Were it not for the fact that the Parkland killer murdered so many innocent people, I’d almost applaud him for giving us David Hogg.

The activist is usually a source for humor, though never intentionally, via his Twitter feed where he routine spouts all different kinds of stupid. His tweets are usually good to kick around for a bit over there, but nothing overly worth delving into.

Until he tweeted this bit of stupidity.

This is a tweet for for the founders of the gun violence prevention movement started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown and indigenous lgbtq women and non binary people that never got on the news or in most history books.

We may not know all your names but thank you.

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) January 27, 2020

And they admitted him into Harvard?

I’m now really glad my son had no interest in attending there.

Now, to be clear, the gun control movement did start over a century ago and arguably from the dawn of this nation. A case could be made that yes, he got that part right.

That’s where it ends, though.

Those champions of gun control who were “almost entirely black, brown and indigenous” people, much less LGBT and non-binary people, though? Oh, they didn’t exist.

You see, gun control in that long-ago era wasn’t the thing we think of today. There were no college students demanding assault musket bans or background checks. No, gun control had a much different face back then.

When you find photography popping up prior to the Civil War, you don’t see pictures of minorities at the photos of meetings where gun control was likely discussed. Then again, maybe all of those folks were hiding under the pointy white hoods.

That’s right, the Klan was a big supporter of gun control back in the day.

What has to be remembered is that up until the latter part of the 20th century, gun control had nothing to do with disarming white people. Prior to that, it was exclusively about disarming black and brown people, including Native Americans. The white folks in power didn’t want slaves or freed slaves having guns. The intense racists that crafted laws didn’t want black folks to have the means to fight back against the white people who might try to lynch them for looking at someone wrong.

In the Reconstruction South, more gun control sprung up but was worded in such a way that the federal oversight would let it pass. They banned guns as certain types of events, knowing full well that white sheriffs would never enforce those laws on white men.

Not too far from where I sit, a group of black men and women during Reconstruction planned a march. They were protesting the removal of some black lawmakers from the Georgia General Assembly. As the group marched down the road, they started being shot at. Several were killed in what was dubbed the Camilla Massacre.

The black marchers didn’t demand gun control, though. No, they went home and got their own guns, then continued the march.

As a result, the General Assembly banned guns at “public gatherings.” That law was on the books in Georgia until 2010.

The unfortunate truth that Hogg seems blissfully unaware of is that his beloved cause of gun control wasn’t championed by some unknown group of minorities–much less LGBT and non-binary minorities who, if they were any of those things, likely kept it quiet anyway–but were instead the tools of the vehement racists Hogg claims to decry.

Gun control’s history is a racist history of people with power trying to disarm those who didn’t have power.

Instead of saluting the mythical heroes of his movement’s past–heroes with absolutely no evidential basis to believe even existed–maybe he should take a step back and recognize his own movements racist roots. Especially when he’s been spending so much time trying to make the opposition look racist.