I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps.... [T]he Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population.... [I]t is a safe guess to assume that more than 80% of the white men living in the rural sections of Florida have violated this statute.... [T]here has never been, within my knowledge, any effort to enforce the provisions of this statute as to white people, because it has been generally conceded to be in contravention of the Constitution and non-enforceable if contested.[1]

By the way—did anyone else notice, on the Simpsons episode that aired last night (the one where Lisa becomes student body president and gets art and music and athletics cut from the school budget, in a parody of "Evita"), how studiously the animators softened their caricature of Moore for his self-voiced cameo? They slimmed him down by a hundred pounds or more, and gave him a clean shave. Yeah, the line he got was a gentle self-effacing poke at the dubiousness of his statistics, but damn they were flattering on the visuals.