[Neo-Luddite]

Just a timely reminder of how FAR afield some of our fellow citizens have wandered. Have a restful holiday! -Mike



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.

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.



Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington, D.C., bureau and the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue (Free Press, 2006).


http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/supreme-court-gun-rights-heller.html

[ArcherandShooter]

Morons. If they want history, they should look at how so many "gun-control" laws were meant to keep arms OUT of the hands of minorities.

[Chipperman]

The gun control laws were racist, not the second amendment. Idiot

There are so many holes in her logic, it's just silly

[Superlite27]

I can't figure it out. It argues that the Second Amendment is a collective right meant to ensure that only white people are armed.

You would think that someone trying to advance equality and freedom for all, would argue that it is an individual right.

Wouldn't an individual interpretation result in each individual, black as well as white, have the freedom to defend themselves?

[simpleguy]

It's nice to know that no matter what we do to restore rights to the people that there is always going to be someone wanting to play the victim. Blacks should rise up and out this author as a an instigator not welcome to the cause of bettering race relations. This is the trash that keeps us all in a never ending "racism" conversation.

End of rant. Sorry I get going. I just get so dissapointed.

[RLsnow]

gah! :@

here are people trying to make sure everyone can own guns to protect themselves, from whatever they need protecting from, or all the other things you use guns for.

and theyre racist?....i might agree if they had argued "The second amendment is an individual right...for white people" THAT would be racist....

[hanno]

The source for this drivel is a guy named Bogus? Sometimes a name isn't just a name...

[RLsnow]

thought the same thing hanno, exactly the same thing xD

[Winchester 73]

Yoy can't get further left in the mag field than Mother.
Everything they say can be taken with large grains of salt and Socialism.
Great reading in place of an enema.See their history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_(magazine)

[jdc1244]

rich libertarians…

Funny, the ones I know are poor, including me.

This is pretty well-documented history…

History also well documents that slaves owned guns and blacks owned slaves.

The article contains nothing new – we all know who the framers were: The Southerners owned slaves and the Northerners allowed slavery to continue. Using the author’s ‘logic’ it could be argued that the entire BOR is null and void.

[Titan6]

I imagine this thread will quickly disintegrate and be closed as all discussions on race draw out the worst in a select few people.

That said there is no merit to his argument. He has shown no historical basis just a lot of talk. Parts of the reason that the majority of blacks in DC support the hand gun ban is the question is irrelevant to many of them. Black men have more than a one in four chance of becoming a convicted felon in their life time.

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o-02.htm

In DC the rate of felony conviction is higher given the urban population.

[Drizzt]

Look at the comments on the article site, though. I do not think the author has anyone fooled.

[kingjoey]

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.

I'm calling BS on this info. Also, has the NAACP been to D.C.? If you dropped a nuke on D.C. only 2/137ths of the casualties wouldn't be black anyways, why is handgun statistics any different? :p

[Neo-Luddite]

One of my habits is to do a daily scan of the larger msm outlets (especially electronic newsprint) for RKBA stories. Sometimes I'll post them here for varrious reasons.

What's funny is that the 'chatter' fell off this week to near zero after an initial reaction to the Heller opener.

I mostly threw this out for the entertainment value. The AP isn't going to be picking up this story or anything.

[Orthonym]

Yeah, essentially, what Drizzt said.

I looked at that yesterday, going from a link at SayUncle's blog.

Anything I thought about saying there, had already been very well said by previous commenters.

I don't think anyone who commented there of whatever political persuasion, agreed with the writer.

Maximum slapdown, it was, in the comments.

[hanno]

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.


Now let's see...
According to the FBI's "Crime in the United States", in 2006, Blacks (12.8 % of the U.S. population) committed 6,843 murders compared to 5,339 murders committed by Whites (80.2 % of the U.S. population).
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_03.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html

Blacks make up 56.5% of the D.C. population, Whites make up 38.4%.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html

Surely someone at the NAACP can do the math. Maybe the NAACP should spend more time working on the culture of violence in some sections the Black community and less time trying to deprive law abiding citizens (including Blacks) of the ability to defend themselves.

We cannot have an honest discussion about violence in this country unless we are also willing to discuss some very inconvenient facts.

The 2nd is there for everyone, it says nothing about race.

[rhubarb]

When I saw the thread title, I thought, "Aha! Somebody else gets it now."

If you look at the history of gun control as it has to do with race, you will see racism mainly against blacks in American gun control laws. It's obvious to me, a white male.

The writer of this article, the NAACP and their ilk are trying to muddy up the truth so that they can control the poor and ignorant. Gun control is just one type of control. The last thing they want in the world is individual Liberty. Drivel.

[Standing Wolf]

Too much gin on the Wheaties again.

[LegalAlien]

OOHHHHHH BOY!!!!!
Why . .oh why . . . . must the tired old race and slavery cards be played????

Enough of that.

Is there anything in the 2A that reserves the term "Militia", or the term "the People" for whites only???????

Hop on the next freighter to back Africa and go duck some AK bullets over there.

[geophysicishooter]

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

What the author leave out, or leaves to the readers' inference, is how many of those murders were commited by blacks in a community that is, according to the article, 80% black.

It seems to me that people who turn to government to control their lives have little interest in taking control of it themselves. Thus, we have well over half a century of government welfare, affirmative action and prefferantial treamtment of certain segments of the population with little, if any, growth seen from those communities as a whole. It's sickening.

[stubob2517]

"and the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue"

Let's see; anti-gun, pro-lawsuit, probably against the death penalty. I belive she may qualify as a mushroom eating, Edie Brickell listening, ganja smoking, dread lock wearing, non-underarm shaving, why can't we all just get along liberal. Just a guess though...

[Ratzinger_p38]

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

I suppose if the supposed gun violence 'jump' only affected whites, descendants of slave owners (IE - me) and rich people Mother Jones would be just peachy with it!

[lanternlad1]

Ummm... Before this was the Heller case, it was the Parker case. And Parker is a black female. There are other plaintiffs in this case, not just Heller.

[OMGWTFBBQ]

Looks like a classic case of cognitive dissonance to me.

Restrict the ability of the black majority to protect themselves from gun violence.

There we go, fixed that part.

[Vern Humphrey]

This is pretty well-documented history, thanks to the work of Roger Williams School of Law professor Carl T. Bogus.
With a name like that, you'd expect him to publish crap.

[Deanimator]

The history of gun control in the United States is also the history of White supremacism... into which Mother Jones has apparently bought.

Mother Jones and the Klan, marching in lockstep...

[bogie]

One of JR's old blogs...

