To Fight Crime, Some Blacks Attack Gun Control : Society: Revisionists see restrictive laws as a historically racist effort to control their community. Violence proves the laws aren’t working.

In politics, the dramatic failure of old ideas can make radical new ideas appear more reasonable. Within the black community, this helps explain the recent spread of libertarian arguments about drugs and gun control, ideas completely at odds with the black political Establishment.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke set the pattern by suggesting America should consider legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, and treating addiction as a health problem rather than a criminal one. Schmoke’s radical suggestion was severely criticized by many black politicians and drug experts. Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics and Addiction, equated Schmoke’s idea with advocating “child pornography.” But after Schmoke broke the ice, black intellectuals joined whites in arguing that making drugs illegal caused more problems than it solved.

The black argument against gun control is following the pattern set by the drug debates. Though he did not get as much media attention as Schmoke, Rep. Mike Espy, a Democrat from rural Mississippi, also broke with the black mainstream. He appeared in an advertisement for the National Rifle Assn., and so energized black voices against gun control.

The black pro-gun and drug-legalization groups are made up of very different types of people. What they have in common is Washington’s rising violence as proof that current regulations are not working because of the libertarian postulate that you can’t repeal the laws of supply and demand. Both are also using historical and legal research to prove that the traditional basis of these regulations is racist, and their current implementation causes suffering in black communities.

The book “Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs,” by Clarance Lusane (a member of Washington Mayor Sharon Kelly’s transition team) and Dennis Desmond, documents why many activists consider the war on drugs an assault on black people and why legalization would reduce violence. Yet to a community confronting ever more shootings, the black arguments against gun control seem even more controversial. Now, the black gun lobby is trying to change that.

Since 1978, Washington has had the nation’s most restrictive gun laws. For example, in New York City, considered to have strict gun laws, people with a high risk of being robbed, such as store owners, can apply for permits to carry concealed weapons. In Washington, only law-enforcement officers can legally carry handguns, and the telephone directory lists no gun stores within city limits. But one of Washington’s greatest problems is that handguns are cheap and plentiful on the black market. “Washington has the tightest gun laws in the nation,” fumes Richard Atkinson, president of the District of Columbia Firearms Assn. and the only African-American on the NRA’s board of directors, “so, according to the people pushing gun control, this should be the safest city in the country. Guess what--they’re wrong. All the laws do is disarm law-abiding people and leave them at the mercy of criminals who can get all the guns they want.”

But the black gun lobby’s strength in Washington isn’t only due to ineffective laws. It’s also because of the nature of politics. Conservatives, Republicans and others have now learned that they need at least a few black allies. Washington is home to the NRA, and Handgun Control, pro- and anti-drug organizations and lobbyists on both sides of almost every other major controversy, and all these groups realize they need a minimum of black support to avoid charges of racism. Therefore, a black person willing to endorse a position at odds with mainstream black leaders is able to find organizational allies easily.

For example, the Georgetown University Law Journal published “The Second Amendment: Towards an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration,” by two black legal scholars, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond. Though the piece was aimed at the legal community, the NRA has promoted it widely. The article investigates the legislative history of gun laws and concludes their origins were profoundly racist. Cottrol and Diamond cite, as one example, the 1680 Virginia statute “prohibiting Negroes, slave and free, from carrying weapons including clubs.” Later they conclude, “Overall, these (gun) laws reflect the desire to maintain white supremacy and control.”

Critics also maintain these laws are immoral because of their current impact on the black community. Jim Speights, a black pro-gun lobbyist, argues, “Gun laws are particularly unfair to poor black people in the inner cities, because they are the most likely to be the victims of crime, and the least likely to get any help from these racist, brutal police departments.”

This argument was given a boost by two recent events. One was the infamous videotaped beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police. “Without guns, how can black communities defend themselves from the kind of white police who think of us as ‘gorillas in the mist?’ ” asks Cottrol, referring to computer conversations between Los Angeles police officers. The other was David Duke’s candidacy for governor of Louisiana. Ray Diamond, who teaches at Tulane University, said, “Attacks against black folks skyrocketed right before the election. If Duke had won, the question of whether black people need guns for self-defense wouldn’t have been just be an academic issue very long.”

But the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and other national black organizations are still pressing for a seven-day waiting period and other gun-control measures. That others are supporting the NRA indicates the growing independence of younger black activists and politicians. When other members of the Congressional Black Caucus criticized Espy for supporting the NRA, the congressman responded, “First, I don’t have to agree with everything the NRA supports. You don’t need Teflon bullets, and no one goes hunting with an AK-47. On the other hand, I don’t come from an urban area with a bad crime problem. Many people in my district go hunting, and it wasn’t that long ago that many felt they needed guns to protect themselves from the klan.”

This attitude is also the sign of a more pragmatic political era. Black Democrats have long enjoyed support from liberal organizations, such as labor unions. After the Republicans promoted black conservatives such as Clarance Thomas, both black conservatives and liberals realized the usefulness of forming alliances that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. In Virginia, the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NRA joined forces to modify a law that would have prevented people living in public housing, primarily black and poor, from owning guns. “In general, I’m for restricting guns,” said Wade Henderson, the NAACP’s chief Washington lobbyist, “but this was also a matter of equal protection under the law. If we’re going to ban guns, treat everyone equally.”

Like the black pro-drug-legalization forces, the black gun lobby is still small. And it recently suffered a major defeat, when Washington voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative letting crime victims sue manufacturers of certain assault weapons for injuries caused by those weapons. But its importance shouldn’t be measured by its size, or even its immediate success, but by its influence on the debate and its usefulness to its friends.

The NRA believes it’s been strengthened by gaining black allies. “There’s this unfair stereotype out there that the typical NRA member is a redneck white guy named Bubba, who drives a pickup and probably belongs to the klan,” says NRA public-relations director Tom Wyld. “That we have vocal black members and supporters breaks down that image. We’re a group of both black and white people who feel their rights are under attack.”