NAACP targets gun industry

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is filing
a lawsuit today against the nation’s gun industry in an effort to seek
significant changes in the gun industry’s business practices and force
gun manufacturers to distribute their product responsibly, but gun
industry advocates are up in arms over the civil rights group’s latest
action.

Steve Dasbach, the national director of the Libertarian Party, expressed
concerns about the new lawsuit which was filed in the U.S. District
Court for the Eastern District of New York. Referring to the lawsuit as
a “racist mistake,” Dasbach said, “With this lawsuit, the NAACP is not
only attacking the civil rights of African-Americans, but is also
continuing the legacy of the KKK and other racist organizations that
have historically tried to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.”

In defense of the lawsuit, Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the NAACP,
said, “Easily available handguns are being used to turn many of our
communities into war zones. The fact that the illegal trafficking of
firearms disproportionately affects minority communities in this country
is indisputable. Urban communities have sadly become so accustomed to
the prevalence of firearms in their neighborhoods that they are no
longer shocked at the sound of gunfire.”

Although appearing to help the urban African-American communities,
Dasbach said this lawsuit, like all the other gun control measures
endorsed by the NAACP, would disproportionately affect minority
communities where people are exposed to higher crime rates and slower
police response time.

“The NAACP apparently wants to limit the ability of its members to
defend themselves and their families against violent crime,” Dasbach
said. “That’s shameful enough, but what’s even worse is that this
lawsuit continues the disgraceful legacy of white racists who don’t
think blacks can be trusted with guns.”

Aaron Zelman, president of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership, is an authority on what he refers to as “200
years of racist ‘gun control’ laws in America.” In his brief historical outline, Zelman shows
how gun control laws frequently targeted African-Americans.

An example of one of these laws was a Mississippi law in 1906 which
required sellers of firearms to keep records of buyers. The records
included indications of race. Another example was the national Gun
Control Act, passed in 1968. According to the JPFO, the act was passed
not to control guns but to control blacks after race riots occurred in
California, New Jersey, and Mississippi.

Speaking of the lawsuit, Zelman said, “We cannot allow black ignorance
to destroy the Second Amendment. That’s exactly where this is headed.”

“This kind of dangerous nonsense — this ignorance on behalf of the
leadership of the black community — has to be addressed by everyone,”
Zelman added. “It’s time for people to tell the leadership of the black
community that they’ve been suckered, conned, and scammed by the
‘limousine liberals’ of Washington, DC.”

Commenting again on the gun industry, Mfume said it has refused to take
even basic measures to keep criminals and prohibited persons from
obtaining firearms. To make his point, he brought up last week’s
shootings in Indiana and Illinois where an African-American man, a
Korean student, and nine other ethnic and religious minorities were
killed by a gunman thought to be part of a white supremacist group.

Although Mfume attacked the gun industry, Elizabeth Saunders, owner of the
American Derringer Corporation, a gun manufacturing company in Texas,
defended the safety precautions taken by her company as well as other
gun manufacturing companies.

“We always sell our guns in the appropriate manner according to ATF
(Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) rules and regulations. If we
didn’t, we wouldn’t be here,” said Saunders.

Saunders’ company is one of the many defendants in the NAACP lawsuit.
Heritage Manufacturing Inc., a small gun manufacturing company in
Florida owned by Jay Bernkrant, is another defendant in the suit.

“We, as an industry, are very responsible people,” said Bernkrant.
“We’re probably one of the most highly governed industries in the
nation. You can ask me about any product that we produced and sold seven
years ago, and instantly, we can tell you who we sold it to.”

The NAACP, in defending its lawsuit, pointed out that, according to a
1998 National Vital Statistics Report, African-American males between
the ages of 15-24 were almost five times as likely to be injured by
firearms as white males in the same age group. Black females in the same
age group were about four times as likely to be injured by firearms than
their white counterparts.

Commenting on the study, Zelman pointed out that criminal activity
starts with criminal intent. Firearms, he said, don’t have criminal
intent.

“Either they (the NAACP) are very ignorant about the reality of life or
they’re being set up as stooges to promote more gun control schemes,”
said Zelman.

Saunders, upset about the lawsuit, thinks the money that will be needed
to fight the lawsuit would have been put to better use if it were used
for gun education.

“Instead of fighting (this lawsuit), we could take the money and have
more education out there and more shooting ranges and things like that
for teenagers to actually go out and get experience shooting a gun in a
safe manner,” Saunders suggested.

“I think it’s so crazy, and it’s such a frivolous type of situation,”
said Bernkrant of the lawsuit. “To try to take the responsibility away
from the person who pulled the trigger and try to find some other source
— it’s an old story and certainly one that has no credibility in my
mind.”

“They’re making a mistake in that they’re not only going to take a
responsibility away, they’re going to take a freedom away,” continued
Bernkrant. “If this is what they intend to do, then God bless America.”