ROSS IN RANGE
Race, Values, the O.J. Verdict, and Right-To-Carry, or
A Statistician Explains a Conundrum
By John Ross

Copyright 2003 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.

I had another column ginned up for this week�s offering but then I read something an hour ago which made me save it for a later date and address something else that�s been on my mind, namely blacks and Right-To-Carry laws. Some background:

Those of you who are regular readers of Ross in Range may notice a similarity in layout and scheduling (but not necessarily content) to another, much more widely read Internet column called Fred On Everything at http://www.fredoneverything.net/ColMenu.html by Fred Reed.

This is not a coincidence. I have been a regular reader of Mr. Reed�s writings for a number of years, from back when he started working for my friend Bob Brown at Soldier of Fortune. Mr. Reed is twelve years older than I, a Marine and decorated Vietnam combat vet, and worked as a police beat columnist for the Washington Times for several years. As such, he has experience in areas I do not, though we�ve both spent a lot of time in the Third World�s more interesting backwaters, often with a girl or a gun in our hands. (Couldn�t resist that one. I think Mickey Spillane takes control of my keyboard sometimes.) Fred is now an expatriate living in Mexico and spends his time writing, scuba diving, hanging out in bars, flirting with women, and apparently doing exactly what he wants.

I like Fred�s weekly columns, and while some (like #199) try to be too cute for my taste, others are absolute knockouts. The latter variety often deal with issues of race and education�the so-called "melting pot" of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in America, and how much (if any) each of these groups is indeed melting.

Fred�s background, especially his years in D.C., gives him the right to speak with firsthand authority on matters I usually avoid: race relations in general and what most people (privately) think of as The Black Problem in particular.

My avoidance is not from cowardice but out of an innate belief that a person who (starting at age three) enjoyed attendance at the best private schools he could get into has not the credentials to be lecturing on matters of sociology and the underclass.

In that light, when Fred writes about blacks and education, given his experience in D.C., I read very carefully. He�s hit some home runs on this subject before, but I thought his 200th column "Whiteness Studies" was an especially long ball, as was #180 "What�s a White Guy to Do?" (Side note: If you are a regular reader of Fred�s column, be aware that his view of the black/white state of affairs in America is more bleak than my own. I am willing to concede that might be due to Fred having more accurate information, however.)

Central to Fred�s commentary is that in D.C., blacks run the whole political and educational system, they have plenty of school funding, and the teachers are paid far more than the national average. The results are terrible. What to do? Neither he nor I have any idea.

At the risk of being accused of blaming blacks for all their own problems, it strikes me that as long as so many blacks have such different value systems from their white counterparts, we will never see the generally easy coexistence that whites enjoy with Asians and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Hispanics.

Never was this brought home so dramatically for me as at the O.J. Simpson trial. I am not talking about the fact that a largely black jury reached a verdict of Not Guilty in the murder of two whites. This has happened many times in our history on the other side of the racial aisle. I am referring to what one columnist* called "the absolutely breathtaking reaction" of America�s entire black population when the verdict was announced. Across the country, Black America was positively jubilant.

When white Americans see film footage of some pus-gut like Bull Connor and his thugs using fire hoses and billy clubs on peaceful black freedom marchers, the near-universal reaction is revulsion. The same is true of lynchings.

It is true that over the years there have been cases where an all-white jury has ignored the evidence and freed a white man for a vicious crime because his victim was black, but White America as a whole has never, in my memory, cheered such events. I would like you to engage in a little exercise here with me. I would like you to envision the O.J. Simpson case, with the races reversed.

Imagine a white Hall of Fame footballer turned actor/pitchman, like Howie Long. Imagine Howie had a moderately hot-looking black ex-wife with a high school education and breast implants. (To my knowledge Mr. Long is not so encumbered, but bear with me.)

Imagine that there was overwhelming DNA and other evidence that Howie had butchered this black ex-wife and a black male acquaintance of hers. Imagine the entire Howie Long Trial being televised for months, and being called the "Trial of the Century." Imagine Greta Van Susteren's TV career being "made" by her televised legal commentary on The Howie Long Trial. Imagine that during The Howie Long Trial there is the revelation that one of the black cops involved with Howie�s arrest disliked whites and had used the terms "white devil" and "honky" in the past. Imagine the defense team running with this and arguing that all the city's black officers tampered with evidence and engaged in a huge conspiracy to frame Howie for the two murders. Finally, imagine a largely white jury telling us they had weighed the evidence and decided Howie was Not Guilty.

Can you, in your most reckless imaginings, see White America having a mass celebration over this Not Guilty verdict, and repeating the mantra The black bitch (and her friend, presumably) deserved it? I can�t. Not at all. Similarly, can you imagine whites all across America being particularly upset at the possibility that Howie might get sent to Death Row for murdering two black people? The concept is ludicrous.

And yet whites in America have come to expect this very sort of thing of blacks. We expect blacks to set fire to their own neighborhoods and loot the black-owned businesses therein when a jury verdict in a racially-charged case displeases them. And they do.

Which brings me to the Right-To-Carry issue. Missouri is unfortunately one of the five remaining states which absolutely prohibit honest adults from carrying a concealed firearm for protection. There is no permit available here under any circumstances. The legislature passed Right-To-Carry last month, but it is not yet law, and there is fear that our Governor may veto the measure, although I believe there are enough votes for a veto override. (7/3/03 update: Gov. Holden just vetoed RTC in a big ceremony this afternoon in St. Louis County. 9/11/03 Update: The Missouri House and Senate just overrode Governor Holden's veto of RTC. Missourians just got some of their rights back, after 129 years.) I wrote an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on this issue, but they want you to pay $2.95 to read it online. I'll put my article up on my site when I get the text loaded.

When discussing this matter, people inevitably bring up Missouri�s 1999 ballot referendum on Right-To-Carry, which was narrowly defeated (with a dismal 30% voter turnout, I might add.) The fact is that the measure passed in almost every county in the state. The defeat came from the fact that two very large urban precincts in St. Louis and Kansas City were over 90% opposed. At the time, I thought this was vote fraud (and to be honest, I still think that was a factor). Ninety percent? You can�t get ninety percent agreement on anything.

A black businessman (who was one of the handful of St. Louis city residents who voted for the referendum) and I were discussing the recent passage of RTC. I brought up the referendum results, and said I could not understand why blacks had been so uniformly against the measure. The proposal was a "shall issue" one, where if you satisfied the requirements (training, fingerprints, no criminal record, no mental illness, etc.) you couldn�t be denied the permit just because the sheriff didn�t like the idea of people besides the police having guns. The businessman stared at me.

