Philando Castile was shot in July of 2016 during a traffic stop by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez. This routine stop lasted no more than a minute before Yanez drew his service weapon and shot Castile, whose girlfriend and four-year-old daughter were also in the vehicle. After Yanez was found innocent in trial this past summer, Philando Castile’s case has become a rallying cry for activists against police brutality and racially biased policing. A key aspect of the Castile slaying was officer Yanez’s claim that he “feared for his life” after Castile disclosed his possession of a legally licensed firearm in his vehicle. Before Castile produced the gun or its license for inspection, he was shot by officer Yanez. Castile’s death revitalized the Black Panthers-era conversation of Black gun ownership rights in the United States; it also raises further questions about racially biased police brutality.
Frederick Douglass famously stated: “The Black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms; and the legislatures of the states will still have the power to forbid it.” The symbolic disarming of Black Americans did not begin with Philando Castile. After the abolition of slavery and the end of the Civil War, Black Codes in the South largely prevented freemen from owning firearms. This “disarmament period” was characterized by terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan collecting guns from freed slaves through means of violence and coercion. These extra-legal practices were largely ignored or blatantly promoted by local government officials: the Black Codes of slave states like Louisiana encouraged white citizens to “shoot to kill” any Blacks they saw with weapons. The fear of uprisings like those of Nat Turner and John Brown transitioned the image of the Black man from “docile slave” to that of a possible threat to white peace in the South.
Evidence of courts selectively curtailing Second Amendment rights is most evident in state courts in the South. The outcomes of State v. Hutly in North Carolina or Nunn v. State in Georgia illustrate that Blacks were not receiving the same legal protections as whites. In Hutly the majority opinion stated that: “[Black codes’] only object is to preserve the peace and safety of the community from being disturbed by an indiscriminate use, on ordinary occasions, by free men of color, of firearms or other arms of an offensive character. Self preservation is the first law of nations, as it is of individuals.” This was echoed by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Cuikshank, which addressed the Colfax Massacre that killed 105 Blacks in Louisiana. Charges were brought based on the Enforcement Act of 1870, which prevented groups from violating the constitutional rights of an individual. The men who led this massacre were charged with violating the First and Second Amendment right of freemen. The Court’s decision stated that the protections of the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government and that only Due Process applied to the states: this clarification of federal law enabled many Southern states to enact codes that violated the rights of free Blacks. Famously in Watson v. Stone (1941) of the Florida Supreme Court, a white man’s gun conviction was overturned due to technical adherence to a firearms control act put in place during the post-Civil War period. The Court stated: “The Act was passed for the purpose of disarming negro laborers. … [It] was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied.” This sort of discriminatory legislation remained in force for years, not truly overturned until the early 2000’s in some Southern states.
In May 1967, the Black Panthers reopened the gun control debate with their presence at the California State House, where Panther leader Bobby Seale said: “The American people in general and the Black people in particular take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the Black people disarmed and powerless” The Black Panther Movement was originally created to voice Black frustration with the slowness of the civil rights movement and the peaceful concepts of Martin Luther King Jr. While the Black Panthers could be considered violent extremists, their fight for their right to bear arms is thematically comparable to that of the NRA and other gun rights organizations today. After the Panthers’ demonstration in 1967, the California Mulford Act was passed, which did not allow anyone who wasn’t a police officer to openly carry a firearm.
D.C. v. Heller re-opened the general gun control debate in 2008. The Court was considering a D.C. law that outlawed carry of an unregistered firearm, but also prohibited the registration of handguns, presenting a legal paradox for gun registration. The Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 also contained provisions that required owners of lawfully registered firearms to keep them unloaded unless they were located in a place of business, or being used for legal recreational activities. The Court deemed this law unconstitutional, noting that prevention of non-state actors from possessing functional firearms circumvented the constitutional mandate that people be able to protect themselves from the state. In a city that is 47.7 percent Black, D.C. v. Heller proved an important step in the legal journey for robust Second Amendment rights for Blacks. Further, in 2010, the Court reversed the the ruling of U.S. v. Cuikshank with McDonald v. Chicago. The Supreme Court stated that Second Amendment rights were applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, and clarified states’ responsibility to protect the constitutional right to bear arms for all citizens, regardless of race. Chicago’s law was similar to D.C.’s by banning both the registration of handguns and the possession of unregistered firearms.
Black gun ownership in America has become a question of political affiliation. The utility of the Second Amendment in the present day can be argued from many points of view, but the ability to take advantage of the right to bear arms should be unquestionable, regardless of race. A particularly telling component of the Philando Castile case is the lack of a statement from the National Rifle Association. Philando Castile, had he been white, would have been the ideal example of the disenfranchisement of firearm rights the NRA purports to represent. How can we expect Black people, particularly Black men, to be rightful, firearm-bearing patriots if the state can pick and choose who to grant Second Amendment rights to based on race? Mrs. Castille’s cry, which perfectly illustrates the paradox of Black patriotism, became a rallying call for Black men shot by police in 2016: “My son loved this city, and this city killed my son!”