The Secret History of Guns

[NobleSavage]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

 

[NobleSavage]

http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/22/how-crazy-negroes-with-guns-he
How 'Crazy Negroes' With Guns Helped Kill Jim Crow

With the rise of Jim Crow segregation at the end of the 19th century, civil rights leaders continued to advocate meeting fire with fire. "A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home," the famed anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote in 1892, when on average more than one black person was lynched every three days in the South, "and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give."

 

[bleubird]

I like the commas in the Second Amendment.It's like the authors just wanted to mess with later Mericans.

 

[The Paul]

I don't think this "A long, long time ago in a faraway land existed racists who agreed with your current belief." is ever actually going to be compelling.

 

[Trausti]

I like the commas in the Second Amendment.It's like the authors just wanted to mess with later Mericans.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNu7ldL1LM[/YOUTUBE]

 

[The Paul]

I like the commas in the Second Amendment.It's like the authors just wanted to mess with later Mericans.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNu7ldL1LM[/YOUTUBE]

I like how he pretends that the other side's argument is the that founders didn't know what a comma is, and then he proceeds to pretend the founders didn't know what a comma is.

 

[bilby]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNu7ldL1LM[/YOUTUBE]

I like how he pretends that the other side's argument is the that founders didn't know what a comma is, and then he proceeds to pretend the founders didn't know what a comma is.

I like how he pretends that the 'Militia' was, in the 1780s, somehow a different entity from the 'People'. Perhaps he is just woefully ignorant of military history.

A 'well ordered militia' was made up of 'the people' getting together for regular training and drill. There was no war between 'the people' and 'the militia'; the war was between the British Army, and the American people, fighting in their role as a militia.

When the British attempted to disarm the American populace during 1774-75, citizens formed private militias that were independent of the royal governors' control. With the outbreak of war, the colonial militias composed the bulk of the armies that eventually won independence. The experiences of the Revolutionary War had instilled most Americans with great confidence toward their militias and distrust of standing armies. Many concluded that a standing army was the tool of an absolutist government and that the militia was the proper means for a free people to defend against such a regime. This belief heavily influenced the debates surrounding the drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution.

http://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/bioterrorism/8military/milita01.htm

But then, facts apparently have no place in the American myth-making business.

 

[NobleSavage]

Uugg. Read the articles, they are interesting. I should have put this in world history.

 

[bilby]

Uugg. Read the articles, they are interesting. I should have put this in world history.

If you wanted to avoid partisan bickering, that might have put it off for a post or two. But likely not much more.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't think this "A long, long time ago in a faraway land existed racists who agreed with your current belief." is ever actually going to be compelling.

It works when people want to shut down "states rights" arguments. "But some racists argued states rights one..."

I was born after that, and I argue it for a wide variety of topics including and especially marijuana legalization (and the rest of the drug war).

In 2010, Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurrence on a gun control case, where he laid out the very racist history of gun control.

 

[The Paul]

I don't think this "A long, long time ago in a faraway land existed racists who agreed with your current belief." is ever actually going to be compelling.

It works when people want to shut down "states rights" arguments. "But some racists argued states rights one..."

I was born after that, and I argue it for a wide variety of topics including and especially marijuana legalization (and the rest of the drug war).

In 2010, Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurrence on a gun control case, where he laid out the very racist history of gun control.

"A long, long time ago in a faraway land existed racists who agreed with your current belief." is not convincing and it never will be.

"The majority of people in the current time and place who agree with your ideas are racists and/or misogynists and/or homophobes and/or theocrats" is.

I expect what's happened is conservatives have noticed the effectiveness of the later, but can't tell the difference between it and the former.

 

[repoman]

Interesting point about militias, Bilby.

If the Second Amendment had said "Militias" instead of "Militia" that would have been much clearer proof.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

"A long, long time ago in a faraway land existed racists who agreed with your current belief." is not convincing and it never will be.

It seems to work whenever the subject is state's rights. It seems to convince people around here at least.

 

[The Paul]

Sometimes in fantasy or science fiction stories they'll talk about an alien or a monster or something and say how like... it does think but it perceives the world so differently from the way a human does, meanings are so different to it, it's logic is so alien, that there's no point in thinking of it's behavior in terms of what would be reasonable or logical from one's own, human point of view. And I'm like "Man, what does that actually mean, in practical terms?"

It means this:

"A long, long time ago in a faraway land existed racists who agreed with your current belief." is not convincing and it never will be.

It seems to work whenever the subject is state's rights. It seems to convince people around here at least.

 

[Valjean]

Wasn't the 2nd amendment conceived and worded to preserve the southern slave patrols?

http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Those same slave owners obviously passed the first amendment for the purpose of making speeches to defend slavery, go to church and have the pastor give sermons defending slavery, and petition the government to preserve slavery. The fifth amendment was passed so that slaves could not be taken without compensation. The sixth amendment was passed so that slave owners could defend other slave owners by serving on the jury.

That article is twaddle.