under both the Second
Amendment, and section 13 of the Texas Bill of Rights. The
outer limit of the state's authority (in this case,
attempting to discourage the carrying of Bowie knives), was
that it could provide an enhanced penalty for manslaughters
committed with Bowie knives.[30] Yet, by 1872, the Texas
Supreme Court denied that there was any right to carry any
weapon for self-defense under either the state or federal
constitutions -- and made no attempt to explain or justify
why the Cockrum decision was no longer valid.[31]
What caused the dramatic change? The following excerpt
from that same decision -- so offensive that no one would
dare make such an argument today -- sheds some light on the
racism that apparently caused the sudden perspective change:
The law under consideration has been attacked upon the
ground that it was contrary to public policy, and
deprived the people of the necessary means of self-
defense; that it was an innovation upon the customs and
habits of the people, to which they would not peaceably
submit... We will not say to what extent the early
customs and habits of the people of this state should
be respected and accommodated, where they may come in
conflict with the ideas of intelligent and well-meaning
legislators. *A portion of our system of laws, as well
as our public morality, is derived from a people the
most peculiar perhaps of any other in the history and
derivation of its own system. Spain, at different
periods of the world, was dominated over by the
Carthagenians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Snovi, the
Allani, the Visigoths, and Arabs; and to this day there
are found in the Spanish codes traces of the laws and
customs of each of these nations blended together in a
system by no means to be compared with the sound
philosophy and pure morality of the common law*.[32]
[emphasis added]
This particular decision is more open than most as to its
motivations, but throughout the South during this period,
the existing precedents that recognized a right to open
carry under state constitutional provisions were being
narrowed, or simply ignored. Nor was the reasoning that led
to these changes lost on judges in the North. In 1920, the
Ohio Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Mexican for
concealed carry of a handgun--while asleep in his own bed.
Justice Wanamaker's scathing dissent criticized the
precedents cited by the majority in defense of this
absurdity:
I desire to give some special attention to some of the
authorities cited, supreme court decisions from
Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and one or two
inferior court decisions from New York, which are given
in support of the doctrines upheld by this court. The
southern states have very largely furnished the
precedents. It is only necessary to observe that the
race issue there has extremely intensified a decisive
purpose to entirely disarm the negro, and this policy
is evident upon reading the opinions.[33]
While not relevant to the issue of racism, Justice
Wanamaker's closing paragraphs capture well the biting wit
and intelligence of this jurist, who was unfortunately,
outnumbered on the bench:
I hold that the laws of the state of Ohio should be so
applied and so interpreted as to favor the law-abiding
rather than the law-violating people. If this decision
shall stand as the law of Ohio, a very large percentage
of the good people of Ohio to-day are criminals,
because they are daily committing criminal acts by
having these weapons in their own homes for their own
defense. The only safe course for them to pursue,
instead of having the weapon concealed on or about
their person, or under their pillow at night, is to
hang the revolver on the wall and put below it a large
placard with these words inscribed:
"The Ohio supreme court having decided that it is a
crime to carry a concealed weapon on one's person in
one's home, even in one's bed or bunk, this weapon is
hung upon the wall that you may see it, and before you
commit any burglary or assault, please, Mr. Burglar,
hand me my gun."[34]
There are other examples of remarkable honesty from the
state supreme courts on this subject, of which the finest is
probably Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford's concurring
opinion in Watson v. Stone (1941), in which a conviction for
carrying a handgun without a permit was overturned, because
the handgun was in the glove compartment of a car:
I know something of the history of this legislation.
The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a
great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here
for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber
camps. The same condition existed when the Act was
amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose
of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce
the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in
turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white
citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of
security. The statute was never intended to be applied
to the white population and in practice has never been
so applied.[35]
Today is not 1893, and when proponents of restrictive gun
control insist that their motivations are color-blind, there
is a possibility that they are telling the truth.
