White supremacy, political violence, and firearms

Policy experts, including U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, convene to discuss armed intimidation in the political process as Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections. Members of the Proud Boys attend a rally wearing yellow bandanas and gaiters over their faces "The Second Amendment itself does not say much about race," concedes Duke University Professor of Law Darrell Miller. And yet, he says, the right to bear arms has been inextricably bound to racism and white supremacy since its inception and has been used as a tool for political violence for just as long. "There is a long tradition, going back to the slave codes, of disarming free Blacks and enslaved persons. But equally, there is a long tradition of whites using private personal arms to act as privatized police of Black persons and communities of color in the slave patrol," Miller said during a recent panel discussion hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Throughout American history, Miller said, laws governing who can possess and carry firearms have been used as cudgels of white supremacy and to limit the exercise of civil rights among Black communities.