Packing heat, Peter?

New York City has one of the toughest gun control laws in this nation, the so-called "Sullivan Law." As to why the law was passed back in 1911, it was to prevent those diry, nasty immigrants from having firearms:

"According to a Chicago-Kent Law Review article by Robert J. Cottroll and Raymond T. Diamond, "In New York, these fears found expression in the passage of the Sullivan Law in 1911. Of statewide dimension, the Sullivan Law was aimed at New York City, where the large foreign-born population was deemed peculiarly susceptible and perhaps inclined to vice and crime. ... It is not without significance that the first person convicted under the statute was a member of one of the suspect classes, an Italian immigrant."

Cottroll and Diamond add that, no matter what arguments are made in favor of gun controls, '[i]f safety concerns must be conceded, it should be recognized as well that local governments have sought to ban firearms from what is frequently considered one of today's untrustworthy and suspect classes, the urban poor.'"

Cottroll, by the way, is African-American.

I also refer you to this:

"That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law."

Which I copied from a law passed in 1689 entitled "An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown."

You can read the entire "English Bill of Rights" here.

Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and others cannot have arms for their defense, only "subjects which are protestants"...interesting, and just a bit discriminatory.