Gun Control Is Just as Racist as Drug Control

Sheila Jackson Lee, a black Democrat who has represented downtown Houston in Congress since 1995, thinks repealing marijuana prohibition is "an important racial justice measure." Twice in the last three years, she has sponsored or co-sponsored bills that would have removed cannabis from the list of federally proscribed substances, eliminating a ban first imposed in 1937. "Thousands of men and women have suffered needlessly from the federal criminalization of marijuana," Jackson Lee said in 2020, "particularly in communities of color."

Like the war on weed, gun control is historically rooted in racism and disproportionately harms African Americans. But on the latter issue, Jackson Lee's agenda is decidedly different.

In 2021, Jackson Lee introduced a bill that would create an elaborate nationwide system to license gun owners, register firearms, and punish violators with the sort of harsh mandatory minimum penalties that she passionately condemns when they are imposed on drug offenders. Jackson Lee frames her proposed restrictions as sensible public safety measures—just as pot prohibitionists have always done.

Jackson Lee embodies a common contradiction. Progressive politicians nowadays overwhelmingly oppose pot prohibition and criticize the war on drugs, in no small part because of its bigoted origins and racially skewed costs. Yet they overwhelmingly favor tighter restrictions on guns, even though such policies have a strikingly similar history and contemporary impact.