"I thought you were good at math," he said. I allowed as to how I felt that I was. "Then you must never have taken Statistics and Probability." I told him I had done this also, and that it had been one of the most rewarding math classes I had ever taken (and incidentally was taught by Amherst�s professor Denton, who is black.) "Then you must be cowed enough by political correctness to never think of applying statistics and probability to anything involving race." Finally I admitted that this last accusation might be true.

"Then I am going to ask you two true-or-false questions. One: Do blacks in the city of St. Louis have large extended families?" I answered in the affirmative. "Two: Is it true that in St. Louis, over 40% of the black males between the ages of 17 and 25 have criminal records?" I told him that was also true, unfortunately.

"So here is the important question: What are the chances of a black person of voting age in St. Louis having at least one relative with a criminal record? Assume we define �relative� broadly, to include the young men who father the children of our female relatives, whether married to them or not." He sat there waiting for my answer.

"Are we talking fathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, stepbrothers, male cousins, sons, stepsons, nephews, mothers� boyfriends, aunts' boyfriends, sisters� boyfriends, daughters� boyfriends, stepdaughters� boyfriends, female cousins� boyfriends, nieces� boyfriends, as well as anyone actually married to a female relative?" I asked. He nodded. "Then I�d say there's nearly 100% probability that at least one relative would have a criminal record." He smiled at me like a teacher who has just gotten the right answer from one of his slower students.

"So," I said, "I'm to believe that the black sentiment in St. Louis was �I wish young Tyrone would stop robbing people, but I don�t want one of the people he robs to shoot him dead.� Is that it?" I asked.

"You�ve got it exactly," he told me.

"But why? I mean, honestly, if some guy was married to my cousin and mugged people for a living, I�d figure he was making his own choices and could damn well take the chance of being blasted. I wouldn�t vote away my rights to help his sorry ass."

"What if it wasn�t just your one cousin�s husband, but 40% of all your male relatives between the ages of 18 and 25? What if that was, oh, I don�t know, a dozen people?" Suddenly I didn�t know what to say.

"You don�t feel that way," I said finally.

"I�m an Uncle Tom. I�ve recently come to realize that I now have very few black friends."

This statement filled me with an ineffable sadness. I know that we will get Right-To-Carry here in Missouri, even if the Governor vetoes it. That�s not the issue. And every black Missourian with a criminal record isn�t going to get shot by an armed citizen�we all know that, too. In over 98%** of the cases where a licenseholder encounters a criminal, he stops the crime without firing a shot. It�s that way in Atlanta and every other big city with a large black population in a Right-To-Carry state, so there�s no reason to think it would be any different in Kansas City or St. Louis.

But the O.J. trial and what the black businessman said has stuck with me. What hope can we have, I wonder, if the values that blacks hold dear are mutually exclusive of those held by whites?

John Ross 6/23/03

[Justin]

I stopped reading when I hit Carl Bogus' name. He's nothing more than a shill for the Joyce Foundation. (But then again, among the anti-gun crowd, who isn't?)

[buttrap]

Mother Jones is out of San Fransisco and one of its early Editors was our buddy Mikey bowling for donuts Moore. Its one of the most extreem left wing rags short of the communist party publications in the US.

[denfoote]

Like most liberals, she needs to put down the crack pipe or the hooka.

[Harley Quinn]

The original Constitution did consider a certain group or people as 3/5ths. And no mention about rights for the other half of man :what: But then you'd have to read the Constitution to know that.

Here is a link, start there and then read it, might help some of you.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/constitution/

[Beagle-zebub]

Oh man, no WONDER colonial New England was behind the second amendment! :rolleyes:

[george29]

Even if she is right about why the Second was written, it should now be clear to her that only when a Black man and a White man can both equaly be able to defend themselves will there be true equality. Shame on her for trying to keep guns from decent Black folk

[Vern Humphrey]

Even if she is right about why the Second was written,

1. She's wrong.

2. Laws against carrying guns in the South were passed to prevent Blacks from carrying -- in fact, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a White man on just those grounds.

[Big45]

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.

This writing is laughable.

[george29]

Laws against carrying guns in the South were passed to prevent Blacks from carrying -- in fact, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a White man on just those grounds.

That's why we (and she) need to fight the DC ban, to allow the Blacks their right to be free and safe by ownership of weapons of self defense. I guess you didn't understand what I wrote.

[JWarren]

The woman's guilty of what MANY people are....

Re-interpreting the intent of the Founding Fathers based upon the social and political rhetoric of today. She is interpreting is as she WISHES it to be.


My grandfather used to always tell me-- and I quote him a lot--

"Truth doesn't care whether you believe it or not."

Our Founding Fathers left a plethera of supporting documentation for anyone who wishes to know their intent.

We don't need to argue about commas, semicolons, or whatever.

She's the type of person that I get a strong urge to smack in the back of the head with a half-filled Mountain Dew bottle. It probably wouldn't knock any sense into her, but it would sure as hell make me feel better.


I guess the reality that the second is about FREEDOM and the NFA and GCA are about restriction is beyond her.

The NFA was a response to the Mafia, and the GCA was a response to the Civil Rights Movement. The Second was about kicking butt- whether it be tyranny or King George.

Pretty simple to me.


-- John

[Vern Humphrey]

I guess you didn't understand what I wrote.
I did indeed understand what you wrote - my point is that gun control in the south is documented as being anti-Black.

[Johannes_Paulsen]

Mother Jones is out of San Fransisco and one of its early Editors was our buddy Mikey bowling for donuts Moore.

Yes, but they actually had standards and fired him (at least, per the Wikipedia):


After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista's human rights record in Nicaragua. Moore stated that he would not run the article because Ronald Reagan “could easily hold it up, saying, 'See, even Mother Jones agrees with me.” Berman described Moore as a "very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy" when asked about the incident. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.

Mother Jones is a magazine whose editorial line is easy to disagree with, but whose arguments I would not dismiss out of hand. The people who write there (along with The Nation) tend to be the intellectual elite of the leftist media. Their arguments should be studied carefully and answered comprehensively.

For instance: the argument he puts forth concerning the 2nd amendment and slave-owners wanting to keep their weapons in case of slave revolts...well, I honestly don't know what the facts were, having never studied it in detail, but that claim does not seem absurd on its face. Slave owners were citizens, slaves were not. Given the fears these slave owners had about slave revolt, it does seem reasonable to assume that they'd be ONE group that WOULD have such concerns.

Does this mean that the Second Amendment is illegitimate? No, of course not. More law-abiding citizens have found protection thanks to the right to keep and bear arms that it affords us than scoundrels. And, in any event, I doubt that slave owners were the only ones concerned about the right to keep & bear arms in 1789.

