Is "Saturday Night Special" a racist term?

H

Hedley

New member
I've heard it mentioned before, and really never gave it much thought. I just thought they were cheap pistols, like my Rossi .38sp. Then, last night I was browsing through the Brady website(I wanted to see how they were going to spin the VA tragedy), where I saw the term "Saturday Night Special," and how they should be outlawed.

From Brady site:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/faqs/?page=sns

Q:What are Saturday Night Specials and Junk Guns?

A: Traditionally, Saturday Night Specials have been defined as non-sporting, low-quality handguns with a barrel length of under three inches (for pistols, overall length of under six inches). "Junk gun" is a more recent term used to describe handguns which lack essential safety features. Both terms refer to a class of inferior handguns produced in quantity by a group of manufacturers located in Southern California and known as the "Ring of Fire" producers. Whatever name attached to them, these handguns are not useful for sport or self-defense because their short barrels make them inaccurate and their low quality of construction make them dangerous and unreliable. They are, however, favored by criminals because of their low cost and easy concealability.

Q:Are they legal?

A: They cannot legally be imported into this country, nor can the parts to assemble them. However, they can be legally manufactured and sold in most, but not all, states. Currently, a number of states have laws regulating Saturday Night Specials. Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota and South Carolina outlaw some Saturday Night Specials based on the melting point of the materials used to produce them. In 1988, Maryland became the first state in the nation to ban the sale of these weapons based on their overall low quality and concealability. Massachusetts established a standard for testing handguns in 1998 and California adopted a similar law in 1999. In addition, a number of localities including Denver, CO and Kent, OH have enacted ordinances regulating Saturday Night Specials. In 2000, the City of Toledo, Ohio became the first jurisdiction to ban both the possession and sale of handguns which do not meet a set of standards based on the ATF's criteria applied to foreign made firearms.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts enacted regulations that would effectively ban Saturday Night Specials and mandate that all pistols and revolvers sold in Massachusetts meet minimum quality standards designed to protect children from unintentional injury. Massachusetts is the first state in the country to use its consumer protection powers to regulate the sale of firearms. These regulations will have the full force of law. The Legislature also added the language of the Saturday Night Special ban to a comprehensive gun control package which became law in October of 1998.
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The I came across this:
http://hematite.com/dragon/bans.html

1870 Tennessee
First "Saturday Night Special" economic handgun ban passed.
In the first legislative session in which they gained control, white supremacists passed "An Act to Preserve the Peace and Prevent Homicide," which banned the sale of all handguns except the expensive "Army and Navy model handgun" which whites already owned or could afford to buy, and blacks could not.
("Gun Control: White Man's Law," William R. Tonso, Reason, December 1985) Upheld in Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. (3 Heisk.) 165, 172 (1871) (GMU CR LJ, p. 74)
"The cheap revolvers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were referred to as `Suicide Specials,' the `Saturday Night Special' label not becoming widespread until reformers and politicians took up the gun control cause during the 1960s. The source of this recent concern about cheap revolvers, as their new label suggest, has much in common with the concerns of the gun-law initiators of the post-Civil War South. As B. Bruce-Briggs has written in the Public Interest, `It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the `Saturday Night Special' is emphasized because it is cheap and being sold to a particular class of people. The name is sufficient evidence -- the reference is to `n*****town Saturday night.'"
("Gun Control: White Man's Law," William R. Tonso, Reason, December 1985)


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1879 Tennessee
Second "Saturday Night Special" economic handgun ban passed.
Tennessee revamped its economic handgun ban nine years later, passing "An Act to Prevent the Sale of Pistols," which was upheld in State v. Burgoyne, 75 Tenn. 173, 174 (1881). (GMU CR LJ, p. 74)

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1882 Arkansas
Third "Saturday Night Special" economic handgun ban passed.
Arkansas followed Tennessee's lead by enacting a virtually identical "Saturday Night Special" law banning the sale of any pistols other than expensive "army or navy" model revolvers, which most whites had or could afford, thereby disarming blacks. Statutewas upheld in Dabbs v. State, 39 Ark. 353 (1882) (GMU CR LJ, p. 74)

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1893 Alabama
First all-gun economic ban passed.
Alabama placed "`extremely heavy business and/or transactional taxes'" on the sale of handguns in an attempt "to put handguns out of the reach of blacks and poor whites."
("Gun Control: White Man's Law," William R. Tonso, Reason,December 1985)

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1907 Texas
Fourth "Saturday Night Special" economic handgun ban.
Placed "`extremely heavy business and/or transactional taxes'" on the sale of handguns in an attempt "to put handguns out of the reach of blacks and poor whites."
("Gun Control: White Man's Law," William R. Tonso, Reason, December 1985)

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1941 Florida
Judge admits gun law passed to disarm black laborers.
In concurring opinion narrowly construing a Florida gun control law passed in 1893, Justice Buford stated the 1893 law "was passed when there was a great influx of Negro laborers in this State....The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the Negro laborers....The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied...". Watson v. Stone,148 Fla. 516, 524, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (1941) (GMU CR LJ, p. 69) [emphasis added].

