RACISM AND GUN CONTROL: Remembering the “Saturday Night Special.” “The reason I retrieved Sherrill’s Saturday Night Special from the back of a high shelf was that he offers a lively argument that the 1968 Gun Control Act was mostly about controlling Negroes and not much about controlling guns. . . . In 1973, the number one bad gun was the so-called ‘Saturday Night Special.’ Remember that one? Just like today’s “assault weapon,” it was an elastic category with no real boundaries. The label could capture small guns, small caliber guns, cheap guns, and if you really want to get to the point, guns likely to be owned by poor people, and more so black people.”