“As far back as the 1860s, gun control has been used to keep arms out of the hands of black people. After the Civil War, a group of discriminatory laws known as the Black Codes limited the civil liberties—like the right to bear arms—of newly freed slaves. Rules in nine states that give local law-enforcement officials discretionary authority to deny people gun permits even if they meet all criteria for ownership – the same power Alabama’s police department exercised when Martin Luther King Jr. applied to carry a concealed weapon. Despite threats to his life from the Ku Klux Klan, the police denied the civil rights leader permission to own a gun.”
