theatlantic | The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald
Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control
guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated
it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded
weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the
modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both
sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in
sight.
The eighth-grade students gathering
on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to
lunch on fried chicken with California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan,
and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to
resemble the nation’s Capitol. But the festivities were interrupted by
the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums,
12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.
The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man,
Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. “The American
people in general and the black people in particular,” he announced,
must
take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.
Seale then turned to the others. “All right, brothers, come on. We’re
going inside.” He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight
into the state’s most important government building, loaded guns in
hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.
