A series of laws and actions thus established that Black people did not have the right to bear arms, the right to a well-regulated militia, or the right to self-defense. Gun control laws, to be clear, were everywhere in antebellum America. Indeed, “the South was the gun control center of the United States as local governments tried to lessen the violence among whites that seemed to dominate the region.”215 But the laws targeted at Black people that banned or severely limited access to weapons, carried racialized criteria and punishments. Even a court ruling that overturned a handgun ban in
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