The University of Georgia is really the big college football team around my neck of the woods, even though we’re hours away from Athens, GA. As such, I’ve followed Buffalo Bills rookie Jake Fromm since his first snap as a Bulldog. I always thought of him as a hell of a player and when he got drafted by the Bills, I thought they lucked out to get him.

But clearly, Jake has some problems. In particular, the text messages from him that got leaked that were guaranteed to make no one happy, messages he’s apologized for.

Buffalo Bills rookie quarterback Jake Fromm apologized Thursday after screenshots emerged of a text conversation in which he said only “elite white people” should be able to purchase guns.

The conversation, which took place in 2019 and was posted to Twitter early Thursday morning, involved Fromm and a friend discussing guns. Fromm wrote, “But no guns are good. They need to let me get suppressors,” before adding, “Just make them very expensive so only elite white people can get them haha.”

Fromm went on to say he was not an “elite white person” later in the conversation.

“I am extremely sorry that I chose to use the words ‘elite white person’ in a text message conversation,” Fromm said in a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday afternoon. “Although I never meant to imply that I am an ‘elite white person,’ as later stated in the conversation, there’s no excuse for that word choice and sentiment.

“I stand against racism 100%. I promise to commit myself to being part of the solution in this country.”

Yeah, there’s absolutely no one who isn’t going to be angered by Fromm’s comments.

However, since Jake has decided to “stand against racism 100%,” allow me to pass along just how wrong his comments were.

I don’t care that he doesn’t think any guns are “good.” He’s a free man and welcome to form his own opinions about things, but saying “just make them very expensive so only elite white people can get them,” is problematic in ways that neither he nor the mainstream media understand.

You see, gun control in this country didn’t start because of violent crime. No, it started because the South lost the Civil War and the slaves were freed. Now, you had all kinds of black folks running around and able to do all sorts of things they wouldn’t have been allowed to do before.

As a result, white officials began trying to keep blacks disarmed. They were terrified of the black man and what he might do after years of subjugation, so they restricted his right to own guns. Oh, the laws didn’t explicitly say “black folks can’t own guns” or anything, but there was an understanding that white sheriffs wouldn’t apply these laws to white gun owners.

Newly freed slaves, however? Oh, that was a different matter entirely.

Somewhere along the way, though, things changed and those laws were applied universally–which, admittedly, laws should be–and gun control was held up as a solution to violent crime. Yet its origins were in keeping a previously downtrodden population downtrodden. Those early adopters of gun control knew that armed citizens had no need to fear, and that was a problem. Fear is a more effective chain than steal, after all.

Today, those laws have expanded so that in many places, only the connected can really keep and bear arms. Celebrities and wealthy individuals tend to have little problem getting carry permits. And, well, many of those “elites” happen to be white.

Gun control really does benefit elite whites.

Meanwhile, poor African Americans are often rolled up on “weapons charges” that aren’t always about criminal history but about going around nebulous and draconian restrictions to get a gun in the first place.

So yeah, Fromm’s comments were wrong, but for more reasons than preferring a different set of rules for the elites. It’s also wrong because in making that comment, he betrayed a profound lack of knowledge about the racist history of gun control in this country.