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marmar

(76,982 posts)
Fri Apr 12, 2013, 09:42 AM Apr 2013

Robert Parry: The Right’s Second Amendment Fraud


from Consortium News:


The Right’s Second Amendment Fraud
April 11, 2013

Exclusive: The Senate has beaten back a filibuster from Tea Party Republicans to block debate on possible gun-reform laws in the wake of last December’s massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Connecticut. But the setback won’t stop the extremists from continuing to twist the Second Amendment, says Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


Frankly, I’d have more respect for Sen. Ted Cruz and other Tea Party Republicans if they would recite the Second Amendment as it was written, not the abridged version that they prefer. After all, the amendment is only 26 words long.

Drafted by a congressional committee that seemed a bit challenged in the precise use of punctuation, it 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.”

But Cruz, R-Texas, and other Tea Party favorites typically lop off the 12-word preamble that explains what the First Congress was thinking when it approved the amendment in 1789. By truncating the amendment, Cruz and the Tea Party obscure the two key motives for the amendment: “a well-regulated Militia” and state “security.”

You see the Second Amendment was not originally viewed as some “libertarian” right to kill representatives of the elected government – as some on the Right now fantasize – but rather the collective right of each state to maintain its own militia drawing from white male citizens who were expected to show up with their own guns. The Constitution also gave the President the power to federalize the state militias for the purpose of defending the Republic. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/04/11/the-rights-second-amendment-fraud/



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