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1988 Maryland
Fifth "Saturday Night Special" economic handgun ban passes.
Ban on "Saturday Night Specials," i.e. inexpensive handguns, passes.
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1988 Illinois
Poor citizens singled out for gun ban in Illinois.
Starting in late 1988, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Chicago Police Dept. (CPD) enacted and enforced an official policy, Operation Clean Sweep, which applied to all housing units owned and operated by the CHA. The purpose was the confiscation of firearms and illegal narcotics and consisted of warrantless searches and of a visitor exclusion policy severely limiting the right of CHA tenants to associate in their residences with family members and other guests. Tenants had to sign in and out of the building, producing to the police or CHA officials photo Id. Relatives, including children and grandchildren, were not allowed to stay over, even on holidays. CHA tenants who objected or attempted to interfere with these warrantless searches were arrested. The ACLU filed a lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of the CHA tenants against the enforcement of Operation Clean Sweep. The complaint was filed in the United Sates District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, on December 16, 1988, as Case No. 88C10566 and is styled as Rose Summeries, et al. v. Chicago Housing Authority, et al. A consent decree was entered on November 30, 1989 in which the CHA and CPD agreed to abide by certain standards and in which the scope and purposes of such "emergency housing inspections" were limited. (GMU, p. 98)

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1990 Virginia
Poor citizens singled out for gun ban in Virginia.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia upheld a ban imposed by the Richmond Housing Authority on the possession of all firearms, whether operable or not, in public housing projects. The Richmond Tenants Organization had challenged the ban, arguing that such requirement had made the city's 14,000 public housing residents second-class citizens. (Richmond Tenants Org. v. Richmond Dev. & Hous. Auth., No. C.A. 3:90CV00576 (E.D.Va. Dec. 3, 1990).) (GMU, p. 97)
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And this:
http://www.boomershoot.org/general/ScaryWords.htm#SaturdayNightSpecial

As for the history of the term, "Saturday night special", David Kopel, Research Director at the Independence Institute, explains:

[The] “Saturday night special” is in part a linguistic descendant of the racist phrase "N*****town Saturday Night." The obvious implication of the phrase "Saturday night special" is that it is a gun used by black people to shoot each other with during their wild Saturday nights. No one denies that the people disarmed by a "Saturday night special" ban would be predominantly poor and non-white.
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Surely, the all-knowing Brady campaign aren't racists. What do you think? Is the controlled sale(ie-setting a minimum price) of inexpensive, but well made pistols such as Hi-Points racist?
 
I was going to come in and say "Come ya' race-baiting Rodney King wanna-be: Give it a rest!", but you have a very valid, well informed, well researched point to make.

FWIW I would like to think we are above the kind of racist political jockeying that put those first SNSpl laws on the books, but my view may be colored by living in Montana, where most folks are colorblind, and those that are racist speak in hushed tones.
 
Banning these guns is racist, but the name itself is no longer as such. Or rather, discriminatory against poor people who wouldn't otherwise be able to defend themselves. Language evolves. We still call paddy wagons, paddy wagons.

Remember that some of the original roots of the NRA also involved black people in the south figuring out ways to defend themselves agains the Klan.

They were used to arrest drunken irish people.
 
Certainly:
-modern gun control in the USA has racist roots, and
-the term started out as a racist term

But, now, over time, the definition has evolved, and it is now NOT racist to use that phrase to refer to a cheaply made gun that melts at low heat and may fall apart or explode with each shot. It's the standard lingo. But it's still a good starting point of conversation to illustrate to the unfamiliar the racist roots of gun control, as your history lesson shows us there.
 
I don't know about the term being racist, but I do know that short-barreled hadnguns all seem to be lumped into the "Saturday night special" category by those who don't know any better. My Smith M60 runs around $500, and I'd hardly call that a SNS.
 
The term "Saturday night special" was originally applied to knives, and it was very much a racist term, relating to the violence of Saturday nights in black neighborhoods.

It was only later that it came to be used relating to cheap guns, and again, the gun reference was used in the same way.

