John Hinckley was a mentally ill young man who acquired a gun to shoot Reagan in a misplaced and deeply confused plan to impress a Hollywood actress. Reagan was surrounded by well-armed and well-trained Secret Service agents.
Lost in discussion at the time was the fact that the Second Amendment was written by our slaver- and slaver-adjacent founding fathers to ensure that local and state militias would always be well-armed in order to put down slave revolts.
People forget that our Founders wrote the Constitution in a serious and deep debate about the future of slavery. In the end, Jefferson (a slave owner) began the process of ending slavery by pushing for a federal ban on the importation of slaves after 1807.
But Jefferson's federal push to end slavery was exactly the problem as far as Virginia and other slaver states were concerned.
What if the federal government could not be counted on to come to the aid of white plantation owners in case of a slave rebellion?
Enter local and state militias and the right to bear arms.
What were these local and state militias about? To put it simply, the mandate of these local and state militias was to put down slave revolts -- the looming fear of every Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia planter.
So when did the United States embrace an expanded interpretation of the Second Amendment that included an individual right to own guns?
It was certainly not there in the beginning.
In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment did NOT protect weapon types NOT having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia".
It was not until 2018, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to keep a gun for self-defense — a reason for gun ownership first voiced in English common law and the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
To this day, the NRA's basic position is that gun ownership is a white right. The subtext of America's gun culture is that gun ownership is necessary in case "they" rise up and chaos ensues. No one has to say who "they" are. The fear of BLM is not a fear of Baptists!
Nothing terrifies NRA members as much as black men and women standing in support of civil rights. “Where are the police," they ask? Where is the armed militia to put down this slave insurrection? And my God, are those people selling drugs?"
As I noted back in 2013:
The quickest way to gun control is if black folks and Hispanics "Open Carry" handguns to their State Capitols and loiter near the parking lots where state and federal legislators and their staffs park their cars.
A really smart gun control group would organize this to make this happen.
But, of course, that has never happened, because police shoot and beat unarmed protestors with impunity. Black protestors with guns? They would drop bombs on them, and no I am not kidding.
It's important to acknowledge that guns are inherently dangerous, but also to acknowledge that so too are swimming pools, hammers, chainsaws, cars, and gasoline. We ban none of those things, but we regulate quite a number of them.
Can we regulate gun ownership to require background checks, mandatory insurance, licensing, and training?
Of course.Can we ban certain kinds of guns, bullets, and munitions?
Of course.
But are guns here to stay?
Of course.
White folks are still very much afraid.
Related Posts:
- Fighting In the Streets
- The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership
- The Start of the Second Amendment
- Supremes on Your (Restricted) Individual Right
- Locked, Loaded, Liberal, and Lesbian
- Hacking at the Roots of Violence
- Time, Place and Manner and the 2nd Amendment
- We Need Blacks, Jews, and Gays with Guns
- The Police State, and White Hegemony
- Making Fascists Fear Again
- Kamala Harris Is a Gun Owner
- Support Mental Health Or I'll Kill You
- Libya and the Second Amendment
- Thomas Jefferson at the Police Barricades
- "Founding Father" Arguments are Irrelevant
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