And, as many people pointed out, many gun control ordinances enacted after the Civil War in the south were intended to disarm African-Americans.

I don't think this fellow's arguments are correct....but I think we are going to hear more of this line of argumentation from the left in the future, and it would behoove us to research this issue further and make sure that we have our arguments locked down, instead of just dismissing this with a Dogbert-esque wave of the paw....

[ozwyn]

At the risk of being offense, or worse yet saying too much truth:

I find it amusing the same left leaning 60's drug using hippies who introduced hard drugs to the black inner cities and made damn sure the drug/gang apocalypse was escalated to the point of sabotaging the civil rights movement they supported now wish to remove more civil rights from African Americans to save them.

Yet again the voice of the left is finding new ways to dress up the same old chains.

The real tragedy is the NAACP is their bossman for the new slavery.

And if they have their way, all races will be their slaves and united in a media run, credit driven bondage.

that's my rant and my .02

[Johannes_Paulsen]

One other thing: I don't know who Bogus is, and can't say much about his qualifications. But I can tell you that an academic Law Review or Law Journal, typically, is not a peer-review journal, but rather a student-run journal. (In fact, I used to be an editor for one of them). Certainly, the students in most cases do their best and fact-check as well as they can, but they're not hard-core academics.

Basically, if a professor has something serious to say about statistics or history, he would probably publish it in a peer-review journal in one of those fields.

[230RN]

First thing I did was turn around quickly five times clockwise to counteract the "spin" on that article.

Then I looked at the calendar to see how long it was to April Fool's Day.

[george29]

I may get slammed but here goes; I think Sharpton/Jackson are the biggest culprits of the people they are supposed to be helping. Here I am Mr. White Bread telling the world the Blacks should have guns but all I hear is roaring silence on the issue from Sharpton/Jackson, maybe they afraid their own people gonna shoot them?

[another okie]

There is an element of truth in the article. One of the duties of the militia is to put down civil disorder, and if that took the form of a slave revolt, then they did it.

However, you would be wrong to say that was their main duty. I am not aware of any slave revolts in Vermont or most other northern states, yet they had militias, too. (There were a couple of revolts in New York before 1776.)

Saying that this was the "reason" for the Second Amendment is a little like saying that the "reason" for the Democratic Party after 1865 was to preserve the oppression of black people.

If you want to learn more, start with these names: Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner.

[geophysicishooter]

I find it amusing the same left leaning 60's drug using hippies who introduced hard drugs to the black inner cities and made damn sure the drug/gang apocalypse was escalated to the point of sabotaging the civil rights movement they supported now wish to remove more civil rights from African Americans to save them.


Best post of the thread.

[Bezoar]

the thing is, the writer makes the assumption that the 2a was created to let "white man militias" keep the poh black slave in his place.
Well do some research, no slave uprisings happened until the abolitionists started up in the 1800s.

as far as the supposedly disproportionate number of deaths between the races. Its simply a numbers gang. The best way to explain it is this way.

take a room, put 100 people in it. 12 get pink tshirts, the rest of fuschia tshirts. A guy in grey shirt comes in and empties a 30 round magazine into the crowd. Physics and math tells us that more people wearing a fuschia tshirt will get shot then people wearing pink shirts.

[RPCVYemen]

From my readings of the history of the 2nd Amendment (from actual historical sources, not articles from American Rifleman), the following statements in Mother Jones sees very likely to be correct:


The militia was the first and last protection from the omnipresent threat of slave insurrection or vengeance. The War for Independence had placed the South in a precarious position: sending the militia to the war against the British would leave Southern communities vulnerable to slave insurrection. The Southern states, therefore, often refused to commit their militia to the Revolution, reserving them instead for slave control.


This a quote from Bogus's article for the UC Davis Law Review. For those who think for themselves, here's the article:

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Bogus2.htm

You may disagree, with many of the other portions of the article, but I suspect that the review of the battle between the Federalists and anti-Federalists over the 2nd Amendment is largely correct.

I think that there is plenty of evidence in the historical record to indicate that the Southern states did in fact demand the 2nd Amendment to prevent northern abolitionists from dia-arming the southern militias that were the fist bulwark against a slave uprising.

Here's Patrick Henry, concerned that Congress would not call fort the militia to suppress a slave rebellion:

If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress insurrections. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only, can call forth the militia.

There was a lot of concern in the South over federal control of the state militias.

There was lot of concern in the South that the North would seek ways to force the South to abandon slavery. I think that subsequent history verifies the Souther fears. :)

That is not to say that all of the authors (or ratifiers) shared this concern. Other authors had other concerns - there were undoubtedly people who backed the 2nd to avoid home grown tyranny, as there were people were not at all concerned about domestic tyranny, but were concerned about foreign tyranny.

History is complex - denying history is just silly.

Well do some research, no slave uprisings happened until the abolitionists started up in the 1800s.


Gloucester County, Virginia, Sept. 1663
New York, 1712
Stono, South Carolina 1739
New York, 1741


To my mind, the fact that the 2nd Amendment may have been supported by slave owners concerned about their right to protect the institution of slavery does not imply that the 2nd Amendment was invalid.


With a name like that, you'd expect him to publish crap.


The source for this drivel is a guy named Bogus? Sometimes a name isn't just a name...


Making fun of a man's last name - is that the source of our intellectual pride?

Mikey bowling for donuts Moore.

Is calling someone "fatso" the best we can do? Does it make you proud to be a member of THR?

Pretty high road.

Mike

[Crunker1337]

Believe it or not, the NAACP is a racist organization.
No lie.
Check out the name: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
It does not stand for National Association for the Equality of Colored People.
It is, by name, an association that intends to ADVANCE the standing of "colored people". Hence, its goals can be furthered by attacking "non colored people" and labeling them as racist.
Besides, the Second Amendment mentions nothing about race, nor does the federal definition of the unorganized militia. The right to keep and bear arms applies to all full citizens, regardless of race or ethnicity or skin color or whatever you want to call it.
The SCOTUS ruling Dred Scott v. Sandford said:
"It would give to persons of the negro race, …the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, …the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."
That's what you can do if you're a full citizen. You can choose to carry arms.

This coming, by the way, from a person of color. Because yeah, according to the article--race matters. We've come a long way since the days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who wanted grandchildren of slave owners and slaves to be united, haven't we?

