The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was blasted in an online backlash Sunday after claiming that racism is “foundational” to the Second Amendment and its inclusion in the Bill of Rights.
In a recent ACLU At Liberty podcast episode, Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University, explained how “anti-blackness” determined the decision to include the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights and informed its “unequal and racist enforcement over the last several hundred years.”
“Sitting in our Bill of Rights is the right to control black people, is the right to destroy the rights of black people and that is so fundamentally just inherently wrong,” Anderson ranted. “The anti-blackness that is embedded in the Second Amendment, this right to a well-regulated militia for the security of the state, is in fact part of the compromise that emboldened the white supremacists.”
Many took to Twitter to slam both the ACLU and Anderson over this wild distortion of history, pointing out that, if anything, it is gun control that is racist.
“Look at what the ACLU has become,” wrote radio host Jason Rantz.
“The ACLU has completely lost the plot,” columnist Jeff Jacoby chimed in. “Meanwhile, the National African American Gun Association, which began in 2015 with a single chapter in Atlanta, now comprises more than 75 chapters with 30,000 members.”
“This is a lie and has been long debunked,” wrote columnist Nicholas Fondacaro.
“So there’s a 58% increase in black ppl in the US buying firearms & the @ACLU wants us to believe the gun laws were spawned from racism?” asked Antonia Okafor, founder and president of EMPOWERED, a nonprofit group designed to educate, train and equip young women in the use of firearms. Classic racist, gun control tactics.”