How did pro-gun/2nd amendment activists view the Black Panther's party use of guns/open carrying?

The books Negroes and the gun, this nonviolent stuff’ll get you killed, and the Gun Rights War provide a rough overview into that area

The NRA and then gov-Reagan supported and passed the Mulford Act in California after the Panthers carried loaded long guns in Northern CA. Prominent Gun rights activists and senators like John Schmitz saw the NRA and Reagan’s acts as a betrayal, but the bill received bipartisan support. The Act prohibited the open Carry of firearms in CA. However, it is important to note the NRA of 1967 is not the NRA of today. The '67 NRA was very timid and flexible and it’s wasn’t until an internal coup in 1977 that they adopted the “not one more inch” style mid set. They retroactively condemned the prohibition on carrying of guns.

Essentially the gun lobby in the 60s was not as robust as it is today, and often times they supported bills their members did not like the GCA in 1968 and the FOPA in 1986. Internal strife between the civil rights groups and depiction of the Panthers as extremists motivated gun control policy in CA and DC, with little opposition. Individual proponents of gun rights spoke out but the lobby didn’t. The Panthers didn't help the case as they were implicated in murders (real or framed) and acts of terror (depends on view of panthers or FBI) They actively patrolled their streets with firearms, but often brandished them at legislators and police officers, acts used as ammunition for both regional and national gun control.

Deepdive below

These armed Panther patrols and copwatching missions fundamentally transformed the public view of the civil rights movement as a whole, and made the rift between moderates and “radicals” the forefront of the debate about gun control. The Mulford Act of 1967 was passed in California with near unanimous bipartisan support specifically in response to the Panther’s patrols in Sacramento. Then Governor Reagan championed the passage of the law against openly carrying firearms as step in combating crime. He claimed there was “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons… [guns are] ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." It was however Reagan’s claim that “no honest citizen would face hardship,” that brought the issue of race to the forefront, because while California did allow concealed carry then-as today- it was restricted primarily to politically connected white males since the legislature decided that permits should be May Issue instead of Shall Issue.

The Assassinations of Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. to a lesser extent since he was seen more derogatorily, provided the public appeals for action and seized on the fear associated with Black Nationalists openly carrying guns to pass the Gun Control Act of 1968. Americans kept buying guns, and if not for the assassinations of near-perfect Americans like RFK gun control might not have gone anywhere, but at any rate fear gave momentum to shift congress into killing two birds—black power and public fear—with one stone. “The killing of Dr. King and Kennedy…received 1300 letters favoring stronger regulations.” Despite the mobilization of gun rights advocates and the support of moderate republicans like Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania gave the bill the reluctant support of the NRA. Before his death, even RFK’s pleas for gun control slyly targeted minorities by blaming the race riots in Newark and Detroit on the availability of rifles, shotguns, and cheap revolvers to their poor populations. Kennedy’s death became the bipartisan rally cry within congress to pass laws that largely left white gun owners unharmed or marginally affected (as price controls on imported surplus and cheap revolvers were not suburban problems) while doing something to “wipe this stain of violence from our land.”

The Black Liberation Front and Black Liberation Army took up the void left by the Panthers and were open about their views that the law was racially motivated and targeting in interviews with the Washington post. Washington D.C. tightened its own laws and used the GCA as justification so the D.C. based Black Liberation Front decried gun control laws restricted to largely black and minority urban centers while white suburbs were allowed to be armed to the teeth. Representatives of growing black caucuses were realizing they were being targeted by gun control. The Front argued that any law that stripped citizens of their rights should be put to a referendum that targeted all, not just those in the inner-cities.The most elucidating views about the law come from the writings of gun control proponent, prominent journalist, and New York based activist Robert Sherrill "The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns but to control blacks, and inasmuch as a majority of Congress did not want to do the former but were ashamed to show that their goal was the latter… The original 1968 Act was passed to control handguns after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated with a rifle. Then it was repealed and repassed to include the control of rifles and shotguns after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy with a handgun.... The moralists of our federal legislature as well as sentimental editorial writers insist that the Act of 1968 was a kind of memorial to King and Robert Kennedy. If so, it was certainly a weird memorial, as can be seen not merely by the handgun/long-gun shell game, but from the inapplicability of the law to their deaths."

Any pretext of neutrality employed in the previous legislative attempts of the 20th century was stripped and in 1968, black Americans were the target and the assassination of the Robert F. Kennedy was the single that released the bureaucratic hounds.

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Black, H. (1968, Mar 17). AMA groups call marijuana 'dangerous'. Boston Globe (1960-1987)

Brief of Respondent for District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290 Congress of Racial Equality https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_07_08_07_290_RespondentAmCuCongrRacialEqualitynew.pdf

Brief of Respondent for District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290 NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_07_08_07_290_PetitionerAmCuNAACPFund.pdf

By, J.V. (1966, Sep 25). The gun and how to control it. New York Times (1923-Current File)

Catherine, Merri. "Huey P. Newton's Interview with The Movement Magazine (1968)." Medium. January 13, 2018. Accessed September 24, 2018. https://medium.com/@merricatherine/huey-p-newtons-interview-with-the-movement-magazine-1968-a328e6b78c32

Cobb, Charles E. This Nonviolent Stuffll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016

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Cramer, Clayton E “The Racist Roots of Gun Control” Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy 2 (1995)

Dash, Leon and Phil Casey Washington Post, Staff Writers. 1968. "'Front' Raps Gun Control as 'Racist'." The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973), Aug 10, 1. http://login.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/143369546?accountid=14816

Doyle, J. (1968, Jun 16). Congress flooded by mail demanding controls. Boston Globe (1960-1987) Retrieved from http://login.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/366896179?accountid=14816

Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)

Funk, T. Markus, “Gun Control and Economic Discrimination: The Melting-Point Case-in-Point,” 85 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 764(1994-1995)

Glover, W.L. (1968, May 10). Americans oppose gun-control laws. The Hartford Courant (1923-1993) Johnson's gun control plan opposed by CORE official. (1968, Jul 15). New York Times (1923-Current File)

Johnson, Nicholas. “Firearms Policy and the Black Community: An Assessment of the Modern Orthodoxy”, 45 Connecticut L. Rev. 1491-1604 (2013).

Johnson, Nicholas. Negroes and the Gun the Black Tradition of Arms. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014.

Kennett, Lee B. and James LaVerne Anderson. The Gun in America: The Origins of a National Dilemma. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975

Kleck, Gary and Don B. Kates, Armed (New York: Prometheus Books 2001)

National Firearms Act (1934) 26 U.S.C.: Internal Revenue Code

Primm, Eric , Robert M. Regoli, and John D. Hewitt. "Race, Fear, and Firearms: The Roles of Demographics and Guilt Assuagement in the Creation of a Political Partition." Journal of African American Studies 13, no. 1 (2009).

Sherrill, Robert, The Saturday Night Special (New York: Charterhouse, 1973

Simonson, Jocelyn “Copwatching” 104 Calif. L. Rev. 391 (2016).

State v. Newsom, 27 N.C. (5 Ired.) 250 (1844)

Tahmassebi, Stefan B, “Gun Control and Racism.” George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal 2 (1991)

Wells-Barnett, Ida B SOUTHERN HORRORS: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. S.l.: ALPHA EDITIONS, 2018

Winkler, Adam. Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2013.

Winkler, Adam. "The Secret History of Guns." The Atlantic. October 06, 2017. Accessed September 24, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/ 'WIPE THIS STAIN OF VIOLENCE FROM OUR LAND'. (1968, Jun 17). Boston Globe (1960-1987)