It's interesting that the Oh-so progressive Liberals use an old racist term to describe inexpensive guns.
Most are shocked to learn of it's origins.........but they still continue to use it after learning.
 
The term "Saturday Night Special" referred to cheap (and usually poorly made) handguns, beginning in the post Civil War era. Some of these blackpowder guns were made with frames cast of dubious materials. Later, in the early 20th century, some of these guns were so poorly made that they didn't survive a complete cylinder full of ammo. Better models became available after WW-I, howver their durability was limited by softer metals (zinc alloys mostly) and fragile designs.

For a more englightening and scholarly work that exists on my webpages above, you should read The Racist Roots of Gun Control by Clayton Cramer.
 
Lynryd Skynyrd must not have gotten the memo either. As long as their song's been out I never heard anyone complain it was racial. At any rate, one of my all time favorite licks.
 
I'm not complaining about anything. I was just mearly wondering why the anti's, such as the Brady's, would continue to use such a term, when they themselves are trying to pander to the hyper-sensitive PC crowd.

I think Dfaris summed up best what I was trying to say.

It's interesting that the Oh-so progressive Liberals use an old racist term to describe inexpensive guns.
Most are shocked to learn of it's origins.........but they still continue to use it after learning.
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I have often heard the term "Saturday Night Special" but in a more specific way . It was a cheap weapon that you carried once a week . Saturday night when you went out to party . If you got into some trouble you could shoot your advisary and throw the gun away . You were safe and out only about $60 .
 
The original term was "Saturday Night N***** Town Special" and referred to knives usually used in drunken disputes over women and gambling in the black side of town.
In those days a large, cheap, easy-opening knife or straight razor was called a "Saturday Night Special".

Later, as the knife was replaced by cheap revolvers, it came to be a term for cheap guns.
The term was first used in larger Southern cities, originally by the police, and only later spread to the rest of the country, and from the police, into general usage.
 
more about socioeconomics than race

It's less, IMHO, racist than it is "poorist". . that is to say the rich want to keep the guns out of the hands of the poor. And in this country a disproportionate number of poor tend to be black.

But the elites have always wanted to maintain control over the weaponry. Nothing new there.
 
There is no need to edit a quote to make it politically correct. The term is "niggertown Saturday night" pure and simple. Read Clayton Cramer's excellent tome on the subject HERE.

The term was first hoisted by by William R. Tonso in his article "Gun Control: White Man's Law"

One should not have to clean up that which is quoted. Yes, we do clean up our own posted curse words. But there is no need to expurgate the quotations of others for nothing more than PC.
 
I edited it out in my original post, because we are not the only ones that view these boards. I understand what you are talking about, but this is the one "clean" gun board I know of.
 
There is no need to edit a quote to make it politically correct.
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One should not have to clean up that which is quoted. Yes, we do clean up our own posted curse words. But there is no need to expurgate the quotations of others for nothing more than PC.
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In this case, the term is historically correct, is obviously being quoted in a fashion that indicates disapproval and is therefore acceptable in the proper context and in a direct quote. However, that is not GENERALLY true--inappropriate language doesn't automatically become acceptable just by virtue of being in a quote.

And while in this case there's no NEED to edit the quote, there's certainly nothing WRONG with doing so. I can't imagine that the point of the post is lost to anyone because the word is not fully spelled out.
 
Sns

As Dfarriswheel and jimpeel have stated, it was the knife that was the original object referred to. In south Texas, the particular SNS knife was the long thin bladed knife sold by the millions today as a "fillet knife". The term transferred to cheaply made handguns (originally)and later to include all small handguns in the anti's eyes during the 1960s, as national gun control legislation was being pushed. The RFK assassination with a cheap .22 revolver gave them a lot of impetus to push the GCA 68.
 
Read my signature. I hate the PC tendency to rewrite history.

It is a good idea to remind the Brady group and their ilk of the origins of the concepts they so glibly parrot--minus the asterisks.
 
Language does change.

The term, "Saturday Night Special" no longer conjures up the racial history of gun control to those that use the term. Since it is most often the gun banners that invoke the term, knowing its historical roots can help you to turn any conversation/discussion against the banners who use it.

The "normal" person(s) in such a discussion will not want to be associated with people who use racial epithets willingly. They will take a step or two away from the person or group that is using the phrase, once its racial roots have been pointed out.
 
Language does change.
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That point is crucial, and I feel you abandon it in the rest of your post. There are a huge number of words and phrases that are born of less than peaceful, loving pedigree. However, it is very common for the word or phrase to outgrow its origins.

Changing the argument to be about the origin of the words when that is obviously not the INTENT (which is the hallmark of a racist comment) is simply petty.
 
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