NRA Brief in Support of Chicago Plaintiffs

The NRA has filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs in the Chicago gun ban case, and I have added the link to my sidebar on the case.

In reading both this and the petitioners briefs, I find it fascinating that so much of the arguments in favor of the 14th Amendment protecting the right to bear arms refers to events in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War during Reconstruction. It seems that southerners wanted their newly freed slaves disarmed, but that northerners saw that denial of arms left these people defenseless. From the brief:

Summarizing this history, the status of the
right to keep and bear arms during the drafting and
ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment is
unmistakable. It was viewed as a fundamental right
in the most literal sense: The foundation necessary
to secure all of the other rights of free citizens.

Gun rights were seen as the means for a minority to protect themselves from a hostile majority, and to help secure their civil rights. It seems that the origins of gun control in the United States are indeed racist.