Adam Winkler Quotes
The Black Panthers’ brazen insistence on the right to bear arms [in 1968] led whites, including conservative Republicans, to support new gun control. Then the pendulum swung back. The gun-control laws of the late 1960s, designed to restrict the use of guns by urban black leftist radicals, fueled the rise of the present-day gun-rights movement—one that, in an ironic reversal, is predominantly white, rural, and politically conservative.
Adam Winkler, Historian & Constitutional Law Scholar, “The Secret History of Guns”, The Atlantic, September 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
She advocated armed self-defense for Blacks.
Thirty young black men and women carrying pistols, revolvers, and shotguns, appeared at the grand entrance of the California Capitol Building. The capital police stopped them and asked what they were going to do with their guns. Bobby Seal replied by asking the police officer what he was going to do with his gun. Seale and the Black Panthers then quoted the Second Amendment to the Constitution and insisted that they had a right to carry guns. Seale led his overtly armed followers inside while police and legislators looked on in horror. They were breaking no law. See the linked quote for Seale’s statement at Sacramento.
The Southern Rebels who insisted on their right to have guns during Reconstruction, viciously denied that same right to the newly freed slaves. Sickles tried to remedy this, but the KKK and other terrorists intimidated most of the Blacks into not using the right that they had. Later, they would do that with the right to vote.
Thirty young black men and women carrying pistols, revolvers, and shotguns, appeared at the grand entrance of the California Capitol Building. The capital police stopped them and asked what they were going to do with their guns. Bobby Seal replied by asking the police officer what he was going to do with his gun. Seale led his overtly armed followers inside while police and legislators looked on in horror. They were breaking no law. See linked quote.
The first Civil Rights Act {587712} was passed a few months before and has some of the same language as Congress wanted to make the laws very clear. The Southern Rebels who insisted on their right to have guns during Reconstruction, viciously denied that same right to the newly freed slaves. Sickles tried to remedy this, but the KKK and other terrorists intimidated most of the Blacks into not using the right that they had. Later, they would do that with the right to vote. In January, the Commanding General in charge of South Carolina had issued an order protecting the rights of Blacks to have guns {629894}. This law applied that to the entire country. The Southerners have always supported the 2nd Amendment except when Blacks wanted to have arms.
He was unhappy about the fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were still routinely carrying guns on duty. In England and Canada there has been a tradition of police officers on their beats being unarmed. When more force is needed special armed police are dispatched.
Adam Winkler is the Connell Professor of law at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has been ranked as one of twenty most cited legal scholars in judicial opinions, including landmark Supreme Court cases on the First and Second Amendments. He is also the author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America, and is a frequent commentator on legal issues.