[One of Many]

It seems to me that a large segment of society is living in self-imposed slavery; they are enslaved to the government as pseudo-parent, providing them with entitlements and absolving them from any personal responsibility for their own welfare and safety. Why would they want to vote for a right that requires them to become responsible for their own safety, as long as they can continue receiving the free police protection and guarantee of safety (yes, I know that is not true, but the voters believe it is and vote accordingly). They think it is free, because so few of them actually pay any taxes into the system, but instead draw the government welfare replacement now called the Earned Income Credit, the Child Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit. They work just enough to qualify for the "refunds" but still not enough to owe any taxes, and rake in the booty.

This is not a racial issue, but it is true that in certain areas a strong majority of these people are from minority groups. Whether slavery is imposed by force or by choice is the issue. Slavery at this time is mostly by choice in the US, but to listen to most of the people that have chosen it for themselves, they are victims of the people that provide them with everything they have. They are just angry that they are not provided with more booty at the expense of real taxpayers, the 20 percent that pay 80 percent of the costs of keeping this nation functioning. These people want the police to protect them, so they don't have to worry about being assaulted by their own offspring. They ignore the fact that they are committing assault every time they put a ballot in the polling place. They prefer assault by the ballot instead of by the bullet. They ignore the fact that they are responsible for the violence in their communities, because they have not provided a stable home environment and good moral upbringing for those children, with both parents working together to instill a sense of decency and self discipline.

[hanno]

Making fun of a man's last name - is that the source of our intellectual pride?

"source of our intellectual pride?" No, sometimes things are done just for fun. I believed the "Mother Jones" article good for a laugh and not much else. YMMV.

[Telperion]

So will Mother Jones be doing an article on the racist and sexist history of the right to vote? We should eliminate this antiquated right that was used for over a century to oppress women and minorities. :rolleyes:

[mrreynolds]

When I saw the thread title, I thought, "Aha! Somebody else gets it now."

If you look at the history of gun control as it has to do with race, you will see racism mainly against blacks in American gun control laws. It's obvious to me, a white male.

I am an American of African descent. I usually just observe these tirades but the current denial level is ridiculous. During the pre error of the Declaration of Independence slavery was legal. The Declaration was just that a Declaration it was not Emancipation which is two different things.

Obviously if some white male was a slave owner he would have no desire for an African to have anything much less a gun. I was born in the North some of the older forum members from the South know what I'm talking about & I'm not implying that you are personally any kind of racist.

It just amazes me the level of denial which still exists in America & I'm not playing any cards. Hence Nazi's were German but all German's were not Nazi's I can respect that truth. The truth is the truth some of the white officers in the NYPD who don't live in the inner city don't want me walking around with any guns period. Some people can be racist & actually convince themselves that "oh I was referring to those blacks, him not you" you're ok because I like you.

That's why I have six concealed permits & a Rifle & Shotgun permit. I reside in New York NY & had an incident where false information was given against me by someone who knew I possessed a legal shotgun.

I was a resident in an apartment building in Harlem NYC. The NYPD all but kicked in my door with no less then ten officers went right to where they were told I kept my shotgun at that time a locked closet & had me open it up. They handcuffed me & stated they would proceed to arrest my whole family including my Mother.

One officer called in the serial number & I wish I had a picture of his face when they told him it was registered to me. Now all these predominantly "white males" became super polite. I instantly became Mr. Reynolds we're so sorry this so sorry that. I could have pursued it legally I was in my twenties then not as adept as I am now but I let it go. We having a saying It is what it is.

My Mother was the one who originally told me if you want to bring a firearm into this home get a permit...so I did.

[JWarren]

I usually just observe these tirades but the current denial level is ridiculous.


I agree completely. However, denial of current societal issues is not confined to one particular demographic.

During the pre error of the Declaration of Independence slavery was legal. The Declaration was just that a Declaration it was not Emancipation which is two different things.

True. History is what it is.

I was born in the North some of the older forum members from the South know what I'm talking about & I'm not implying that you are personally any kind of racist.

I’m curious. While you are not implying that any individual is a racist, are you implying that there is no or little racism/prejudice in the North?

It just amazes me the level of denial which still exists in America & I'm not playing any cards.

Again, I agree. But let’s explore this at the end.

Some people can be racist & actually convince themselves that "oh I was referring to those blacks, him not you" you're ok because I like you.

And again, are you implying that such is not said in other demographic groups?

That's why I have six concealed permits & a Rifle & Shotgun permit. I reside in New York NY & had an incident where false information was given against me by someone who knew I possessed a legal shotgun.

I was a resident in an apartment building in Harlem NYC. The NYPD all but kicked in my door with no less then ten officers went right to where they were told I kept my shotgun at that time a locked closet & had me open it up. They handcuffed me & stated they would proceed to arrest my whole family including my Mother.

Are you implying that the action of the officers was motivated by race or by the false information given against you? While I may be willing to concede your point, you have not given adequate evidence to assert a racial motivation.

I know of a teenage Caucasian kid who was pulled over for speeding where the Highway Patrol pulled him through his window and threw him into the highway after pulling him over. Yeah, I was that kid years ago. It was wrong, but it had nothing to do with race.

One officer called in the serial number & I wish I had a picture of his face when they told him it was registered to me. Now all these predominantly "white males" became super polite. I instantly became Mr. Reynolds we're so sorry this so sorry that. I could have pursued it legally I was in my twenties then not as adept as I am now but I let it go. We having a saying It is what it is.

Yes. They made a mistake, and knew it. I would argue that if they were truly racists and had no respect for law, they would have had no problems planting something. It kinda reminds me of that Dave Chappell episode about sprinkling someone with “Crack Dust.”

My Mother was the one who originally told me if you want to bring a firearm into this home get a permit...so I did.

A wise woman and I am glad you listened to her.



It just amazes me the level of denial which still exists in America & I'm not playing any cards.


OK… let’s cut through it. I wholeheartedly agree that there is a tremendous amount of denial that still exists in America.

The problem is that the “denial” extends FAR beyond some “white” people. As I have seen it, EVERYONE has the propensity of being racist/prejudice/etc.

I’ve met black people who are blatantly racists. I’ve met Asians who were blatantly racists. I’ve met Jewish people who were prejudice against others. I’ve met Northerners who made no attempt to mask their prejudice against Southerners. And how many derisive “Redneck comments do we see even on THR? How accepted is the use of many terms to address White persons—and yet, other derisive terms are now only addressed by their first letter.

And yes… I’ve met White persons who were racists.

Yet, somehow it is assumed that only a White person can be a racist. Yet it is accepted that the South is the whipping boy for the country’s societal ills.

I reject both of those notions.

