There’s been some controversy over Beyonce’s Super Bowl halftime show in which she and her dancers wore costumes inspired by the Black Panthers.

I seriously doubt most Americans would’ve noticed if it weren’t pointed out to them as knowledge of American history is sorely lacking in 2016. In fact, the whole thing made me think about the connection between the Black Panthers and present-day California gun owners.

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland. It was a black nationalist Marxist organization that believed that the nonviolent civil rights movement had failed and a new approach was necessary to affect change.

They organized to fight police brutality by tailing police and observing them when they detained or arrested black citizens. They soon dropped the “for Self-Defense” from their name, reflecting a schism in leadership as to the best way forward.

The Panthers authored a 10-point program that called for employment, education and for blacks to be exempted from military service, among other utopian ideas. They also offered free breakfasts and education for children, provided a free ambulance service, protected senior citizens and established free medical clinics in 13 cities.

One of my cousins was the treasurer of a Black Panthers chapter.

So where do present-day California gun owners fit into this? The Black Panthers supported the Second Amendment the same way National Rifle Association members do today. At the time it was legal for a citizen in California to carry a loaded weapon in public as long as they weren’t pointing it at anyone. So Black Panthers armed themselves with shotguns and rifles and shadowed police, watching for civil rights violations, and they patrolled their streets with weapons in view.

California Republican lawmakers were so horrified by this in 1967 that they quickly moved to remove the right to carry loaded weapons from everyone. GOP Assemblyman Don Mulford authored AB 1591, which eventually bore his name. When Black Panthers leader Newton heard of the move to strip citizens of these gun rights, he dispatched more than two dozen armed Panthers to the Capitol building in Sacramento.

Lawmakers after the stunt toughened the Mulford Act. Incidentally, the NRA supported the new law.

California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who signed the bill, said he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

In addition to home defense, hunting and recreational target shooting, many gun owners see gun possession as a check on government power. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre often cites fears of government tyranny, once calling the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms “jack-booted government thugs” and has called the IRS the “thug arm” of the U.S. government.

They have that in common with Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and other militants who didn’t have to imagine government oppression because of a long history of mistreatment, brutality, murder and denial of civil rights by the state and its law enforcement arm.

Unfortunately, some Panthers chose armed struggle. Two days after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, a group of Panthers ambushed Oakland police. Shootouts between the FBI, police and Panthers erupted in many cities.

While nonviolent direct action was clearly the best way to fight back, it is curious that those 1960s radicals who chose to arm themselves against an oppressive government are looked back on with disdain while many 2016 gun rights advocates, whose oppression exists mainly in their minds, see themselves as patriots.

Gov. Jerry Brown has finished what Ronald Reagan started by prohibiting the open carry of even unloaded guns in California.

That desire for liberty and freedom from oppression ideologically connects leftist 1960s-era black militants to many conservative white gun rights advocates today whether they want to acknowledge it or not. Peace.

Kelvin Wade, a former Fairfield resident, is the author of “Morsels” Vols. I and II and lives in Sacramento. Email him at [email protected].