"In 1640, the very first gun control law ever enacted on these shores was passed in Virginia. It provided that blacks, even freemen, could not own guns. Chief Justice Roger Taney's infamous opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford circularly argued that blacks could not be citizens because if they were citizens, they would have the right to own guns: "[I]t would give them the full liberty," he said, "to keep and carry arms wherever they went." With logic like that, Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery. Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated. After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted 'Black Codes', denying black Americans the rights of citizenship, such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms, while other Democrats, sometimes the same Democrats, founded the Ku Klux Klan. For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats. The original draft of the Anti-Klan Act of 1871, passed at the urging of Republican president Ulysses S. Grant, made it a federal felony to 'deprive any citizen of the United States of any arms or weapons he may have in his house or possession for the defense of his person, family, or property'. This section was deleted from the final bill only because it was deemed both beyond Congress' authority and superfluous, inasmuch as the rights of citizenship included the right to bear arms. Under authority of the Anti-Klan Act, President Grant deployed the U.S. military to destroy the Klan, and pretty nearly completed the job. But the Klan had a few resurgences in the early and mid-20th century. Curiously, wherever the Klan became a political force, gun control laws would suddenly appear on the books. This will give you an idea of how gun control laws worked."