We SHOULD have come far enough that we can end the tired, moldy rhetoric. We will NEVER address the problems we have in our society until we are able to finally rip the curtains down and let the light shine equally upon ALL participants regardless of race or demographics.

We will only advance as a society when we allow free expression of the issues. For instance… Don Imus. Whatever you or I may think of the guy—or whatever we think of what he said— the REAL effect of that situation and others is that NO ONE will speak openly of issues or concerns for fear of becoming the next Don Imus. It effectively creates a Wall of Silence. But has that Wall actually done anything other than hinder discussion?


We truly ARE in an age of denial. But lets make sure we identify ALL of those in denial and not seek out more whipping boys.


This entire line of discussion is OT, and will likely be curtailed. I’ll be happy to continue it in the form of Private Messages.


All the best!


-- John

[goon]

Who is Mother Jones?

Nevermind. The name meant nothing to me two minutes ago and I was fine with that.


As far as race, my opinion is that it's only an issue because people make it an issue.
The world is full of ignorant morons.
They'll target you because you're Asian, or because you're blind, or because you're a woman.
Or they'll target you because you're the white protestant male who is the source of all their problems.
Either way, morons are morons.
In an ideal world they'd all be smart enough to google "moron", see their pictures associated with that term, and rehabilitate themselves.
But alas, this is not an ideal world.

[MachIVshooter]

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

Since when is 40% an insignificant number???

[gunsmith]

You would think that someone trying to advance equality and freedom for all, would argue that it is an individual right.
Mother Jones doesn't believe in "equality and freedom for all"
They believe (like the Nazi's, also a left wing party) that police/army only needs guns.

[erictank]

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.

Interesting that they just gloss over the facts that 1) Rowan had no business shooting at someone who'd been swimming in his pool when said evilnastybadteenager is RUNNING AWAY, and 2) that Mr. Rowan was an unrepentant and demonstratedly-hypocritical victim-disarmament advocate (who, after the shooting, when confronted about his hypocrisy, stated something on the close order of "Well, I'm still going to have a gun to protect MYself!". He did, later, admit that his position was hypocritical, but continued to support victim-disarmament laws). These items are surely relevant, considering they chose to bring Rowan up in the first place.

But then, admitting the objective truth on that (or as others have pointed out, on the matter of violation of the rights of minorities re: the Second Amendment) might be a bit much to ask from the staff of 'Mother Jones', from what I've seen.

[Neo-Luddite]

erictank--I noticed they threw the Rowan story in (not really relevant, even withing the piece as written). Your memory of the affair is accurate--after when he was called on it (about being an anti-owning a pistol) he blathered on some nonsense about how he'd get rid of HIS gun once he succeeded in getting them banned.
I was in high school at the time and it helped fuel my early cynical world view about how people most interested in controling others' behavior are often the 'secret' fetishists of the behavior everyone should be worried about.

[TCB in TN]

My dad always told me that "People are just people, you have good and bad from every country, race, and religion." I have found that to be true. I grew up in a pretty much all white town, blacks were not wanted here, but it was not really an overt thing. I played sports and traveled around the state and ended up making a lot of black friends, I worked out and got into a little boxing/martial arts, and made some Asian, and Latino friends. In the process I found that my dad's words were very true. So while I grew up around some who were prejudice, I was both taught and learned to give people a chance. Now then I spent some time with some of my black friends from the Chattanooga area, went and played ball in a few places where I was the only white guy there, and I can honestly say that I was treated by some there in a very "impolite" fashion, all for being white, and NOT staying where I should. :cuss: Had the same type of experience with both Asian's and Latino's as well.

So I can speak from personal experience when saying here in the South there are still racial problems, BUT that said I have heard more damning racial comments while working in the North, and from those who live in the North than I ever have down here. Lots of folks moving down here from Michigan, and most have something bad to say about Detroit, and let me tell you those comments do involve race!

Racism, sexism, and all other prejudices are sadly part of human nature, it unfortunately seems to come much more easily than tollerance, and caring, and while overt signs, symbols, and the acts themselves may slowly be diminishing, it appears that they may never go away! But anyone who feels that it is a one way street is sadly mistaken! In truth that is just another very good reason for ALL PEOPLE to arm themselves so that they can protect themselves from those who do not take THE HIGH ROAD, so to speak!

[jakeswensonmt]

For instance… Don Imus. Whatever you or I may think of the guy—or whatever we think of what he said— the REAL effect of that situation and others is that NO ONE will speak openly of issues or concerns for fear of becoming the next Don Imus.
Which is why these Mother Whatever clowns are embedding their anti-gun agenda in racist nonsense. Of course, the racist nonsense makes no sense and withers readily under scrutiny, but due to the Imus effect mentioned above many white people will not speak out to oppose the writer for fear of being labeled a racist.

It effectively creates a Wall of Silence.
<RANT>But that wall only works one way. Only whites are silenced. I for one am sooooo sick of the nonstop accusations of racism from black "activists", especially when just about every white person in America walks on eggshells when it comes to race and fears making the slightest error that could even remotely be construed as racist. Meanwhile even prominent blacks (Sharpton, Wright, Jackson, Berry) openly exhibit their racism like it was a Nobel Prize, and rank-and-file blacks feel perfectly justified and righteous in their race-based hatred and denigration of "whitey" and "crackers."</RANT>

[geekWithA.45]

What a fascinating inversion of reality.

Even though they are wrong, let us consider that in the abstract, they are explicitly saying the same thing that we are:

When one group is institutionally disarmed, and another group is institutionally armed, Bad Things Happen.

And they're proposal is....to institutionally disarm one group of people.

Smart. Brilliant!

[Stevie-Ray]

<RANT>But that wall only works one way. Only whites are silenced. I for one am sooooo sick of the nonstop accusations of racism from black "activists", especially when just about every white person in America walks on eggshells when it comes to race and fears making the slightest error that could even remotely be construed as racist. Meanwhile even prominent blacks (Sharpton, Wright, Jackson, Berry) openly exhibit their racism like it was a Nobel Prize, and rank-and-file blacks feel perfectly justified and righteous in their race-based hatred and denigration of "whitey" and "crackers."</RANT>That's because the plight of the black man to them will never be ended with racial equality, but only by preferential treatment for blacks. They are going, IMO, farther than anyone in promoting racial tensions. Good rant, BTW.

[Nikon777]

As an Black male, its saddening some of my people are so stupid.

Many blacks don't seem to understand that... as my sig line says, the roots of gun control stem from racism.

Idiots...

