"What if slaves had guns?" asks a Tea Party Member at a rally today.

[progressivebydesign]

http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/weblogs/news-blog/2013/feb/23/tea-party-rallies-gun-rights/

"Tea party member Michael Abbott, 47, held a sign that read: "What if slaves had guns."

Having a gun makes you safer, argued Abbott, a former police officer." Grateful that he is a former police officer.

But seriously, WTF? Apparently some Tea Party members actually know the truth about the 2nd Amendment, and the "militias" used to control slave uprisings. The TP doesn't even try to pretend anymore.

On the bright side, only 35 people showed up to their big gun rally.

[JaneyVee]

1. extremely ignorant and incredibly dumb. But not the least bit surprising.

[JI7]

2. this is just like the "there would be no holocaust if Jews had guns"

but it's not just a bad argument, i also see it as a way for them to blame the victims.

[geckosfeet]

3. Then they wouldn't be slaves anymore. See post civil war era.

[BainsBane]

7. the 2nd Amendment was implemented

because of slavery, to maintain control over slaves, or so some have said citing the prominent historian Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom. I read this book some years ago but don't recall the part about the Second Amendment so I would have to look at it again to say for sure, but there is a article on several websites arguing that Morgan says the Second Amendment was about maintaining Social Control over slaves. http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/american-history-black-history-and-right-bear-arms

The central argument of Morgan's book that I do remember well is that the very concept of freedom we have in this country emerged in opposition to slavery. In 17th century Virginia, both Europeans and Africans were held as indentured servants. Over the course of the century, slavery emerged as a racialized institution, and race emerged as a marker of legal status as slave. Prior to then, there was no such thing as race as we understand it today. (Similar ideas imagining race as a category were developing in Germany at the time). Over the course of the 17th century, race displaced religious difference as a justification for slavery. In response to demands for land and a popular uprising by poor whites, racialized slavery gradually became the vehicle through which poor whites gained land and freedom--so the very concept of freedom we have today is borne of racism.

Therefore it would not surprise me if Morgan concludes that the freedom we vest in the Second Amendment emerged as a means of control over the slave population, so the above article is probably right.

[geckosfeet]

10. That was not the central purpose of the 2A, and the 2A does not mention slavery

or servitude.

There are a lot of period documents describing free men as being required to bear arms. Partially for defense against indigenous peoples (American Indians) and later for defense against popular uprising and revolts.

After the civil war firearms were instrumental in the freed slaves maintaining their freedom and defending themselves. It was around this period that laws began to be written that specifically addressed the rights of feed slaves to own firearms.

The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights

Recently, some progressives have argued that, all the rhetoric about arming the people to resist tyranny notwithstanding, the real intent of the authors of the Second Amendment was to preserve slavery, and that, therefore, those who cite the Second Amendment as supporting every citizen’s right to bear arms today are – well, ignorant wingnut enablers of slaveholding racism, I guess.

The logic escapes me here. Sure, the Second Amendment was ratified in a context where most of the framers -- certainly those of the Southern plantocracy – assumed that the right it guaranteed was – like every other right instituted by the Constitution at time – meant to be limited to free white males, who were the only fully-enfranchised citizens. But, really, Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder, so there’s something wrong with us using his words to promote equal rights? As do the authors of every law, indeed every text, the framers wrote something whose significance and effect exceeds what they could have imagined. The text, the law, that the framers wrote now stands apart from and beyond their personal intentions. Perhaps it is because they could not imagine the extension of a certain right that they wrote a text that does not exclude it. I’ll take that. We all do.

In this case however, we have clear evidence of subsequent law that was intended by its framers to extend the right to bear arms not only beyond, but against, the purposes of slavery. One might have noticed that, through a series of excruciating struggles during the course of American history, including a Civil War, the full enfranchisement of citizenship with all its attendant rights, including the right to keep and bear arms, was extended to all the previously excluded groups of American society. It is crystal clear that the intention of the framers of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments was to guarantee the right to bear arms to freed slaves. As Adam Winkler points out: “Whether or not the Founding Fathers thought the Second Amendment was primarily about state militias, the men behind the Fourteenth Amendment—America’s most sacred and significant civil-rights law—clearly believed that the right of individuals to have guns for self-defense was an essential element of citizenship. As Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar has observed, ‘Between 1775 and 1866 the poster boy of arms morphed from the Concord minuteman to the Carolina freedman.’"

