It is no longer a slippery slope fallacy to claim that after guns, they will come for metal knives, and after the metal knives, they will come for the plastic ones. Great Britain has seen a string of knife bans, to the point that it is not even legal to carry a knife if the authorities do not think that your reason is good enough. (Story from the hstoday.us below) The Church of England is literally using language like “pointy knifes” must be banned, letter below. To further the point, they are literally attempting to ban plastic cutlery for purposes of carbon footprint reduction (How will we prepare food at this rate?), again new story below. This may seem silly, but it is actually happening to knives. Many conservatives have been laughed at for even suggesting that this is the logical end of the gun debate, that all guns will be banned and knives will be next. We see that occurring in Britain in real time.
When discussing the topic of Gun Control, one can easily run into the weeds of stats and lose the war for winning the battle. We need to remember from where does this type of ideology stem, and what has it produced. Note, I am a stats guy. I believe in knowing the facts, but that is only a small percentage of the conversation if you wish to win someone on the other side of the Gun Control Debate.
Last week we discussed stats and common arguments, so now let's look at the origins of gun control and what the philosophy of gun control has produced in societies that have implemented it. In America, it bears merit to look at why gun control was even considered in a society that had recognized a citizen's common law right to own a firearm since the English Bill of Rights of 1688. This Bill of Rights, by the way, reinstated the rights of all to keep and bear arms. Protestants, specifically, had been stripped of this right under persecution by James II. So why would a Protestant nation even consider gun control laws, they had just left violent persecution in Europe. Many of them fought for these very reforms. So why would some of these refugees employ similar tyrannical policies? For the same reasons those in Europe oppressed the Protestants, sin and power.
Looking at American History is like looking at the tale of two Americas. One America was fighting for Christ's Liberty for all, and the other living in the same sin nature in which the rest of the world wallows. The gun control issue is one of many debates that has serious philosophical implications. Either all have the right to defend themselves, as God has declared in His Word, or Man has the right to pick and choose if man has the right to self defense. When man usurps God's authority, tragedy inevitably strikes.
One of the first gun laws in America was written in Virginia in 1640 specifically against the African Slaves who had been brought to the New World:
“Prohibiting negroes, slave and free, from carrying
weapons including clubs." (The Los Angeles Times, "To
Fight Crime, Some Blacks Attack Gun Control," January
19, 1992)
Also passed in 1640 Virginia was this statute: "That all such free Mulattoes, Negroes and Indians...shall appear without arms." [7 The Statues at Large; Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, p. 95 (W.W. Henning ed. 1823).] (GMU CR LJ, p. 67)
Virginia continued to institute such laws and was joined by South Carolina in 1712 when the latter codified a statute banning:"An act for the better
ordering and governing of Negroes and slaves." [7
Statutes at Large of South Carolina, p. 353-54 (D.J.
McCord ed. 1836-1873).] (GMU CR LJ, p. 70)
In 1791 the 2nd Amendment was ratified, codifying the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It is important to note that the first congress almost split over the issue of slavery during our battle for independence from Britain, which truly didn't end until January 8, 1815 in New Orleans. Benjamin Franklin after having returned from France to broker the end of the French Revolutionary War brought a petition before Congress that read as such:
““Mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness.” All people were entitled to the “blessings of liberty . . . without distinction of color.” It noted the contradiction of slavery and freedom in the American experiment while seeking the means “for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people,” and it called on Congress to grant “liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage.” It advocated not only the end of the slave trade, as the Quaker petition had the day before, but the end of slavery itself.” billofrightsinstitute.org
The Abolitionist case took a back seat to survival and rested until the decadespreceding the Civil War which, however complex, was at least in part foslavery.
In those decades marching up to the Civil War many states passed other egregious gun laws.
In 1825 Florida enstated a law allowing local authorities to ransack Melanated homes (slave or free) for the purposes of confiscating any weapons of any sort (even a cane could be considered contraband.
In 1828 Florida did in fact reverse somewhat to allow Free Melanated people to own firearms, only with a license. (Because you know you can't trust some sorts of people so we need licenses. This argument has become no less immoral with time.)
In 1831 Florrida reversed again and repealed all licenses held by melanated people. (If God is not the one endowing us with our rights, and government is, then our rights are based on elections and political whimsy.)
In 1857 the Dredd Scott vs Sandford case, one of the worst cases of jurisprudence ever seen in America, the court upheld the following: Fro Chief Justice Taney: “if
members of the African race were "citizens" they would
be exempt from the special "police regulations"
applicable to them. "It would give to persons of the
negro race...full liberty of speech...to hold public
meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry
arms wherever they went." (Id. p. 417) U.S. Supreme
Court held that descendants of Africans who were
imported into this country and sold as slaves were not
included nor intended to be included under the word
"citizens" in the Constitution, whether emancipated or
not, and remained without rights or privileges except
such as those which the government might grant them,
thereby upholding slavery. Also held that a slave did
not become free when taken into a free state; that
Congress cannot bar slavery in any territory; and that
blacks could not be citizens.”
