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Prior to 1968 there are very little, local or federal, legislative efforts to restrict gun ownership. Even after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and later his brother Robert there was a very minor effort, in fact vitally no legislative thrust, to restrict gun ownership. None of this however, precludes the Second Amendment rights of private citizens to own guns. Many politicians have been very careful to walk the thin line of "gun registration" and "gun ownership". The idea is like ownership of a car, you are not restricted from owning it but you must have "license" to drive it. Thus the registration of guns is used to control a citizen's access to and ownership of firearms.

The question of legal ownership of guns by United States citizens is answered by the Second Amendment of the Constitution which gives every citizen the "right" to own firearms. However, local and state governments have skillfully found ways to control citizens access to various types of firearms as well as managed to find ways to control which segments of the population will have access. In 1968 many local governments passed restrictive firearms ownership laws over night. Washington DC with a population of 75% African American retained one of most restrictive laws on the books until recently, the laws remained enforced from 1968 until 2008, forty years!

Washington DC restrictive law was justified by the local "crime" statistics, however much of the actual appeal to retention of the law can be found in understanding the majority Euro-American population fear's. Statistics will show that much of the interest in restricting what is called "urban" gun ownership has a historical foundation. A list of laws called the "Black Codes" were passed in the 1800's by every state that allowed slavery. These were laws designed to control the African American enslaved population.

The primary justification for these "codes" was the fear held by slave owners concerned with "slave revolts. If these revolts were successful not only would people died but more important to slave owners was the loss of "their property", the slave. The revolt of Nat Turner in Virginia increased "legal enforcement" such that slave owners clamped down severely on their "cargo" of human property. During this era it was illegal for African Americans to congregate on the streets, own fire works, walk at night without a white person, to own firearms and have three enslaved males together talking. It is noteworthy to

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