Rage Against the Machine - People of the Sun
The Web of History: Mulford, California, and Rage
The Mulford Act: Fear, Law, and the Stink of American Hypocrisy
The Mulford Act is not some polite debate about safety. It’s a legislative panic attack, a spasm of white California in 1967, triggered by the sight of Black people actually using the Second Amendment. The Black Panther Party, a bunch of pissed-off young Black men and women in Oakland, had the fucking nerve to arm themselves and patrol their neighborhoods. They watched the cops who treated Black lives like trash, and they did it with loaded shotguns and a look that said, “Try us.” This wasn’t an academic argument about rights. This was survival, and the Panthers refused to be easy targets for state violence.
This was a direct, physical threat to the status quo. On May 2, 1967, thirty Black Panthers, armed and stone-faced, walked into the California State Capitol. They weren’t there to shake hands. They read Executive Mandate Number One, called bullshit on the Mulford Act, and made it clear: “We’re not going to take this anymore.” The media started calling it the Panther Bill. Lawmakers called it an emergency. The NRA, those supposed Second Amendment zealots, lined up behind the bill like obedient dogs. Ronald Reagan, grinning like a game show host, signed it and made carrying a loaded gun in public a felony.
This wasn’t about safety. This was about control. This was about making damn sure Black people didn’t get the same rights as white people, especially the right to defend themselves. The Mulford Act is racism, pure and weaponized, a direct response to Black power. When white men parade with rifles, it’s patriotism. When Black men do it, it’s a crisis. That’s not a side note. That’s the fucking headline.
Southern California: Gun Control’s Carnival of Contradictions
Jump to Southern California, 2025. The Mulford Act’s ghost is still pissing on the state’s shoes. California brags about having the strictest gun laws in America. You want a gun? Get ready for background checks, waiting periods, bans on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and ghost guns. You need a permit, a background check, a safe-handling demo, and the patience of a saint to deal with the paperwork.
California crows about its low gun death rate, 8.6 per 100,000, compared to the national 14.2. But numbers don’t tell you shit about the atmosphere. Los Angeles County just declared June 2025 Gun Violence Awareness Month after a cop got murdered in Baldwin Park. The county is handing out free gun locks, running buybacks, and calling gun violence a public health crisis. Every 30 hours, a kid is shot or killed in LA County. The Department of Public Health’s Office of Violence Prevention is in full panic mode, throwing out 28,000 gun locks and begging people to store their weapons safely.
Here’s the ugly punchline. The same state that wrote the Mulford Act to disarm Black radicals is now obsessed with getting guns off the street, period. The panic has shifted from Black power to mass shootings, domestic violence, suicide. The laws are colorblind on paper, but the history is bleeding through the cracks. California’s gun laws are a patchwork quilt of fear, stitched together by decades of moral panic and political cowardice. The Mulford Act was the original template: see a threat, change the law, call it safety, and hope nobody remembers why you did it.
Rage Against the Machine: The Soundtrack for Burning It Down
Now crank up Rage Against the Machine. If you want to feel the psychic violence of American history, textbooks are useless. You need Rage. People of the Sun is a Molotov cocktail aimed at the fantasy of American innocence. Zack de la Rocha, Mexican-American and pissed off as hell, spits out a tribute to the indigenous people of Mexico, survivors of Spanish conquest, descendants of the “fifth sun” in Aztec myth. The song is a history lesson with the subtlety of a brick.
The lyrics are a catalog of violence, resistance, reclamation. De la Rocha spits references to Mayan ruins, Spanish conquistadors, and the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. The song is a rallying cry for the oppressed, the erased, the people whose history is written in blood. “This is for the people of the sun,” he screams, refusing to let the past rot in the ground.
People of the Sun isn’t just about Mexico. It’s about every group that’s been fucked over by power: Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant. It’s about the Panthers in Oakland, the kids in South Central, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the women learning to shoot in Oakland because the cops don’t give a shit about their safety.
The Web of History: Mulford, California, and Rage
How does it all connect? The Mulford Act is the state’s white-knuckled reaction to Black people refusing to be victims. California’s current gun laws are the bastard children of that same impulse: control, containment, the illusion of safety. People of the Sun is the soundtrack for everyone who knows the system was never built for them and never will be.
The Panthers marched into the Capitol with guns because they knew the cops would never protect them. The state changed the law overnight, proving the Panthers’ point. Today, California’s gun laws are supposed to protect everyone, but the violence keeps coming anyway. The state hands out gun locks and hosts buybacks, but kids still die at home, at school, in the street.
Rage Against the Machine doesn’t offer solutions. They offer fury. They offer the ugly truth that history is a cycle of oppression and resistance, that the people of the sun, whether in Chiapas or Compton, are still fighting for dignity, safety, the right to exist without fear. The Mulford Act tried to kill that fight. It failed. The fight keeps coming back, exactly like the chorus of People of the Sun. It’s coming back around again, and again, and again.
The Ugly Truth
The Mulford Act is not ancient history. It’s the DNA of California’s gun laws. It’s the reason the state is obsessed with regulating who can carry, who can own, who can defend themselves. The law was born out of fear: fear of Black power, fear of armed resistance, fear of the end of white supremacy. That fear still shapes every conversation California has about guns, violence, and safety.
Southern California in 2025 is a battleground. The state is winning the numbers game, fewer deaths, fewer guns, but it’s losing the war for justice. The violence persists, the trauma lingers, the history refuses to die. The gun laws are strict, but the roots are rotten.
The fight is not over. The song is a fuck you to the people who write laws out of fear and call it progress. It’s a love letter to the survivors, the fighters, the people who refuse to be erased. The Mulford Act tried to silence the Panthers. California’s laws try to silence the violence. Rage tries to make sure we never forget why the fight matters.
No Happy Ending
There’s no tidy conclusion. The Mulford Act was racist, full stop. California’s gun laws are complicated, contradictory, and haunted by their origins. Rage Against the Machine is the soundtrack for people who know the system is rigged and refuse to shut up about it. The Panthers carried guns because they had to. The state changed the law because it was scared. The violence continues because the roots of the problem have never been pulled out.
History isn’t a circle. It’s a fucking spiral, dragging us back to the same fights, the same fears, the same demands for dignity. The people of the sun are still here. The rage is still burning. And the law, no matter how many times it changes, can’t kill the truth. If the people of the sun were armed, ICE wouldn’t be as bold, as jackbooted, as conveniently masked up.
“I’m not asking for a seat at your table. I’m pointing out that the table was built on my back, set with my silence, and guarded by rules I was never allowed to write.”
— Anonymous