[BainsBane]

11. The entire constitutional convention was about slavery

Yet the word only appears in relation to abolishing the slave trade. The above author clearly knows next to nothing about slavery. Planters didn't assume slavery would be guaranteed. They decided to ban the translatlantic slave trade to America at the convention, setting the date of 1807. Anti-slavery thought was already in force in England at the time of the constitutional convention, leading to their own decision to abolish the slave trade in 1807. England would increasingly put pressure on the rest of the Atlantic world to end their slave trades. The moral and economic basis of slavery was under attack with the rise of liberalism (see Adam Smith's writing on the subject), while Southern slaveholders continued to hold on to a way of life they held dear.

Slavery was not nearly as important economically at the time of the convention as it would become shortly thereafter because of the invention of the cotton gin. It was only then that American short-staple cotton became useful in the textile mills that fed industrialization in England and eventually the US. That gave rise to King Cotton and the Antebellum South. Much of what most people think about slavery comes from that time period.

Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder who proposed the abolition of slavery in an early draft for the constitution of the state of Virginia, prior to the federal Constitutional Convention. This is yet another point that disputes junior's point above that early Americans just assumed slavery would be continued in perpetuity. Jefferson wrote extensively about his opposition to slavery. That he continued to own slaves and only freed his own decedents on his death speaks to his own financial problems and personal hypocrisy rather than the author's assumption that slavery was not in question.

Gun zealot is not a qualification to write history, and the above text is a clear demonstration why. The fact is, guns were simply not the issue in colonial America and the early Republic that they are now. Looking backward to try to defend your fetish is ahistorical. It overlooks the key historical dynamics of the time in pursuit of a 21st century agenda.

As Edmund Morgan points out, the very notion of freedom was borne from slavery and racism. White indentured servants gained freedom and land because Africans became a permanent slave force, deprived of all rights. White freedom existed because of slavery. The institutions of colonial America and the early Republic--and the law in particular--grew up around maintaining control over slaves. The Supreme Court was stacked with Southerners up until the Civil War. American law grew up around maintaining slavery.

If you want to come up with a historical defense of the Second Amendment, you'll need to find something written by someone with a passable knowledge of American history. Generally the base-line standard is a Ph.D. in history.

[geckosfeet]

14. Presenting the 2A's purpose as a means to support slavery is absurd. And if you want me

to believe that is what it was meant for, you are going to have to come up with something a little more convincing than "I am right, they are wrong". All I see is you digging your heels in the face of evidence to the contrary of what you are claiming.

The second amendment makes exactly zero references to slavery. But the constitution, and the supreme court in fact DID protect slavery before, as the Polemicist states, the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments were created.

The Supreme Court, in its infamous decision in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), ruled that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. In so doing, Scott v Sandford invited slave owners to pour into the territories and pass pro-slavery constitutions. The decision made the Civil War inevitable. Chief Justice Roger Taney, writing for the majority in Scott, also concluded that people of African ancestry (whether free or a slave, including Scott) could never become "citizens" within the meaning of the Constitution, and hence lacked the ability to bring suit in federal court.

Before the Civil War ended, Congress passed, and sent to the states for ratification, the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished "slavery" and "involuntary servitude" and authorized Congress to enact "appropriate legislation" implementing the abolition. The Amendment was understood to also make blacks citizens of the United States (overruling Dred Scott on that point). The House vote to propose the Thirteenth Amendment followed the Senate vote, and barely made the 2/3 majority requirement. When the vote was announced the galleries cheered, congressmen embraced and wept, and Capitol cannons boomed a 100-gun salute. Congressmen George Julian of Indiana wrote in his diary, "I have felt, ever since the vote, as if I were in a new country." Ratification by the states quickly followed, and Secretary of State Seward proclaimed the Amendment adopted on December 18, 1865.

Less than a year after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress used its newly conferred power to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, giving black citizens "the same right in every state...to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, ...to inherit, purchase, sell, and convey real and personal property; and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens." Supporters if the 1866 law argued that its guarantees constituted "appropriate" means of "enforcing" the right of blacks not to be held in bondage.

The fourteenth and thirteenth amendments, in addition to providing equal protection to all regardless of national origin, provided civil rights for all, regardless of national origin. This effectively provided freed slaves the ability to legally bear arms to protect themselves against aggressors.