After the Civil War, the reconstruction era saw the above laws “Slave Codes” become “Black Codes”. These often banned Melanated ownership of firearms without a license. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was meant to overturn these and the 14th Amendment reinforced the CRA of 1866, but states continued in their sin.
“Opponents of the 14th Amendment objected to its
adoption because they opposed federal enforcement of
the freedoms in the bill of rights. Sen. Thomas A.
Hendricks (D-Ind.) said "if this amendment be
adopted we will then carry the title [of citizenship]
and enjoy its advantages in common with the negroes,
the coolies, and the Indians." [CONG. GLOBE, 39th
Congress, 1st Session, pt. 3, 2939 (4 June 1866)].
Sen. Reverdy Johnson, counsel for the slave owner
in Dred Scott, opposed the amendment because "it is
quite objectionable to provide that 'no State shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges and immunities of citizens of the United
States'." Thus, the 14th Amendment was viewed as
necessary to buttress the Civil Rights Act of 1866,
especially since the act "is pronounced void by the
jurists and courts of the South," e.g. Florida has as
"a misdemeanor for colored men to carry weapons...and
the punishment...is whipping..." [CONG GLOBE, 39th
Con., 1st Session, 504, pt. 4, 3210 (16 June 1866)].”
The KKK was formed the same year in 1866, primarily by Democrats who felt as Thomas Hendricks did. This organization and those who held hate in their hearts towards the freed slaves wanted gun control to make their business of oppression easier.
Saturday Night Special Laws were concocted and enacted to make inexpensive firearms “Saturday Night Specials'' difficult to obtain. This made it difficult to afford a firearm for all of those who the left saw as undesirable, especially the melanated individuals, but also the Appalachian and Italian, who were also connoted with “higher criminality and lower breeding”. Remember, these were the same people who were enthralled with eugenics and thought the poor and slaves were in these circumstances because of their genetics and nature.
In 1911, the Sullivan Law was enacted. This law required police permission to obtain a permit to own a handgun. Again, the Southern Italian was also specifically singled out as particularly criminal in nature, as well as the more melanated African American.
In 1934 the National Firearms Act was passed to prevent the ownership of firearms that were considered too dangerous to be left in the hands of the common folk. Firearms under this law were still available if you were to ask for a license and pay a tax equal to that of a used automobile.
In 1941 Florida a judge admitted to the unequal administration of a gun control law: “In concurring opinion narrowly construing a Florida
gun control law passed in 1893, Justice Buford stated
the 1893 law "was passed when there was a great influx
of negro laborers in this State....The same condition
existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act
was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro
laborers....The statute was never intended to be
applied to the white population and in practice has
never been so applied...". Watson v. Stone, 148 Fla.
516, 524, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (1941) (GMU CR LJ, p. 69)”
After MLK was assasinated in 1968, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed and Robert Sherril, an avowed anti-gun journalist admitted that: “that the
Gun Control Act of 1968 was "passed not to control
guns but to control Blacks." [R. Sherrill, The
Saturday Night Special, p. 280 (1972).] (GMU CR LJ, p.
80) "The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to
control guns but to control blacks, and inasmuch as a
majority of Congress did not want to do the former but
were ashamed to show that their goal was the latter,
the result was they did neither. Indeed, this law,
the first gun-control law passed by Congress in thirty
years, was one of the grand jokes of our time. First
of all, bear in mind that it was not passed in one
piece but was a combination of two laws. The original
1968 Act was passed to control handguns after the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated with a
rifle. Then it was repealed and repassed to include
the control of rifles and shotguns after the
assassination of Robert F. Kennedy with a
handgun.... The moralists of our federal legislature
as well as sentimental editorial writers insist that
the Act of 1968 was a kind of memorial to King and
Robert Kennedy. If so, it was certainly a weird
memorial, as can be seen not merely by the
handgun/long-gun shellgame, but from the
inapplicability of the law to their deaths." (The
Saturday Night Special and Other Guns, Robert
Sherrill, p. 280, 1972)”
In 1994 Clinton introduced HR 3838 to ban firearms in government housing, people who need to be able to protect themselves more than most.
All of this to say, Britain's gun and knife bans have not worked, Australia's bans have done little, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao's bans accomplished exactly what they wished. Why would we in America continue the regressive and Anti-God philosophy of Gun Control. Let us live in Liberty, but with responsibility. Those who commit heinous acts should be held to account, but we can also deter them with an armed populace.
Knife Crackdown:
Pointy Knife Ban:
Plastic Cutlery Ban:
List of Gun Laws: https://www.sedgwickcounty.org/media/29093/the-racist-origins-of-us-gun-control.pdf
Bill of Rights Institute: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/benjamin-franklin-and-the-first-abolitionist-petitions
NY State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen Debate: