For all the noise made by Gun-nut Nation about how they are always on the verge of losing their 2nd-Amendment ‘rights,’ a new book by Carol Anderson, who runs African-American Studies at Emory University, focuses on the 2nd Amendment as a device which was stuck onto the Constitution to help maintain the slave system and is still being used to foster what she calls the ‘fatal inequality’ between Blacks and Whites.
I am convinced, incidentally, that if Donald Trump hadn’t flipped three states – MI, PA, WI – by 3/10ths of one percent of the total votes cast in those three states, he wouldn’t have won the 2016 election and the growth of concern about endemic racism – BLM, The 1619 Project, critical race theory, Anderson’s book – would probably have never occurred. If Hillary had been President when George Floyd was killed, she would have rounded up the usual suspects, appointed a Presidential Commission to publish a report, and that would have been the end of that.
The first half of Anderson’s book is a detailed discussion which tries to revise the standard explanation for the 2nd Amendment, which says that the existence of local militias comprised of citizens who carried their own weapons was designed to maintain the political and military supremacy of the individual states. Against this view, Anderson posits the thesis that the existence of the militia was primarily to maintain slavery by chasing down runaway slaves and suppressing slave revolts.
As far as I’m concerned, you could have it either way. The fact that the way gun ownership is regulated today is couched in legal terms that which dates from the eighteenth century and grows out of a legal tradition which nobody really understands, may be an interesting discussion-point for a seminar on Constitutional law, but really doesn’t enlighten today’s argument about gun violence at all. If the NRA and Gun-nut Nation want to believe that the Founders understood the necessity to maintain their vigilance against the ‘tyranny’ of the national state, good for them. The guys who commit 125,000+ gun assaults against themselves and others every year aren’t thinking about whether they have any kind of ‘right’ to walk around with a gun.
Professor Anderson makes a convincing argument about how the 2nd Amendment has been used in the modern period to enfranchise Whites with gun ownership while denying the same enfranchisement to Blacks. In particular, she cites recent instances in which Blacks who were in legal possession of guns (Philando Castile, Jemel Robertson, Emantic Bradford) were shot by cops even though the cops weren’t in any way threatened by the behavior of these Black men.
The author also notes that exceptions to 2nd-Amendment guarantees fall disproportionately on Blacks, in particular the whole idea that only ‘law-abiding’ citizens can own guns. And since the incarcerated population is overwhelmingly minority-based, obviously any withholding of the ‘right’ to self-defense from members of minority groups hurts more than helps these individuals protect themselves and their families once they get out of jail.
On the other hand, what Professor Anderson does not want to acknowledge is the fact that even though 2nd-Amendment ‘rights’ are seemingly reserved for members of the White race and denied to Blacks, it cannot be said that this particular type of discrimination makes Blacks more vulnerable to gun violence perpetrated by Whites. In fact, gun violence is overwhelmingly almost to the point of universality, an intra-racial event. When it comes to using a gun to hurt someone else, Blacks shoot Blacks, Whites shoot Whites. And it certainly can’t be argued that by restricting legal ownership of guns only to law-abiding Whites, that this practice has made it difficult for residents of inner-city, minority neighborhoods to get their hands on guns.
Carol Anderson has written a lively book and there’s no reason to ignore the fact that there have been too many, much too many instances of Blacks getting shot and killed by cops, whether the victims were armed or not.
I just don’t think the issue of gun violence will be better understood by viewing through the vortex of 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’
Jun 16, 2021 @ 10:49:01
I’m not in a great rush to read the book. I think the language in the Federalist Papers and the language in many of the Northern states that did not countenance slavery puts the lie to the revisionist idea that the 2A was primarily about rounding up slaves. Maybe it was in the South, but that was due to the culture in the south.
A lot of this so called scholarship starts with the desired conclusion and works painfully backwards.
Jun 16, 2021 @ 11:33:36
“…if Donald Trump hadn’t flipped three states – MI, PA, WI – by 3/10ths of one percent of the total votes cast in those three states…” This is like saying if my uncle didn’t have testicles, he would have been my aunt. Trump won the election in 2016. Get over it. Biden won the election in 2020 and I’m over it.
In my comment posted yesterday, June 15th, I said that I hate to see the U.S. go back to the Jim Crow laws that were enacted by Democrats, mainly in the south, so many years ago. As I’ve reviewed Carol Anderson’s book, I believe this is one of the important points made. And with so many gun laws being past and proposed by the Gun-Control Nazis they do just that, discriminate against the minorities and the poor. Instead of preserving liberty these laws are simply denying it.
Jun 16, 2021 @ 14:42:58
The one thing those who hate citizens rights all do is look for OUTSIDE rubbish to support their false claims. Based on this stupidity one could say no right affirmed in the bill of actually means what it say. That despite Jefferson being very emphatic it does. Clearly these were existing rights something that seems to escape the delusions of Ms Anderson’s inability to reason. The convoluted mangling of irrelevant linking to blacks is obviously trying to ride on BLM terrorists popularity with the unthinking masses.
Obviously not have read the amendment is not a problem to putting claims in that simple defy logic to anyone who has. Neither government, governments courts or clueless clowns define the constitution. Ms Anderson obviously does not know what the word people means. Nor are prisoners stripped of any right and if they lose this right without due process it is due entirely to the dangerous delusion indoctrinated of gun control and nobody else.
However lets just shoot this clown down. The bill of rights does not define a new right. It affirms EXISTING RIGHTS and the 2nd in particular has its heritage in the British Bill of rights which have absolutely nothing to do with slavery. Even more telling is Jefferson quotation of Cesare Beccaria Of Crimes and Punishments.
Of false Ideas of Utility.
A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave’; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.
The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.
I would not bother with this clearly gutter press rubbish.
Critical Race Theory Meets The 2nd Amendment. |
Jun 22, 2021 @ 11:44:01