BTW - you elitism is showing.

[BainsBane]

16. Try rereading my first post

I did not claim the Second Amendment was created entirely to support slavery. I cited an article in which some have used Edmund Morgan to make that claim. I specifically said I do not recall that part of the book and went on to layout his principal argument about slavery and freedom. I also directed you to an actual history book by respected historians that might help you understand what did lead to the Second Amendment. My background is in the history of slavery (Brazil, with a minor exam field in the US), not justifying or delegitimating the Second Amendment. The text you cited before was AWFUL, completely ignorant of basic historical developments. Hence the other reference I directed you to.

Citing Dredd Scott and post-civil war cases says nothing about the reasons for the Second Amendment. Do you actually suppose I don't know the basic circumstances of Dredd Scott and the Reconstruction amendments? The author, evidently, does not. Dredd Scott was a slave who traveled with his master into free territory. He sued on the grounds that since slavery was prohibited in the Wisconsin Territory, he should be considered free. The court denied that claim and went further to rule that African-Americans were not citizens and therefore not entitled to constitutional protections. It DID NOT say that congress could not prohibit slavery in free territories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott
That had all been established by the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850.

You have called others stupid for not having intimate knowledge of gun mechanics. I have disputed that notion. Here I have shown you are using bad information, a source from someone who knows next to nothing about the history of the US. Sure, call it elitism. Training and education matter in a field. Anti-elitism doesn't justify spreading patently false information. Moreover, given the fact you and your friends regularly insult the intelligence of others who don't share your fetish for guns, you are hardly in a position to pass judgment. There is a reason one looks for a qualified surgeon for an operation, or a qualified dentist before letting someone do a root canal. The discipline of history also requires advanced training to do it properly, and a Ph.D. is the basic standard. Your gun enthusiast above clearly doesn't have that training. (It would appear he doesn't even have a BA in the field or remember much about his US history survey course.) You can find much better sources, which is why I directed you to a book that may help you.

[geckosfeet]

17. I have called no one stupid. But I do respect an opionion born out of knowledge.

I agree, a surgeon should be qualified to operate. But surgeons have their own interpretations and can approach a medical condition in different ways. Indeed, expertise and requirements for medical professionals varies considerably across the world.

A knowledge of history can be had by anyone who cares enough to crack a book or run a few google searches. An academic will have a much deeper and comprehensive understanding of the matter. They also understand that history is not fixed and immutable and that we see history through the eyes of our times and political leanings. FYI - I am not an academic.

As for peoples knowledge of firearms, that is their business. But I can't help but be amused at times, at some of the things people say.

On edit: - You seem to really like the word fetish. I find that amusing.

[BainsBane]

18. the fact is

the source you cited is bad. You can do far better. As I've demonstrated, the author's knowledge of history is poor. That doesn't mean you can't justify your position on the Second Amendment. I'm just imploring you to use something credible.

[geckosfeet]

19. thanks for the advice

[BainsBane]

13. Because I hate bad history

nearly as much as guns (maybe more; it's an internal struggle), I'll direct you to this source. http://www.amazon.com/Whose-Second-Amendment-Protect-Historians/dp/0312240600

There are essays from a variety of perspectives. You should find something to support your argument there. I have not read the book myself.

[Deep13]

4. They would have been killed ...

...and new slaves brought in to replace them.

What an idiot.

[Initech]

5. 35 people at a rally? I bet there were 70 portable toilets.

[backscatter712]

6. The slaves didn't have guns. This teabagger's ancestors had guns... and whips.

Remember, part of the real purpose of the Second Amendment was to make sure that those slave patrols, ahem, I mean citizens militias, had enough weapons to keep those slaves enslaved.

[midwest irish]

8. Nat Turner

They should google him. Especially what the response was. Sorry, but their argument has no merit.

[Recursion]

12. John Brown raided Harpers Ferry hoping to arm slaves

The panic he caused across the south suggests that the slave owners, at least, were worried about the idea.

[uriel1972]

9. You know what they are thinking...

yet when they come out and say it, you still sit there blinking.

[Renew Deal]

15. What if the cops Dorner killed had guns?

[Recursion]

20. The slaves in Haiti armed themselves and formed a Republic

I don't see why everybody thinks this is a crazy question. The idea was the basis of John Brown's raid.

[loyalsister]

21. Their family tre probably would have stopped growing in the 1800s

nt