How Fake 2nd Amendment History Kills

[WilliamPitt]

False history can kill, as the American people have seen again in the slaughter of 12 people working at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. on Monday, when an emotionally disturbed gunman gained access to the military facility and opened fire, adding the site to a long list of mass-murder scenes across the United States.

Though the focus after the latest rampage has been on the need for better mental health detection and for better security at bases, the underlying story is again how easy it is for people in the United States, like the troubled Aaron Alexis, to obtain lethal weaponry – and how hard it is to keep guns away from dangerous individuals.

In that sense, the Navy Yard narrative is just one more bloody patch in the grim tapestry that stretches from Virginia Tech to Aurora to Newtown to hundreds of other locations where thousands upon thousands of innocent lives have been taken by gun violence in America.

But a key reason why the nation is frozen in a shocking paralysis, unable to protect even little children, is that the American Right has sold much of the country on a false history regarding the Second Amendment. Right-wingers and other gun-rights advocates insist that the carnage can’t be stopped because it is part of what the Framers designed.

Yet that is not and never was the actual history...

The rest: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/19/how-fake-2nd-amendment-history-kills/

[NYC_SKP]

1. The amendment was never intended as a blank check for some unstable person to massacre...

That's a fact!

And, this is also a fact:

The clear message from the Right has been that armed Americans must confront the “tyrannical” Barack Obama – the twice-elected President of the United States (and the first African-American to hold that office) – especially if he presses ahead seeking commonsense gun restrictions.

Crazy times, man...

[1-Old-Man]

2. About a year ago I spend a good bit of time researching the history of the 2nd Amendment

I've gone and looked for myself, and I have to tell you, there is nearly nothing in that article that I saw any support for. That said I have to admit that among the various Amendments to the Constitution it is the 2nd for which the least background is available. It is very easy to find out where it came from but nearly impossible to find out why it was written, what the thinking behind it was.

[Robb]

5. Probably by design.

As soon as you can nail down the reasons for ancient rules, you can start to chip away at their relevance to the currently living.

Such as biblical cautions against eating pork, ever. We now know when it's safe(r) to eat, when it's not. If anyone could show the 2nd was written for a similarly outdated threat, well, it would weaken the absolutists' arguments.

[WillyT]

3. K & R !!!

[hack89]

4. The 2A amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms

according to President Obama and the Democratic party platform. I agree with them.

I also agree with justice Scalia that guns can be restricted - the 2A does not forbid the regulation of guns.

[The Magistrate]

6. A Solid Piece, Sir

I would advance only one caveat. The amendment was, at least in part, intended as a selling point to political elements in various states who still placed a high value on state sovereignty versus the new central authority. Taken together with a common understanding that the new Federal government would not maintain much in the way of a standing army, the amendment can be seen, and certainly was sold, as offering a means for state governors ( or to put it more bluntly, the wealthy and powerful gentlemen of a state, whose creature any state governor would be ) to resist encroachment by the Federal government on their State's prerogatives, by establishing that state militias would be the predominant form of military force, and by setting control of militia at the state level. Certainly by the time of President Jackson, this view had become practically obsolescent, as the Nullification crisis showed, but it was present at the start, and is a genuine enough root from which the modern idiocy of 'its so people can over-throw the government' grows.

[CTyankee]

7. You realize you have caused massive headaches amongst certain DUers don't you?

They have taken to their beds with cold compresses on their foreheads...

[Zorra]

8. I'm sorry, but if he wants to make a real case, he needs to state historical facts and cite sources,

and Parry does little of either.

Jefferson's lust for blood and personal cowardice?

Pfffft. Hair on fire shit.

It's completely obvious that we need some serious hard core revision of gun control, but dude is full on claiming, and not backing it up with anything, while making a bullshit appeal to emotion. How about some letters, writings, or records, some solid historical evidence, of the Founder's intentions to back up his claims?

I'm not saying that Parry doesn't have a case, just that he is not making a good one at all. If he's claiming something is not, and never was, the actual history, then he could totally make his case by actually citing and sourcing the actual history.

[The Magistrate]

13. Worth Reading The Whole 'Tree Of Liberty' Letter, Ma'am

It contains a pretty mixed message. The view that Mr. Jefferson talked a better game than he actually played is a sound one.

"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted."

- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787[2]

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. If the framers were not concerned with domestic tyranny explain the 3rd Amendment.

Or the 1st or the 4th or 5th ... well, all of them, really. Every Amendment in the BoR is meant to hold the government in check, not the people.

[Lizzie Poppet]

10. A nicely-written version...

...of the failed, discredited "collective right" argument.