:cuss:

[TEDDY]

I am a white boy from the north,Mass.Lived in Boston, and the suburbs.married a georgia/tenn. girl.now I live in SC in black naborhood.I get along with my nabors.many of the males have guns mostly for hunting.It is a fact that some slave owners allowed their slaves to have guns,for hunting.slavery was not stopped till end of civil war.however the inportation of slaves was banned in 1803? and slaves children were free.and free slaves owned slaves.after the war most slaves returned to the plantations and worked for the owner.unfortunately some whites used violents against the freed slaves.I doubt that it was the plantation owners, but white fanatics.
I am not aware of prejudice against blacks in the north.course there were not many blacks till the 60s when Kennedy and co. inported them from the south.
incidently I called blacks colored folks till I asked them what they prefered.
:uhoh:--:confused:----:D

[Nikon777]

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both are also an embarrassment. *** is wrong with these people?

[Deanimator]

I am a white boy from the north,Mass.Lived in Boston, and the suburbs.married a georgia/tenn. girl.now I live in SC in black naborhood.I get along with my nabors.many of the males have guns mostly for hunting.It is a fact that some slave owners allowed their slaves to have guns,for hunting.slavery was not stopped till end of civil war.however the inportation of slaves was banned in 1803? and slaves children were free.and free slaves owned slaves.after the war most slaves returned to the plantations and worked for the owner.unfortunately some whites used violents against the freed slaves.I doubt that it was the plantation owners, but white fanatics.
I am not aware of prejudice against blacks in the north.course there were not many blacks till the 60s when Kennedy and co. inported them from the south.
incidently I called blacks colored folks till I asked them what they prefered.
You've got enough erroneous material here to make a handout by VPC or Brady. A few:

1. Slave's children were NOT free. Where you get this from is utterly beyond me. If they WERE, why escape, if you were ALREADY free???

2. Large numbers of Blacks moved to large industrial centers around the time of WWI to work in defense industries. That continued during WWII. Besides, why would a Black person WANT to stay in the Jim Crow South? It's like a Jew wanting to stay in Germany under the Nuremberg Laws.

3. While there was plenty of "prejudice" in the South, there was more than enough to go around in the North, in Chicago in particular. Chicago was and IS one of the most segregated cities in the United States. You may not have heard of the 1919 race riots in Chicago. Oddly, Chicago was one of the few cities where race riot casualties held rough parity between the races. One reason was that the returning Black doughboys raided the National Guard armories and adequately armed themselves rather than just sit around waiting to be slaughtered. I guess lynching isn't as much fun when you have to wade through a hail of '03 Springfield and BAR fire to do it.

Trust me, what you THINK you know, you DON'T.

[Cosmoline]

They conveniently overlook the origins of modern gun laws as part of Jim Crow. The lies coming from the mouths of these self-appointed leaders ought to choke them.

[Deanimator]

That's because the plight of the black man to them will never be ended with racial equality, but only by preferential treatment for blacks. They are going, IMO, farther than anyone in promoting racial tensions. Good rant, BTW.
They don't give a flying Kucinich about the plight of the Black man (which some of them help to perpetuate). If that were the case, NONE of them would support monsters like Dick Daley, who was Cook County State's Attorney when the Chicago PD was operating its own torture chamber which catered exclusively to Black suspects.

The only "plight" they care about is the plight of their bank accounts. The pity is that victims of the public schools don't have the mental wherewithal to see the truth.

[Titan6]

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.

I guess he missed the point that they were overwhelmingly killed by... yes... young black men.

I totally missed the point that he left out the Rowan is black. I just assumed everyone knew. So his total invention that yet another black on black shooting created "racial tensions" is a bad farce.

The more I read it the more it becomes clear that it is a really, really bad hack job to paint gun rights advocates as racist. I just didn't realize how bad it was without re-reading it. Someone needs to explain facts to this liar.

[Deanimator]

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.
I'll bet Bogus doesn't talk to many actual Black people.

If he did, he'd find that the same ones who claim to support repressive gun controls, casually violate those laws on an every day basis. And I'm not talking about drug dealers or holdup men. I'm talking about every day working people who know that they're as likely to be "protected" by Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise as they are by the Chicago Police Department.

It's called "cognitive dissonance".

[Flyboy]

Clearly, he's confused the Second Amendment with the Army-Navy Laws.

Matter, of fact, even the Dred Scott decision supported the idea of blacks owning guns...that's why they ruled against making blacks free men.

[CZ.22]

I've had black friends and white friends. More of my friends have been white, but that's just because there were less black .
I've also met black jerks and white jerks.

[scout26]

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.

That's why you'll find so many contemporary writings from the founders about "How to keep a brother down" by refusing to allow them to be armed, and absolutely nothing about the need for freemen to be able to defend themselves from tyrants/criminals.

[scout26]

Double tap

[FreshTapCoke]

Wait, is this the same Militia that the anti-gun people are saying became the National Guard?? Will these people not rest until they have insulted everyone?

[Beagle-zebub]

Regardless of what side of the moral issue you are on, I think pretty much everyone would have to agree that the issue of racism is exceptionally difficult to resolve, given the nature of the terms involved.

Possibly the biggest problem is that, unless overt, it is difficult to determine with a high-degree of certainty that any given action is racist and to what degree. It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism; confirming this, though, is more difficult, since storms of that magnitude, against cities that vulnerable, within states that dysfunctional only happen very rarely, meaning that a cleanly comparable disaster afflicting a whiter city would be very unlikely to happen without considerable time elapsing during the control disaster and its experimental counterpart, during which time society might or might not change. The obvious alternative is to make rougher comparisons, but the level of roughness at which comparisons are still acceptable is up to every individual to make subjectively, and this choice may be influenced by the individual's possible racism.

The particularly offensive nature of racism encourages its use a weapon. If you have unrestricted hatred for a person, and they're not the same race as you are, what better way to attack somone than with a racial epithet? It replaces their individuality with an undesirable stereotype, makes an immutable part of their being into something bad, and impresses upon them that entire segments of the population hate them. To a lesser degree, the idea that certain races are less protected by the law gives a sadist disproportionate reason to victimize them--that might sound ridiculous, but supposedly the rates of rape victimization on Indian reservations by outsiders is astronomical (heard a story about this on NPR); whether or not the lack of legal protection is due to racism, or to the legal nightmare created by the issue of federalism, it's fairly certain that rapists are more likely to rape Indian women because of the perception that they are less likely to get punished for doing so.

Additionally, an accusation of racism is not falsifiable. We've all heard "some of my best friends are ________!" We have probably heard it more as a joke than in earnest, since it's so laughable...and that's probably the most reasonable attempt at falsification.

So, everyone is pretty much screwed.