Nonetheless, there are some rather interesting questions
that should be asked today. The most obvious question is,
"Why should a police chief or sheriff have any discretion in
issuing a concealed handgun permit?" Here in California,
even the state legislature's research arm--hardly a nest of
pro-gunners--has admitted that the vast majority of permits
to carry concealed handguns in California are issued to
white males.[36] Even if overt racism is not an issue, an
official may simply have more empathy with an applicant of a
similar cultural background, and consequently be more able
to relate to the applicant's concerns. As my wife pointedly
reminded a police official when we applied for concealed
weapon permits, "If more police chiefs were women, a lot
more women would get permits, and be able to defend
themselves from rapists."
Gun control advocates today are not so foolish as to
openly promote racist laws, and so the question might be
asked what relevance the racist past of gun control laws
has. One concern is that the motivations for disarming
blacks in the past are really not so different from the
motivations for disarming law-abiding citizens today. In the
last century, the official rhetoric in support of such laws
was that "they" were too violent, too untrustworthy, to be
allowed weapons. Today, the same elitist rhetoric regards
law-abiding Americans in the same way, as child-like
creatures in need of guidance from the government. In the
last century, while never openly admitted, one of the goals
of disarming blacks was to make them more willing to accept
various forms of economic oppression, including the
sharecropping system, in which free blacks were reduced to
an economic state not dramatically superior to the
conditions of slavery.
In the seventeenth century, the aristocratic power
structure of colonial Virginia found itself confronting a
similar challenge from lower class whites. These poor
whites resented how the men who controlled the government
used that power to concentrate wealth into a small number of
hands. These wealthy feeders at the government trough would
have disarmed poor whites if they could, but the threat of
both Indian and pirate attack made this impractical; for all
white men "were armed and had to be armed..." Instead,
blacks, who had occupied a poorly defined status between
indentured servant and slave, were reduced to hereditary
chattel slavery, so that poor whites could be economically
advantaged, without the upper class having to give up its
privileges.[37]
Today, the forces that push for gun control seem to be
heavily (though not exclusively) allied with political
factions that are committed to dramatic increases in
taxation on the middle class. While it would be hyperbole
to compare higher taxes on the middle class to the suffering
and deprivation of sharecropping or slavery, the analogy of
disarming those whom you wish to economically disadvantage,
has a certain worrisome validity to it.
Another point to consider is that in the American legal
system, certain classifications of governmental
discrimination are considered constitutionally suspect, and
these "suspect classifications" (usually considered to be
race and religion) come to a court hearing under a strong
presumption of invalidity. The reason for these "suspect
classifications" is because of the long history of
governmental discrimination based on these classifications,
and because these classifications often impinge on
fundamental rights.[38]
In much the same way, gun control has historically been a
tool of racism, and associated with racist attitudes about
black violence. Similarly, many gun control laws impinge on
that most fundamental of rights: self-defense. Racism is so
intimately tied to the history of gun control in America
that we should regard gun control aimed at law-abiding
people as a "suspect idea," and require that the courts use
the same demanding standards when reviewing the
constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use
with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.
============================================================
Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a
telecommunications manufacturer in Northern California. His
first book, _By The Dim And Flaring Lamps: The Civil War
Diary of Samuel McIlvaine_, was published in 1990. _For The
Defense of Themselves And The State: The Original Intent &
Judicial Interpretation of the Right To Keep And Bear Arms_
will be published by Greenwood/Praeger Press in 1994.
NOTES
1 Thomas N. Ingersoll, "Free Blacks in a Slave Society:
New Orleans, 1718-1812", _William and Marry Quarterly_, 48:2
[April, 1991], 178-79.
2 Daniel H. Usner, Jr., _Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a
Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley
Before 1783_, (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North
Carolina Press, 1992), 139, 165, 187.
3 Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, _The Course of
Mexican History_, 4th ed., (New York, Oxford University
Press: 1991), 216.
