“Armed For Freedom” from episode #183 “Taking it to the Streets”

Aug 07, 2019, 06:00 PM

In this segment from BackStory’s 2017 show, “Taking it to the Streets,” Brian and Ed talk to Adam Winkler of UCLA about when the Black Panthers became one of the first groups to claim gun ownership as a constitutional right.

At least 31 people were killed this past weekend in mass shootings in the U.S. The violence that took place during the early morning hours of August 4 in Dayton, Ohio was the nation’s 251st mass shooting of 2019. 
 
As the U.S. and its leaders once again debate gun control, BackStory revisits a segment originally published in 2013. In it, UCLA legal scholar Adam Winkler talks to Brian about the day in 1967 that 30 Black Panthers walked into the California State House in Sacramento carrying loaded guns. They were protesting a gun control bill that they said deprived them of their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, but ended up being the target of early gun control laws.
 
Image: “The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities, cease their wanton murder and brutality ...” from a Black Panther Party poster featuring Huey P. Newton, approximately 1965. Source: Yanker Poster Collection, Library of Congress.
 
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