The Dark History of The Second Amendment
The original intent of America's founding fathers on The Second Amendment, from Alternet:
So Few Americans Understand What the Second Amendment Is Really About—or Its Dark History:
The Second Amendment is an anachronism that's no longer relevant today.
So, if the Second Amendment wasn’t originally about protecting gun rights, why is it in the U.S. Constitution? What were the Founders thinking?
Well, the first and most obvious answer, and the one accepted by most historians, is that they were trying to prevent the existence of a standing army during times of peace.
Here comes the fundamental purpose of state militias:
By protecting the militias, the Founders weren’t just preventing or trying to prevent the rise of mischief by a standing army; they were also protecting the institution of slavery that was the key to the southern economy. In states like Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas, militias were also known as slave patrols.
Well fancy that! Our elitest founding fathers wanted a state militia to protect and serve their property interest in slaves.
And so Patrick Henry lobbied James Madison to rewrite the Second Amendment into the version we know today.
He spoke passionately at the Virginia Ratifying Convention:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war," Henry said, "but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress ... Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."
The simple solution:
To satisfy Henry, James Madison changed the word "country" to the word "state,” a change Patrick Henry demanded to make it explicitly clear that the Constitution protected the state militia (aka slave patrol) in Virginia.
The article also points out that every single one of the Bill of Rights has limitations. There are no absolute rights. More history and analysis here:
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/repeal-second-amendment
Comments
Good article.
I might have to send that one on. A good reminder of the true motivations of the founders.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Very interesting.
I was pretty much taught at the university level that being a new country with Spain at the South, France at the North, was impetus for a militia, given we had no standing army. I was never lectured or steered toward historical slavery as any impetus for arms. I will also say, I have only recently realized I was academically shielded from slavery having anything to do with the Revolution.
Oh, well. I tried.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Slavery and genocide, what built this country.
The more I read the more clear that becomes. I just finished Nick Turse's "Kill Anything That Moves" and while that's about Vietnam, the parallels to our founding are very clear. I look at the Middle East wars, obviously, as just more of the same, as is keeping the US dollar as world reserve currency. It is in the very DNA of this country, so to speak. Hell, even Las Vegas really isn't all that much of an aberration where that's concerned. We just come in later and pretty up the story, write books about it, and feed it to our kids. And it's been going on since the beginning.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
George Washington used the militias
In 1791, he used them to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Also, I think there were a bunch of Redcoats up in Canada that caused some worry. I don't think we need to protect ourselves from Redcoats anymore.
Beware the bullshit factories.