Here's a statement made in 1941 by Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford in the case of Warren vs. Stone, involving a Caucasian Florida resident caught packing a gun without a permit and referring to Florida's old Discretionary system thrown out in 1986:
"I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was
passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for
the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed
when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming
the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent
in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled
areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to
the white population and in practice has never been so applied." - Watson v. Stone,
4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941) (Note: Per scholarly work by Clayton Cramer, "The Racist Roots of Gun Control")
Next, check out an article about the founding of the Michigan CCW system:
http://www.detroitnews.com/EDITPAGE/9903/04/sweet/sweet.htm
So there's no question about the origins of discretionary CCW. They were crafted to allow bigoted cops to control minority access to shootin' irons.
And guess what? These ideas predate NFA1934, which contains the "local Sheriff sign-off" on ownership of full-auto. That said, many Fed agents were less biased than most local cops, so the NFA rules were enforced "mostly against everybody", in terms of busting people for guns not legally registered under the NFA rules. The hard part (for minorities in particular) was getting the Sheriff's signoff for legal ownership, and that's true to this day.
Don't believe me?
Lemme 'splain something. In my mostly-white county, there's two mainly-black towns. Contra Costa County, California, the towns are Richmond and Pittsburg.
Care to guess which two towns were set up as total-zero-CCW zones by the two white PD Chiefs and the white Sheriff?
Now, the good news is, the Richmond portion of the three-way conspiracy was set up by the FORMER Chief and was being maintained out of intertia by the staff. When my lawsuit hit combined with the info I've quoted in this post above, a minority staffer in the city Attorney's office just about died. He talked to the Chief, who's white...and they agreed to "clean up", allowing people to apply and judging their needs and merits individually and without racial or economic-class bias. And the Chief chose a black Captain (Ray Howard) to do the initial screening.
(Note to all: I'm white, but as a Richmond resident the policies screwed me equally. They had to use "geographic redlining" to carry out a racist policy - HOWEVER, we're delving into the Sheriff's issuance/denial records and we expect to find several metric tons of topsoil.)
I've dropped my suit against the city and RPD, but it continues against the Sheriff. I'm asking the court to strip the Sheriff of all discretionary power after finding him totally incapable of administering the CCW system in an unbiased, legal and honest fashion.
There's a WHOLE lot more at my website, at:
http://www.ninehundred.net/~equalccw
Jim March