4 Ingersoll, 192-200. Benjamin Quarles, _The Negro in the
Making of America_, 3rd ed., (New York, Macmillan Publishing:
1987), 81.
5 Theodore Brantner Wilson, _The Black Codes of the South_
(University of Alabama Press: 1965), 26-30.
6 Stanley Elkins, _Slavery_, (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press: 1968), 220.
7 Eric Foner, ed., _Nat Turner_, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
Prentice-Hall: 1971), 115.
8 Harriet Jacobs [Linda Brant], _Incidents in the Life of
a Slave Girl_, (Boston: 1861), in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
ed., _The Classic Slave Narratives_, (New York, Penguin Books:
1987), 395-396.
9 Francis Newton Thorpe, _The Federal and State
Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of
the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore
Forming The United States of America_, (Washington,
Government Printing Office: 1909), reprinted (Grosse Pointe,
Mich., Scholarly Press: n.d.), 6:3424.
10 Thorpe, 6:3428.
11 Simpson v. State, 5 Yerg. 356 (Tenn. 1833).
12 State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418, 422, 423 (N.C. 1843).
13 State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250 (1844).
14 State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250, 251
(1844).
15 Thorpe, 5:2788.
16 State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250, 254
(1844).
17 State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418, 422 (N.C. 1843).
18 State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250, 254
(1844).
19 Early state constitutions limiting the right to bear
arms to citizens: Connecticut (1818), Kentucky (1792 &
1799), Maine (1819), Mississippi (1817), Pennsylvania (1790
-- but not the 1776 constitution), Republic of Texas (1838),
State of Texas (1845).
20 Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 250, 251 (1846).
21 Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 250, 251 (1846).
22 Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 69 (1848).
23 Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 70, 71
(1848).
24 Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 72 (1848).
25 Juliet E. K. Walker, _Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the
Antebellum Frontier_, (Lexington, KY, University Press of
Kentucky: 1983), 21. This is an inspiring biography of a
slave who, through hard work moonlighting in the production
of saltpeter (a basic ingredient of black powder) and land
surveying, saved enough money to buy his wife, himself, and
eventually all of his children and grandchildren out of
slavery -- while fighting against oppressive laws and
vigorous racism. Most impressive of all, is that he did it
without ever learning to read or write.
26 Walker, 73.
27 Stephen Middleton, _The Black Laws in the Old Northwest:
A Documentary History_, (Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press:
1993), 27-32, 227-240, 309-314, 353-357, 403-404.
28 Michael Les Benedict, _The Fruits of Victory:
Alternatives to Restoring the Union_, 1865-1877, (New York,
J.B. Lippincott Co.: 1975), 87. Francis L. Broderick,
_Reconstruction and the American Negro, 1865-1900_, (London,
Macmillan Co.: 1969), 21. Dan T. Carter, _When The War Was
Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865-
1867_, (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press: 1985),
219-221. Eric Foner, _Reconstruction_, (New York, Harper &
Row: 1988), 258-259.
29 Foner, _Reconstruction_, 200-201.
30 Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, 401, 402, 403 (1859).
31 English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 475 (1872).
32 English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 479, 480 (1872).
33 State v. Nieto, 101 Ohio St. 409, 430, 130 N.E. 663
(1920).
34 State v. Nieto, 101 Ohio St. 409, 436, 130 N.E. 663
(1920).
35 Watson v. Stone, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941).
36 Assembly Office of Research, _Smoking Gun: The Case For
Concealed Weapon Permit Reform_, (Sacramento, State of
California: 1986), 5.
37 Edmund S. Morgan, "Slavery and Freedom: The American
Paradox," in Stanley N. Katz, John M. Murrin, and Douglas
Greenberg, ed., _Colonial America: Essays in Politics and
Social Development_, 4th ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc,
1993), 280.
38 Thomas G. Walker, "Suspect Classifications", _Oxford
Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States_, (New
York, Oxford University Press: 1992), 848.
--
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer My opinions, all mine!
Violence on TV? Why can't it be on CSPAN?