state government to implement the disenfranchising of black voters. He unabashedly stated that the 1890 constitution's framers had created the constitution precisely to disenfranchise black voters, having desired to prevent black voters from casting ballots, not for any shortcomings they may or may not have had as voters, but for simply being black: The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson reiterated the views of Governor Vardaman and the 1890 convention, stating that: In a veiled threat, Governor Vardaman stated that were the 1890 constitution fail in its explicit intent to disenfranchise the state's African American voters, the state would utilize other methods to disenfranchise them: Governor Vardaman, like most Southern Democrats at the time, was an outspoken proponent of using lynchings and terrorism as methods to marginalize and deter African-American voters: The Clarion-Ledger newspaper, known for its vocal partisan support of the state's Democrats, also delivered a justification and rationale for the 1890 constitution's disenfranchising of black voters, expressing the white supremacist view that the framers of the 1890 constitution held, that even the most ignorant and uneducated white voter was preferable to the most well-educated and intelligent black voter: The effects of the new constitution were profound. In 1890, there were 70,000 more African-American voters in Mississippi than there were white ones. By 1892, that number had dropped to 8,615 black voters out of 76,742 eligible voters. After World War I, Sidney D. Redmond, a black lawyer from Jackson and the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, attempted to investigate the disenfranchising of black voters in Mississippi. He wrote letters of inquiry to several Mississippi counties, which went unanswered. He then inquired via telephone, and many of the counties responded to his inquiries by telling him that they did not "allow niggers to register" to vote. Several decades later, following an investigation by the United States government into the discriminatory voting practices of Southern U.S. states, the U.S. Supreme Court would declare that methods employed by state governments to disenfranchise African-American voters and prevent them from casting ballots were direct violations of the precepts United States Constitution. As a result, Section 244 was rendered effectively null and void under the rulings of U.S. court decisions such as Harper v. Virginia, and the section was formally repealed by the state on December 8, 1975, 85 years after it was created. Gun control In addition to disenfranchising black voters, the 1890 constitutional convention