Mother Jones: 2nd Amendment was about slave enforcement

[PA Rifleman]

Queue: Twilight Zone soundtrack (click here to listen)
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Source:
http://www.motherjones.com/washingto...ts-heller.html

Whitewashing the Second Amendment

Washington Dispatch: As the Supreme Court reviews a historic gun-rights case, lost is the Second Amendment's controversial history—when it wasn't a bulwark against tyranny but a way of enforcing it.

March 20, 2008



Racial politics dominated the talk in Washington this week as Barack Obama called on Americans to stop ignoring the country's racist past and move forward. The message, apparently, didn't reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices were busy ignoring race during a hearing on the biggest case of the year. On Tuesday, at the same time Obama gave his big speech, the court heard oral arguments in D.C. v. Heller, a case challenging the District of Columbia's 30-year-old law banning handgun ownership. The case marks the first time the Supreme Court has reviewed the Second Amendment in 70 years, and its interpretation could have far-reaching implications for state gun laws. Heller is mostly about gun ownership, but it is also about race—not that you would know that based on the oral arguments.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton explained the ugly history behind the gun lobby's favorite amendment. "That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections.

First, by way of background: The key issue in Heller is whether the Constitution guarantees an individual, as opposed to a collective, right to bear arms within the context of a well-organized militia. The plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller, is an armed security guard who, with the help of some rich libertarians, brought the lawsuit against the District, arguing that the city's handgun ban illegally prevented him from keeping his work weapon at home. Last year, in a 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed and ruled that the city's gun-control law was an unconstitutional infringement on an individual's right to bear arms. Fearing a flood of new firearms into the city as a result, the District appealed to the Supreme Court.
Dozens of interest groups, from the Pink Pistols to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, have filed amicus briefs, offering their take on the Second Amendment. But during oral arguments, Justice Anthony Kennedy and his conservative brethren seemed to fully embrace the gun lobby's favorite romantic myth that the founders, inspired by the image of the musket in the hands of a minuteman, wrote the Second Amendment to give Americans the right to take up arms to fight government tyranny. But what the founders really had in mind, according to some constitutional-law scholars, was the musket in the hands of a slave owner. That is, these scholars believe the founders enshrined the right to bear arms in the Constitution in part to enforce tyranny, not fight it.
Last week at an American Constitution Society briefing on the Heller case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton explained the ugly history behind the gun lobby's favorite amendment. "That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldn’t use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery.
This is pretty well-documented history, thanks to the work of Roger Williams School of Law professor Carl T. Bogus. In a 1998 law-review article based on a close analysis of James Madison’s original writings, Bogus explained the South’s obsession with militias during the ratification fights over the Constitution. “The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population,” Bogus writes. “Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats.” He goes on to document how anti-Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason used the fear of slave rebellions as a way of drumming up opposition to the Constitution and how Madison eventually deployed the promise of the Second Amendment to placate Virginians and win their support for ratification.
None of this figured into Tuesday's arguments at the Supreme Court. Instead, a majority of the justices, especially Kennedy, seemed to buy the story that the founders were inordinately concerned with the ability of early settlers to use guns to fend off wild animals and Indians, not rebellious slaves. (Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick counts pivotal swing-voter Kennedy making no fewer than four mentions of a mythical "remote settler," who Kennedy suggested would have needed a gun to "defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears, and grizzlies.")
Just as the court largely ignored the racist past of the Second Amendment, its focus on self-defense also glossed over the more obvious racial implications of the decision it was reviewing. The plaintiff, Heller, is a white man who lives in a 60 percent black city whose democratically elected leaders long ago decided that handguns were doing more harm than good to its citizenry. Indeed, while two of the original five plaintiffs in the Heller case are black women, not a whole lot of African Americans in the District appear to be out there clamoring to own more handguns for self-defense.
In an interview, Bogus says that polls consistently show that African Americans support gun control in much higher numbers than white people do, and probably for good reason: They're usually the ones looking at the wrong end of the barrel. As the NAACP points out in its brief on Heller, in D.C. in 2004, there were 137 gun-homicide victims. All but two of them were black. If the Supreme Court invalidates the city’s handgun ban, any ensuing uptick in gun violence is likely to have a disproportionate impact on African Americans, particularly young men.
Of course, it won’t only be young black men who suffer should the court decide that D.C. residents need more handguns. In fact, someone ought to remind Justice Kennedy about what happens when the wrong people get guns—namely the average, law-abiding D.C. residents who would supposedly benefit from the new gun ownership rights. With all his concern with grizzly bears, Kennedy has clearly forgotten about Carl Rowan Sr.
Back in 1988, the African American syndicated columnist shot an unarmed, 18-year-old white kid from Chevy Chase who'd gone for an unauthorized dip in Rowan's swimming pool. Rowan, who shot the kid in the wrist as he tried to flee, claimed he'd feared for his life and was only defending himself. Nonetheless, the columnist was prosecuted for illegally possessing a handgun. The trial ended with a hung jury and Rowan escaped punishment (though the teenagers were sentenced to community service), but the incident fueled a tremendous amount of racial tension in the city that might have been avoided if Rowan had just, say, called the cops.
Gun-wielding journalists who can’t shoot straight may not be the bulwark against tyranny libertarians had in mind. Yet they’re just one of the many scary scenarios the District faces should the court rely on language inspired by slavery and the libertarians’ whitewashed version of American history to restrict the ability of a majority black city to protect its citizens from gun violence.
(Photo of crime scene tape in front of the Supreme Court by flickr user takomabibelot used under a Creative Commons license.)

