For all of the antipathy gun owners may feel toward those who would like to take away our guns, we have no cause to question their motives. After all, we have a common fundamental objective: a country in which all citizens are safe, wherever they live, work or play. But while it may not be legitimate to question motives, it is entirely appropriate to question judgment. In that context, the gun-control movement has some explaining to do.

We all know the origin of the right to keep and bear arms. It is found in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. So where did today's gun-control laws originate? Not in such a noble document as the Constitution. The first gun-control laws were enacted during the shameful years of slavery. Their clearly stated purpose was to keep guns out of the hands of blacks (both slaves and freed men). Even after slavery was abolished, laws were enacted to prevent law-abiding black Americans from obtaining firearms. It's a sordid history that gun-banners desperately want to forget.

The first gun-control laws were based on a perverse but unassailable logic: People kept in bondage must not have access to arms, lest they turn the arms on their masters. A number of laws were enacted during the early 1800s to prohibit slaves from owning firearms.

In 1865, shortly after the Civil War ended, slavery was outlawed. But in the former Confederate states, measures were enacted to ensure that former slaves were kept in virtual bondage. These so-called Black Codes required blacks (but not whites) to obtain licenses in order to purchase firearms. Because the licensing authorities were usually Confederate sympathizers, few blacks were able to obtain gun licenses. Accordingly, the black population of the South was kept almost entirely defenseless against the depredations of racist mobs.

In response to the Black Codes, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was a noble but empty gesture. Shortly after the act was passed, Alabama made it illegal for blacks to own firearms. A number of other Southern states followed suit.

The turn of the century unfortunately did not portend reform of 19th century gun-control laws. Indeed, Southern whites saw no need to change a system that had served them so well during the 1800s. The respected University of Virginia Law School Journal probably spoke for many in the Old Confederacy when it predicted in 1909: "Let a negro board a railway train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip, and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights."

In 1925 there appeared a glimmer of hope for black Americans who desperately wanted to be able to defend themselves against armed racists. Ossian Sweet, a prominent black doctor, moved into a working-class white neighborhood in Detroit. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that blacks were not welcome to live in that part of the city.