After Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, armed militias and mobs conducted mass executions in Virginia, and the state legislature passed a series of laws that forbade free black persons “to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead.” In 1834, the Tennessee Supreme Court revised the firearms provision in its state constitution on racial grounds: “the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence” became “the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence.”10
