The NRA Helped Ban Guns to Stop the Black Panthers — The Mulford Act, Declassified

On May 2, 1967, thirty members of the Black Panther Party walked into the California State Capitol in Sacramento, legally armed with loaded rifles and shotguns. They were there to protest a bill moving through the California legislature — a bill written, in part, with assistance from the National Rifle Association. The bill passed. Reagan signed it. And the NRA helped write it.

This is the story of the Mulford Act — and the buried chapter of American gun history most people have never been told.

California Assembly Bill 1591 — the Mulford Act — was introduced in 1967 by Republican assemblyman Don Mulford to prohibit the carrying of loaded firearms in public spaces in California. Its target: the Black Panther Party’s armed police patrols in Oakland.

The Panthers had studied California law carefully. At the time, open carry of loaded firearms in public was legal, and the Panthers organized armed citizen patrols to monitor police activity in Black neighborhoods. The patrols were legal — and deeply threatening to California’s political establishment. The Mulford Act made that practice a crime.

The NRA’s Role — What the Record Shows

According to contemporaneous reporting and congressional testimony, NRA representatives participated in drafting sessions for the Mulford Act in 1967 and 1968. The organization issued a statement supporting the bill’s passage — documented in congressional records and contemporary news accounts.

The organization that would later become famous for treating the Second Amendment as absolute helped craft one of the most significant restrictions on public gun carrying in California history — because the people carrying guns were Black.

The Racial Architecture of American Gun Law

The Black Codes enacted across the South after the Civil War explicitly barred freedmen from owning firearms. The Supreme Court’s 1876 decision in United States v. Cruikshank stripped federal protection for Black gun ownership. The Second Amendment, in practice, has never been applied uniformly across racial lines.

The 1977 Turning Point

The NRA of 1967 was fundamentally different from today. Founded in 1871, it had for nearly a century focused on marksmanship, hunting, and firearms safety — supporting the National Firearms Act of 1934 and Federal Firearms Act of 1938.

The transformation happened at the NRA’s 1977 annual meeting in Cincinnati — the “Revolt at Cincinnati” — when Harlon Carter staged a coup, replacing moderate leadership with hardline Second Amendment absolutists. The modern NRA was born at that meeting. The organization that supported the Mulford Act was not the one that exists today.

What Happened After

The Mulford Act was signed by Reagan on July 28, 1967 — permanently ending open carry in California. Within months, the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 extended similar restrictions nationally. The NRA supported that legislation as well. The Black Panther Party never again conducted armed police patrols.

The Declassified Record

The FBI’s COINTELPRO files on the Black Panther Party are public under FOIA — documenting surveillance, infiltration, and coordination with local law enforcement. The Mulford Act’s drafting history is in the California legislative record. The NRA’s congressional testimony from 1967–68 is in the public record.

The history has not been hidden — it has simply not been told in a way that connects the pieces. This documentary traces the full record: the 1967 Sacramento demonstration, the Mulford Act’s drafting, the NRA’s documented involvement, and the 1977 transformation that created the modern NRA.

Watch the full investigation: https://youtu.be/2g-NrKQTvgg

Black History Declassified publishes documentary investigations grounded in primary sources — FBI files, court records, congressional testimony, and declassified government documents. Subscribe: @BlackHistoryDeclassified on YouTube.