Like the KKK, the NRA was also formed right after the Civil War. The organization’s first major involvement with promoting gun laws tainted by prejud… - Adam Winkler

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Like the KKK, the NRA was also formed right after the Civil War. The organization’s first major involvement with promoting gun laws tainted by prejudice was in the 1920s and 30s. In response to urban gun violence often associated with immigrants, especially those from Italy, the NRA’s president, Karl Frederick, helped draft model legislation to restrict concealed carry of firearms in public. States, Frederick’s model law recommended, should only allow concealed carry by people with a license, and those licenses should be restricted to “suitable” people with “proper reason for carrying” a gun in public. Thanks to the NRA’s endorsement, these laws were adopted in the majority of states.
The 1960s saw another wave of gun control laws that were, at least in part, motivated by race. After Malcolm X promised to fight for civil rights “by any means necessary” while posing for Ebony magazine with an M1 Carbine rifle in his hand and the Black Panthers took to streets of Oakland with loaded guns, conservatives like Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, began promoting gun control. Black radicals with guns, coupled with the devastating race riots that wiped out whole neighborhoods in Newark and Detroit in 1967, helped persuade Congress to pass the Gun Control Act of 1968. That law barred felons from purchasing firearms, expanded the licensing of gun dealers, and barred imports of “Saturday Night Specials”—cheap, often poorly made guns that were frequently used for crime by urban youth. As one gun control supporter at the time frankly admitted, a close look at that law revealed that it wasn’t really about controlling guns; it was about controlling blacks. And the NRA, in its signature publication, American Rifleman, took credit for the law and extolled its virtues.