[DemonOfTheFall]

hahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahhaha....

hahahahhahahahah....

hahahahahhahahahah.

Oh MERCY....

WEAK.

[skyjerk]

The plaintiff, Heller, is a white man who lives in a 60 percent black city whose democratically elected leaders long ago decided that handguns were doing more harm than good to its citizenry.

At least the article has one little kernel of truth buried in the middle.
This little piece of the article is what its really about , isnt it?

They decided for the citizenry for its own good. Taking away their right to decide for themselves.

[Agent Smith]

I'm really sick of hearing these organizations trying to turn everything into a race related issue.

If they are trying to end racism, then crying racism every chance they get is not the way to do it. The only thing they are going to accomplish, is to create racists.

[crlovel]

Racial politics dominated the talk in Washington this week as Barack Obama called on Americans to stop ignoring the country's racist past and move forward.

I LOVE this quote. What are we supposed to do? Dig up the past and roll about it in it like dogs in crap? Let's all go mourn and wail and beat ourselves over what some of our ancestors did and did not do. Oh, woe is me.

Funny how the Asians got over it. Funny how the Irish got over it. Funny how just about every race and culture has been enslaved at some point in time, and for the most part, all have gotten over it. Maybe it's time Barack put the country's racist path behind him, stopped pandering to the descendants of long-deceased slaves, and took a step forward himself. Oddly enough, most Africans (REAL African Americans) and Carribean natives moving to this country in the present day say the same thing, and they succeed in this country. Maybe it's because they're not being raised on hand-outs and racist diatribe from their parents and so-called leaders.

[CoyoteJack]

What a load of crap. It wasn't the 2ndA that was created to prevent slaves from gaining firearms and uprising. If anything most of the early gun control measures were designed for that purpose.

Apparently those in D.C. clamoring for more gun control measure don't realize that the ones who are most likely to point a gun at them aren't paying attention to such laws in the first place.

[Philadelphia]

They got the 2A mixed up with early gun control laws (which were intended to ensure that blacks would not have access to guns).

[Johannes_Paulsen]

Last week at an American Constitution Society briefing on the Heller case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton explained the ugly history behind the gun lobby's favorite amendment. "That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldn’t use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery.

This article is incorrect, but it isn't weak as someone said. Like many smears, it can be very potent, especially if it gains traction in the African-American community. For that reason, it needs to be addressed seriously by our side. I suspect we'll be hearing it again.

I don't believe he's correct at all, because the primary purpose of the Second Amendment as it was originally conceived was as a check on Federal government power and as a way of addressing national defense: keeping the people armed would hopefully obviate the need of a permanent standing army, while at the same time ensuring that a defensive force could be mustered in an emergency. Other purposes (such as self-defense) would have been secondary.

They may be a tiny kernel of truth in what Paxton is saying, though -- not enough to make his point, but just enough to mean the argument will be repeated because it may sound like the whole truth in some circles. Slavery existed in some states at the time the Bill of Rights was written. Slave revolts were something that were obviously a concern for the citizens (i.e., all white, male property owners) of those states. I have no hard evidence on this (and neither, I suspect, does Payton,) but it's logical to infer that one reason southerners would have supported an amendment protecting the right to keep & bear arms would be to make sure that they could not be disarmed by the federal government, leaving them defenseless in the face of a slave revolt.

But...the story doesn't end there. After the Civil War, the it was the Republicans in Congress who passed the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Freedman's Bureau Act of 1866, explicitly protecting (among other things) "the constitutional right to bear arms...without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery."

It was now the former slaves (along with southern Unionists and the so-called "carpetbaggers" from the North) who needed protection from the Klan, ex-Confederate soldiers, and anyone else who favored that treasonous "Lost Cause" and was still upset about losing, especially at a time when they simply could not rely on the (white southern) officials who were sworn to protect them. It was the defeated former slave states that were now attempting to pass gun-control laws -- to make sure that blacks were disarmed and defenseless. "In response, antislavery theorists emphasized the personal right of all free citizens -- white and black, male and female, northern and southern, visitor and resident--to own guns for self protection." (Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights at 262.)

So Paxton's arguments are especially malicious considering what the Second Amendment came to mean after the Civil War: the individual right to bear arms for self defense was on equal footing within the Second Amendment along with militia duty. Why? It was the African-American experience in the Reconstruction South -- surrounded by a hostile population, bereft of help from the so-called civil servants that were sworn to give that protection -- that started serious talk about the Second Amendment protecting an individual right to bear arms for self-defense purposes. That is something that we cannot forget -- both for their memory, and for our own sake.

Of course, Paxton's argument falls apart for another reason. One of the benefits of the First Amendment was that slave owners could propagandize in favor of slavery without interference from the Federal Government. Is Paxton arguing that the First Amendment is therefore illegitimate as well...? And the Fourth Amendment -- the unreasonable searches and seizures would also prevent the seizure of slaves by the Federal Government without due process. Should we junk that one, too? In fact, some have said (ahem) that the entire Constitution is 'stained with the original sin of slavery'. Certainly, some slave owners did assist in its drafting and ratification. Does the entire thing get junked? Paxton seems to imply that it would.

[mikepro8]

My head just exploded.

Seriously... I think this guy lives on a separate plane of existance.
Hell, I have made some crazy stretches while arguing points before, but this guy is seriously off his rocker.

BTW, great post crlovel - you speak the truth.
My family never owned slaves - they were too dirt poor to own slaves. I hate even hearing the rhetoric day in and day out. Its done, nothing that anyone can do and UNdo it. Move on.

[Booner]

Hippies smell.