A cartoon history of the United States comes next, on the theme that American gun owners are racist. The Second Amendment is said to have been written "so every white man could keep his gun." Actually, at the time of the Second Amendment, every state allowed free people of color to own guns. Moreover, anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner would later use the Second Amendment as part of his argument to show that slavery was unconstitutional. Gun prohibition, he argued, is a condition of slavery; the Second Amendment guarantees the right of all people to own guns; hence slavery, and its attendant gun prohibition, are unconstitutional.source
The audience is now informed that the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871, "the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." The voice-over says that this was just a coincidence, but the cartoon shows gun owners helping Klansmen to murder blacks.
The phrasing of the Klan line leaves some viewers with the impression that the Klan was created in 1871, even though the group was founded in 1866 in Tennessee. What happened in 1871 was congressional passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allowed the president to suppress the Klan by denying Klansmen the writ of habeas corpus. (The Klan was, of course, composed of men who fought on the losing, pro-slavery side of the Civil War.)
President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 into law, and worked for the rapid extermination of that terrorist organization. Grant dispatched federal troops into South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida to destroy the Klan and to protect black voting rights. In an April 1872 report to Congress, Grant pointed out the continuing problem in some southern counties of the Ku Klux Klan attempting "to deprive colored citizens of their right to bear arms and the right of a free ballot."
President Grant also signed the Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a federal crime for the Ku Klux Klan or similar conspiracies to interfere with the civil rights of freedmen — including their Second Amendment right to arms.
Frederick Douglass justly called Grant "the benefactor of an enslaved and despised race, a race who will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."
The 1871 founders of the National Rifle Association were thus diametrically opposed to the Confederates who founded the KKK. The NRA founders were Union officers who had fought on the winning, anti-slavery side of the Civil War. Dismayed by the poor quality of Union marksmanship during the war, the NRA's founders aimed to improve the shooting skills of the American public at large. The first NRA president was Ambrose E. Burnside, who had served as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
Ulysses Grant left the presidency in 1877, but continued his long career of public service in retirement. In 1883, he was elected president of the National Rifle Association. From 1871 until the end of the century, nine of the NRA's ten presidents had fought against slavery during the Civil War. These included Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a hero of Gettysburg, and Gen. Phillip Sheridan, the famous Union cavalry commander. During Reconstruction, Gen. Sheridan served as military governor of Louisiana and Texas, and removed hundreds of local officials (including the governors of both states, and the chief justice of the Texas supreme court) from office for failing to respect the rights of freedmen and for failing to enforce laws for their protection.
In Bowling, Michael Moore brags that he is an NRA "Lifetime member." So it might be expected that Moore would inform viewers about the NRA's noble anti-slavery history. But Moore's connection to the NRA is bizarre; he told Tim Russert that he joined the group so that he could be elected its president and make it support gun control. This is aggrandized self-delusion, rather like Barbra Streisand announcing that she was becoming Catholic so that she could be elected Pope and make the Church support polygamy.
The supposedly racist nature of white gun owners is reinforced by Bowling's statement that an 1871 law made it illegal for blacks to own guns. No such law existed, although it is true that many gun laws from the late 19th century — such as licensing and registration laws, or bans on inexpensive guns — were selectively enforced in the South so as to deprive blacks of firearms. These are the same kinds of laws that Moore promotes today. Indeed, he turned the Bowling for Columbine premier into a fundraiser for the Brady Campaign, which works hard to outlaw inexpensive guns used by poor people for protection."
Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history send-up, with the narrator talking rapidly, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict Klansmen becoming the NRA and an NRA character helping to light a burning cross.source
This sequence is intended to create the impression either that NRA and the Klan were parallel groups or that when the Klan was outlawed its members formed the NRA.
Both impressions are not merely false, but directly opposed to the real facts.
Fact: The NRA was founded in 1871 -- by act of the New York Legislature, at request of former Union officers. The Klan was founded in 1866, and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that while it was an organization and a terrorist one, it technically became an "illegal" such with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in 1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered the President to use troops to suppress the Klan. (Although we'd have to acknowledge that murder, terror and arson were illegal long before that time -- the Klan hadn't been operating legally until 1871, it was operating illegally with the connivance of law enforcement.)
Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus and deploying troops; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.
Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."
Fact: After Grant left the White House, the NRA elected him as its eighth president.
Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan, who had removed the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to suppress the KKK.
Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising. The NRA was founded by former Union officers, and eight of its first ten presidents were Union veterans.
Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized as NRA chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen."
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