[CTyankee]

12. "failed"? "discredited"? Only by the extreme RW members of the Supreme Court

who were appointed by REpubublican presidents. That is YOUR side. The collective right argument was around a long time and largely agreed to by Dems and Reps alike. RW extremism changed that. If that is what you are championing, why not say so more clearly?

Many here would be interested in hearing about it

[Lizzie Poppet]

14. Or by anyone with even a basic grounding in linguistics.

Feel free to tag the individual right argument (you know...the interpretation held by our Democratic president and party) as "RW extremism" all you like...but don't expect anyone informed to buy it.

[CTyankee]

15. try some history, first Lizzie.

You side with the Scalia wing. That's RW and it's extreme for anyone calling themselves a liberal or a progressive. I know this is not what you want to hear and certainly not what you want others to know about you, but it is the awful truth.

I side with Justice Ginsburg. You do not. Nuff said.

[Lizzie Poppet]

16. I side with our President and his party.

You do not. "Nuff said."

My position on this issue happening to be the same as Scalia's doesn't make me any more of an extreme right-winger than it does the same for Barack Obama. That's an absurd assertion, to be blunt.

Personally, I don't much care about the judicial precedent on this particular matter, at least not in terms of arriving at my position. I largely base my position on linguistic analysis of the amendment itself.

[CTyankee]

20. "happening" to be!

I doubt very seriously if Pres. Obama is really happy with the Heller decision. He accepts it because at present it is the law. Can't say the same for the Republicans when it comes to Obamacare. Those who, of course, also side with you on Heller. Nice friends you got there. Most people on this website agree with Justice Ginsburg because, last time I looked,this was a liberal/progressive website. There are other places you could go that would be more simpatico with your endorsement of Justice Scalia and his views. But you know that.

[former9thward]

17. Take up your complaint with the President Obama.

From the White House website:

President Obama strongly believes that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms.

That's never been in question.

None of the Bill of Rights were about "collective rights".

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/president-obama-believes-second-amendment-he-also-believes-common-sense

[CTyankee]

21. Of course he believes that, since it is the law.

Me, I look forward to working for a presidential candidate who would be willing to appoint SC justices that would happily vote to revisit Heller and rule the way it was before.

So, I'll put you down as supporting the far RW justices of the court who were appointed by republicans. I'm not.

[former9thward]

22. President Obama believes any Supreme court decision "since it is the law?"

So no matter what they rule he supports that? Hmmmm, I remember him blasting the Citizens United decision right in front the the Supreme Court Justices at the State of the Union speech. That's the law too but that did not stop him from strongly disagreeing with it. So I imagine you will be putting Obama down as supporting the far RW justices of the court.

[CTyankee]

23. well, if he were making your argument I would agree, but we don't know do we?

[Paladin]

11. Hey, Will! Did you know that "well regulated" was interpreted differently, back then?

Way back at the end of the eighteenth century (the only time in history that counts, per Antonin Scalia), "well regulated" actually meant "having all the fucking guns and ammo you want, no matter what." John Adams said so, or maybe it was Benedict Arnold.

Hey, I've been reading that in the DU Gungeon for years, now; it must be true, right?

[aikoaiko]

18. So, Robert Parry, why didthe founding fathers avoid creating a standing army...

...if they weren't concerned about tyranny? hmmmmmm.

[jmowreader]

26. Probably because the young nation didn't have two nickels to rub together

[KamaAina]

19. Whoa! No love for Jefferson AT ALL.

[nomorenomore08]

25. Yeah, I wonder if that's a bit much. The guy couldn't have been *all* bad.

[nomorenomore08]

24. K&R

I concede that there are legitimate civilian uses for firearms - some firearms anyway - and I don't think eliminating gun ownership is realistic or even desirable. But when the most mild of gun-control measures continue to fail in Congress, and to bring out the rabid pro-gunners screaming about their "rights," things are clearly way out of whack.

[davidpdx]

27. What is scary is we have these wackos walking around with huge guns

outside of schools (like happened in the outskirts of Portland) and scare the shit out of people.

[Laelth]

28. Excellent essay. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[Loudly]

29. Who, was it supposed, would be doing the infringing if not the federal government?

The 2A was included to appease skeptics of a federal government.

But the Civil War rendered the 2A quite utterly moot and obsolete.

The Covenant of Appomattox is that armed rebellion is never legitimate in this country under any circumstances.

Having therefore been tested and found for naught, the 2A can never again be pointed to as a "right" or a reason for guns and ammunition in the hands of the public.

One can call such reverence for arms a sentimental affinity for violence and an honored tradition of spilling blood at the whim of shooters.

But a "right" no more.