For the longest time I have defended the 2nd amendment of the constitution of the United States. Not because I think it's good to have people walking around with guns in this day and age, but the spirit behind its origin I always found compelling. However, I was wrong...
Image by Pål Joakim Pollen - source: Flickr
Let me start by saying that I, and most other people who are not from America, am always amazed at the reaction of many Americans when their 2nd amendment is discussed or criticized in any way. It's as if the right to bear arms is some kind of holy ground, not to be contaminated with any restrictions of any kind. Republicans' fear of the Democrats "taking away their guns" is unfounded because no political leader in that country would dare propose the abolition of this holy amendment; they'd never win an election. And like I said, going by conventional wisdom on the origin of the 2nd amendment, I can understand how people in "the land of the free" have grown accustomed to their right to own firearms. That conventional wisdom is that the states have the right to form well regulated and armed militias to defend the states' freedom and relative independence against the federal government. Here's the text of the amendment:
"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."
Seeing that America had won its freedom from the King of England, which is still celebrated every year on July 4th, Independence Day, one can understand that the people in the young country were suspicious of an overbearing federal government and standing armies. And I also believe that the power of the government, any government, should be constricted as much as possible. So, I like the idea behind the 2nd amendment against the background of the zeitgeist in which it originated. However, nowhere in the amendment is talk about the right to bear arms as a way to defend oneself individually. The understanding of the 2nd amendment as simply the right to own guns, and to defend oneself, family or property, has gradually changed through Supreme Court verdicts.
Loaded: A Disarming History of the 2nd Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Review
But that's not the focus of this post. What I want to focus on here is that I've been wrong all those years about the reasons behind the inclusion of the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. You see, it's never been used to protect the state against the federal government. Even armed uprisings within the states have never been quenched or resolved through the use of a well regulated state-militia, but rather through the invocation of the armed forces of the federal government. What it has been used for though is to put down slave uprisings... Slaves and free black people weren't allowed to bear arms, you know? And if we look at the full story of how, when and why the southern states made so much effort to include the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights, it becomes perfectly clear that this amendment is born out of fear of revolting slaves. Not for personal defense and not for safeguarding the freedom of the state.
I've included two videos in here, one reviews the book Loaded: A Disarming History of the 2nd Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and one is an interview with Carol Anderson, professor of African American Studies; they both make a clear case for the racial and racist motivations for the 2nd amendment. It's ironic then, that until this day black people are still disproportionately victims of police brutality and police shootings. Please watch both videos, especially if you're an American. It would be useless for me to argue for the disarming of American citizens, so I won't do that here. But maybe there's a case to be made for gradual change towards less guns by making people aware of their history.
DEBUNKING 2nd Amendment Myths
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