Our View - Friday

COURT ENDS RACIST LAW
GUN LAWS TARGET MINORITIES

    It's a banner ruling in the interest of civil rights for all. The Supreme Court's finding that gun rights belong to individuals, not just armies and police, means minorities can finally fully enjoy their 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law.

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi so loathes gun rights that hours after the Supreme Court's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, she urged the District to continue whatever gun restrictions it can eke out under a liberal interpretation of the ruling. Inadvertantly, most likekly, she's supporting continuation of regulations that are racist.

    Few things could be more racist, after all, than the gun laws and attempted gun laws throughout the United States that have been enacted or proposed in order to disarm the citizens of predominantly minority communities.

    The District of Columbia, one of 18 cities in the United States where blacks comprise more than 50 percent of the population, has enforced the toughest gun ban in the country. In D.C., nobody has been allowed to own a handgun since 1975, when the city enacted its Firearms Control Regulations Act. Shotguns and hunting rifles have had to be dismantled and packed away, rendered useless for self defense. And crime has run rampant. Violent criminals have ignored the gun law; their victims have not.

    "Racism still is a big part of gun control," said Kenn Blanchard, a former federal law enforcement officer and author of "Black Man With A Gun: A Responsible Gun Ownership Manual For African Americans," in a 2003 interview with Cybercast News Service. "Anywhere that there are no concealed-carries, there's also a predominant black population."

    Much of the mainstream press may not report it, but the Supreme Court's decision was celebrated Thursday by some groups as a victory first and foremost for minorities living in high-crime areas. It was also celebrated by thousands of Jews who believe gun rights hedge fascism.

    "This is a great day for law-abiding citizens of the nation's capital who have unjustly been denied their full right to protect themselves and families for over 30 years," said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the black activist organization Project 21, in a press release.

    The Second Amendment, combined with the 14th, is supposed to keep authorities like Pelosi from advocating laws that say "these people get guns and those people don't." The amendments are supposed to guarantee the same rights to all individuals, regardless of authorities who like choosing winners and losers.

    Smart minorities are realizing in droves that gun rights may be among their greatest assets. Take, for example, the organization Pink Pistols. Their slogan: "Armed Gays Don't Get Bashed."

    Jonathan Rauch, a Yale-educated scholar and seasoned Washington journalist, has encouraged fellow homosexuals to become proficient with guns. Where laws allow it, "homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible," Rauch wrote in a 2000 article for Salon magazine.

    In an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, urging the court to strike down D.C.'s gun ban, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership stated: "Throughout history, the disarmament of populations has all too frequently resulted in genocide and mass oppression. History is replete with this familiar pattern."

    The brief explained how a handful of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, which the German government failed to disarm, held off Nazis for nearly a month.

    "The Framers understood that a broad right of a population to keep and bear arms is critical to prevent the rise of tyranny," the brief stated.

    And it explained to the court how gun control was essential to maintaining black slavery in the United States, offiering multiple citations.

    "When slavery was legal, the slave states had comprehensive legal and customary prohibitions on black ownership of firearms. ... In the North, however, blacks successfully defended themselves against mob violence by bearing arms in their own defense."

    For the past 33 years, residents of the nation's capital - most of them black - have been forbidden by law to defend themselves and their properties with guns. They have lived as second-class citizens, denied equal protection. Pelosi - our country's third highest-ranking elected official - would like this outrage to continue and she's not alone. But the Supreme Court has spoken. Lo, the Constitution applies to us all - including inner city blacks.

MUGABE'S REIGN OF TERROR

    In announcing that he has decided not to participate in the presidential runoff election scheduled for today, Zimbabwean opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai lamented that President Robert Mugabe's supporters had replaced the ballot with the bullet. He was right.

    Since Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in the first round March 29, Mugabe's supporters and the government have conducted something of a reign of terror against supporters of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. Hundreds of people have been beaten up and at least 80 killed.

    Tsvangirai's lament is about what happens when the public face of many modern governments slips and their true natures are revealed. The late Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong famously remarked that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and governments everywhere stay in power through force and coercion. Most governments these days seek to camouflage this essential nature with the language of consent and the trappings of democracy.

    Mugabe, however, is and has for a long time been one of the more ruthless dictators in the world. A regime based almost solely on the desire of a leader to maintain himself in power leads to policies that harm the society the leader claims to represent. Mugabe's policies have resulted in Zimbabwe being one of the poorest and least-hopeful societies in the world.

    Having discovered that it was no longer possible to rig elections as successfully as in the past, however, Mugabe and his supporters have all but abandoned the façade of a legitimate government underpinned by fair and orderly process and reverted to the bottom line of those who cherish power for its own sake - the use of force and intimidation.

    Thus the regime's response to a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on it to allow opposition rallies and free political prisoners was simply to blow it off, with "[t]he Security Council cannot micromanage elections in any particular country" and dark hints that Tsvangirai was nothing but a British stooge.

    One can understand Tsvangirai's decision. After a few weeks of hope following the March 29 election it has become increasingly apparent that Mugabe plans to stay in power by any means necessary, and that today's election will be anything but free and fair. But it's beyond tragic that Zimbabwe, once an oasis of prosperity in Africa, will languish under Mugabe's boot for even one day longer.