Robert Parry: Crazy Gun-Toting Insurrectionists

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from Consortium News:


Crazy Gun-Toting Insurrectionists
March 31, 2013

Exclusive: Just a few months after 20 first-graders were mowed down by a deranged killer wielding an assault rifle, the prospects of restraining this gun madness are fading. A major factor is the Right’s success in promulgating a bogus history of what the Framers were doing with the Second Amendment, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


Tea Partiers and their Libertarian allies fancy themselves the true protectors of the Constitution, but they consistently demonstrate profound ignorance of what the Framers were doing and why. It’s as if they are all summa cum laude graduates of Glenn Beck’s unaccredited online university.

Their sloppy history might not be a matter of particular concern if the consequences weren’t so severe, such as how it has frustrated common-sense gun control by promoting a false interpretation of the Second Amendment – that the Framers wrote it because they wanted individual Americans to be heavily armed so they could kill representatives of the U.S. government.

A common view on the Right – and among a few on the Left – is that the Framers, having emerged from a war against the British Crown, wanted to arm the American people so they could battle the “tyranny” of their own Republic. This wacky interpretation has fed an insurrectionist mood in some circles, where these modern extremists assert that the elected government of the United States must be resisted through violence and that no limits on gun ownership can be tolerated, that citizens must be armed to a level comparable to the government’s police and military.

It doesn’t seem to matter that George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and other key Framers considered the creation of a Republic led by elected leaders to be the best protection against “tyranny” – and that the Constitution’s intricate system of checks and balances would further shield the country from the possibility of tyrannical leadership. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/31/crazy-gun-toting-insurrectionists/