The unholy tie between slavery and guns

[packman]

Charles Dickens toured America in 1842 at the height of his fame as an author. He was appalled by what he saw in America. What he may have missed is the tie between the Constitution which defined a black as subhuman which (allowed slave-holding states to count human chattel, described as “other persons,” as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of taxation and state representation ) and the Bill of Rights.

"The Second Amendment, adopted a couple of years later ( as part of the Bill of Rights (of free white people), was essentially written to protect the interests of Southerners in the states that formed militias—often known as “slave patrols”—to crush any attempt at what was called, in those days, a “servile insurrection.” That’s why the full text of the Second Amendment reads:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
To keep slaves in slavery, you needed militias and they needed to be armed. Such is the fundamental “right” assured by the Second Amendment.

Thus was born the grotesque Second Amendment which plaques us today - the fundamental historical right to once own slaves and the fundamental right to arms - an intertwining of denial of human rights, fear, and a misplaced sense of entitlement to own a weapon of death.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/the-u-s-right-to-own-guns-came-with-the-right-to-own-slaves.html

[ileus]

1. The good news is here in modern times the 2A is a right for everyone.

[Skinner]

2. Interesting. I had never heard this explanation for "militia" before.

On its face it seems more likely to me than the argument that "militia" referred to the military.

[hack89]

5. Here is a short history of militias in America

In fact, the militia did equal military during the time the Bill of Rights was drafted.

A. The Colonial Militias

The great majority of colonists arriving in America during the seventeenth century had no experience as soldiers. Yet owing to the small British military presence of the time, the colonists soon found the need to establish a military force. They drew from their knowledge of the militia system in England to develop their own military forces. The resulting colonial militia laws required every able-bodied male citizen to participate and to provide his own arms. Militia control was very localized, often with individual towns having autonomous command systems. Additionally, the colonies placed relatively short training requirements upon their militiamen: as little as four days of training per year.

The colonies did little to change their militias until just prior to the Revolutionary War. 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

Colonial militias fought with the British during the French and Indian war as well as protecting settlements from Indian attack. This 'slavery patrol' argument is historic revisionism with no documented validity.

[hack89]

3. So why did non-slave states add the RKBA to their state constitutions?

and why is there no documented discussion of slave patrols during the writing of the BOR?

[KamaAina]

4. That oldie but not-so-goodie has been debunked.

On an African American-centric website, no less.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2013/01/second_amendment_slave_control_not_the_aim.html

If Hartmann's political goal is to argue for reasonable firearms regulations, then he and I are in the same camp. I have long argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual's right to own firearms, and that the purpose of the amendment was purely to guarantee that the states could maintain their own militias. I have also written a great deal on how the Constitution protected slavery (see my book Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson), and I am not shy about pointing out how the founders protected slavery. Indeed, my most recent public comment on slavery and the founding was an op-ed in the New York Times on Jefferson and slavery titled "The Monster of Monticello."

Still, however committed one may be to a political outcome, it serves no purpose to make historical arguments that are demonstrably wrong, misleading and inconsistent with what happened. Hartmann does not serve his cause well by purporting to write history when his version of history is mostly wrong, and very misleading.

Hartmann begins by arguing that "the real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says 'State' instead of 'Country' " was that the framers wanted "to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote."

Hartmann implies that the Second Amendment was adopted (or at least written) to get Virginia's "vote" for ratification of the Constitution, which took place in July 1788. But this is not even remotely true. In 1788 the Second Amendment was not yet written and was not part of the debate over ratification of the Constitution.

[aikoaiko]

6. Militias could be used for various purpuses and the souther slave revolts were a concern to whites

But to say that the 2nd Amendment was essentially written to protect the rights of white Southerner slave holders is a huge overstatement.

As others have noted since this myth started making the rounds a few years ago, this erroneous explanation for the 2nd Amendment fails to explain why abolitionist states included the RKBA in their state constitutions.