The Atlantic: The Secret History of Guns

[Fumesucker]

The issues around guns, racism and violence are a lot more complicated than many of us realize or want to admit. I think this piece is interesting and anyone who wants to intelligently discuss the issues of guns, violence and racism would benefit from reading the whole thing if for nothing else than the historical perspective.

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

Yet we’ve also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.

For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.

Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as “an arsenal.” William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King’s parsonage.

Indisputably, for much of American history, gun-control measures, like many other laws, were used to oppress African Americans. The South had long prohibited blacks, both slave and free, from owning guns. In the North, however, at the end of the Civil War, the Union army allowed soldiers of any color to take home their rifles. Even blacks who hadn’t served could buy guns in the North, amid the glut of firearms produced for the war. President Lincoln had promised a “new birth of freedom,” but many blacks knew that white Southerners were not going to go along easily with such a vision. As one freedman in Louisiana recalled, “I would say to every colored soldier, ‘Bring your gun home.’”

[scarletwoman]

1. Interesting and valuable piece. Thank you for posting it.

K&R. Bookmarked for full reading later.

[BainsBane]

2. I'm oppressed by gun violence

The people in Charleston were oppressed by racism and gun violence. The 10 people killed last night were oppressed by gun violence.

That argument has a lot in common with the notion that the rights of corporations to free speech should be protected.
The rights of the corporate gun lobby, of killers and their apologists, have come to trump the rights of the rest of us.
Gun proliferation is immoral, racist, and murderous. It is in fact terrorism. I am sick to death of hearing justifications for why my life means less than the so-called right to accumulate, carry, and use an arsenal of weapons fit for a small army. Fuck the gun apology. Fuck the gun lobby. Fuck the corporate gun lobby's subversion of democracy and free speech. Promoting war at home is wrong, NO BETTER than promoting empire abroad. In fact the two go hand in hand.

I am sick of being told my life is worth less than the right to deadly property. I am especially sick of people who claim to be liberals holding up the rights of corporate gun manufacturers over the citizenry. The position is wrong. Justifying policies that cost 32,000 lives every year is unconscionable.

[Fumesucker]

3. I'm pretty firmly on DU record as anti gun

Like a lot of things here I don't make a big deal of it but my feelings are fewer guns is better.

You can choose to be informed or not, I've found when arguing things that being informed wins respect and makes me more able to advance my position but of course we all have our little stylistic quirks and peculiarities.

[BainsBane]

4. I saw your post to me in Manny's thread

You gave lots of BS arguments against gun control. You showed yourself to be entirely uninformed on polling data, the effect of gun laws on people of color, and advanced transparent and self-serving arguments.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6874774

Not only that, you claimed clairvoyance in a way that just so happens to benefit the corporate merchants of death and leads to great loss of life in communities you claim to worry about.

Maybe this is all new and you decided to reverse engineer your views in order to represent Sanders, when in fact he and all other politicians should be representing us. I don't know, but I don't find it acceptable. I will not be supporting any GOP-like gun policies.

[Fumesucker]

5. And you'll be shocked, shocked when it turns out just like I said

I haven't changed my views at all actually, I'd love to see fewer guns but using current police and their procedures to do it is going to be a Charlie Foxtrot of immense proportions with social fallout all over the map.

Be careful what you wish for, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.