History Never Repeats

So last week, this happened:

Larry Ward, chairman of the national Gun Appreciation Day gun rights advocates have planned for the weekend of President Obama's second inauguration, told CNN Friday that there never would have been slaves in America if black people had guns.

"I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history," Ward said.

Yeah, he said that out loud on teevee.

This morning, Melissa Harris-Perry's opening segment described what really happened when African-Americans started bearing arms in public.

Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” He called guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.” In a later press conference, Reagan said he didn’t “know of any sportsman who leaves his home with a gun to go out into the field to hunt or for target shooting who carries that gun loaded.” The Mulford Act, he said, “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.” 

Yep, Saint Ronald Wilson Reagan signed off on a Republican-drafted, far-reaching gun control bill, bringing us to This Week's Discussion Question:

History's a beeyotch sometimes, ain't it?

Please keep the discussion civil. Seriously. Civil.