Stacy Swimp, president and CFO of the Frederick Douglass Society, spoke at a press conference on gun control on Feb. 22, 2013 in D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
(CNSNews.com) – Gun control dates back to laws before and after the Civil War that prohibited or restricted African Americans from owning firearms, a group of black leaders said Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“History is rife with examples. There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people control,” Stacy Swimp, president and CFO of the Frederick Douglass Society, said at the event.
Swimp compared the call for universal background checks for gun purchase to the time when blacks were required to register with the government.
“The first gun laws were put into place to register black folks, to make sure that they would know who we were – that we could not defend ourselves,” Swimp said.
“I think if you look right after the Emancipation Proclamation--what was going on down in the southern states, it’s very clear that the Dixiecrats wanted to disarm black people to keep us from defending ourselves against the Klansman, who were murdering white and black Republicans to control the ballot box,” Swimp said. “So I think history is rife with examples. There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people control.”
The gun control laws that banned or put restrictions on African Americans from owning firearms are documented on a timeline from 1640 to 1995 by the National Rifle Association’s Institute of Legislative Action and can be found here.
Ken 'The Hutch' Hutcherson, former NFL linebacker and pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Wash., spoke at a press conference on gun control on Feb. 22, 2013 in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
Ken “The Hutch” Hutcherson, former linebacker with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys and pastor of the Antioch Bible Church, told CNSNews.com “gun control is about controlling people.”
CNSNews.com asked: From what was said today, it seems in fact that gun control hurts the African American community.
“It absolutely does, there’s no doubt about it,” Hutcherson said. “It began that way with history. You see why there was so much gun control earlier in life--in American life--because it controlled African Americans.
“Gun control is about controlling people,” he said. “We need to understand that those who need to be trained, who need to be armed is the African American community, and I don’t understand why any African American that is there in Congress right now would have the slightest thought about taking guns away from African Americans. We need them.”
Speakers at the event spoke out in defense of the Second Amendment and its guarantee that American citizens have the right to own and bear arms and that the government should not infringe on that right, including Ken Blackwell, chairman of the board for the Center of for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) and board member of the National Rifle Association.
“That right to protect one’s life and liberty is a God-given right,” Blackwell said in a statement. “It is a gift from God, not a grant from government.”
Star Parker, founder and president of CURE, said her organization held the event to allow black leaders “to express our deep concern of efforts currently under way to limit our God-given and constitutional right of self-defense.”