[JWarren]

Beagle,

I lived through Katrina. The response to Katrina had NOTHING to do with racism. It had everything to do with not realizing how bad it was.

I'm really tired of seeing that accusation thrown around with nothing but one's own speculation as evidence. If racism was the motive, why was there tons of supplies going into NO weeks before we ever saw an emergency vehicle of any kind?

It was a storm of the century-- that means its kinda hard to firmly grasp the effects. It's not like the US has a lot of history or experience with dealing with such a thing....



Regurgitating the same speculative and asinine claims is no different than what we repeatedly criticize the media, gun control activists, politicians etc. about daily on this board when they use idiotic claims to support gun control. And yet, I see the EXACT thing happening regarding with issues like this. It seems that if you repeat something often enough you really will get the masses to believe it. I guess it simply depends what we wish to challenge.



-- John

[FourNineFoxtrot]

I hope this article doesn't circulate much. Doesn't matter that it's b.s.; the creation of a link, however fictional, between guns and racism, is disastrous for us. Brilliant stroke by them, of course, and I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner and with greater force. Since the anti-gun campaign has always been more about emotion than logic, it's a natural step.

If a large number of people were led to believe that guns and racism had a definite link, there would be little hope for us. Let's just hope this article dies the quiet death it deserves.

Maybe it's just the mood I'm in, but this whole idea is giving me a bad feeling.

[learn2shoot]

It is the trait of a professional (regardless of profession) to attempt to continously improve themselves in their career. Please give the author of this article the opportunity to improve herself....

thetortellini@earthlink.net

Rememeber, this is the highroad so be polite, yet helpful

[mrreynolds]

Gun control in the postwar South

David B. Kopel (http://www.reason.com/contrib/show/249.html) | February 15, 2005

If you believe everything that Michael Moore says in Bowling for Columbine and his books, then you would think that "pro-gun" people are white racists, and that "gun control" would be a wonderful way to help minorities. But a look at America's past reveals what historian Clayton Cramer has accurately called "The Racist Roots of Gun Control (http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html)."

After the Civil War, the defeated Southern states aimed to preserve slavery in fact if not in law. The states enacted Black Codes which barred the black freedmen from exercising basic civil rights, including the right to bear arms. Mississippi's provision (http://users.adelphia.net/~jmscarry/USDocuments/MississippiBlackCode.html) was typical: No freedman "shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition."

Under the Mississippi law, a person informing the government about illegal arms possession by a freedman was entitled to receive the forfeited firearm. Whites were forbidden to give or lend freedman firearms or knives.

The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867 complained that freedmen were "forbidden to own or bear firearms and thus.rendered defenseless against assaults" by whites. Or as a letter printed in the Jan. 13, 1866 edition of Harper's Weekly observed: "The militia of this county have seized every gun found in the hands of so-called freedmen in this section of the county. They claim that the Statute Laws of Mississippi do not recognize the Negro as having any right to carry arms."

Congress' "Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction" set forth the factual case for the need for a 14th Amendment to protect the liberties enumerated in the federal Bill of Rights. At the Committee's hearings, General Rufus Saxon testified that all over the South, whites were "seizing all fire-arms found in the hands of the freedmen. Such conduct is in clear and direct violation of their personal rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, which declares that 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'"

Despite the statutes, and at the suggestion of Reconstruction governors and other leaders, blacks often formed militias to resist white terrorism. For example, in June 1867 in Greensboro, Alabama, the police let the murderer of a black voting registrar escape; in response, a freedman who would later serve in the Alabama State Legislature urged his fellow freedmen to create a permanent militia. "Union League" militias were formed all over central Alabama.

The freedmen slipped from white control. One planter protested that his workers were "turbulent and disorderly," coming and going when they wished, as if they had a choice whether or not to work. The Union League, protested another ex-master, was advising freedmen "to ignore the Southern white man as much as possible...to set up for themselves."

The next spring, the Ku Klux Klan came to central Alabama. The Klansmen, unlike the freedmen, had horses, and thus the tactical advantages of mobility. In a few months, the Klan triumph was complete. One freedman recalled that the night riders, after reasserting white control, "took the weapons from might near all the colored people in the neighborhood."

The same dynamic existed throughout the South. Sometimes militias consisting of freedmen or Unionists were able to resist the Klan or other white forces. In places like the South Carolina back-country, where the blacks were a numerical majority, the black militias kept white terrorists at bay for long periods.

While many blacks participated in informal, local militias, most of the reconstruction governors set up official state militias that were racially integrated. Like many other facets of the reconstruction governments (and the racist governments which followed them), the integrated "black" state militias were corrupt. The state militias, which sought to protect the state governments and the election process, were frequently in conflict with informal white militias. Arms shipments from the federal government to arm the militias were often intercepted and seized by white militias.

Official or unofficial, the black militias were the primary target of the white racist resistance. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, the U.S. Senate advocate of racism for many decades, joined a "Sweetwater Sabre Club (http://partners.nytimes.com/books/00/05/21/reviews/000521.21dewlt.html)" whose members seized control of South Carolina's Edgefield Country from a black militia in 1874-75, and attacked a black militia at Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876.

In areas where the black militias lost and the Klan or other white groups took control, "almost universally the first thing done was to disarm the negroes and leave them defenseless," wrote Albion Tourgeé in his 1880 book The Invisible Empire. (An attorney and civil rights worker from the north, Tourgeé would later represent the civil rights plaintiff in Plessy v. Ferguson (http://laws.findlaw.com/us/163/537.html).)

The Klan's objective in disarming the blacks was to leave them unable to defend their rights, a Congressional hearing found. Afraid of race war and retribution, whites were terrified at the mere sight of a black with a gun. As legal historian Kermit Hall notes (http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Hall1.html), "From the southern white's point of view, a well-armed Negro militia was precisely what John Brown had sought to achieve at Harpers Ferry in 1859."

The Vicksburg white riot of 1874 (http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/hs_es_urban_race_riots.htm) typified the problem. According to a Congressional investigation, the whites conducted, "Unauthorized searches by self-constituted authority into private homes, searches for arms converted, as is unusual, into robbery and thieving...." The Congressional Report detailed one arms roundup:

One poor old man, half crazed, but harmless, sitting quietly in a neighbor's house, is brutally shot to death in the presence of terrified women and shrieking children. He gained his wretched living by hunting and fishing, and had a shot-gun. No one pretended that Tom Bidderman had anything to do with the fight, but he was black, and had a gun in his house, and so they murdered him for amusement as they were going from the city to restore order in the country.

The Radical Republican Congress observed the South with dismay. The Republicans intended to use federal power to force freedom on the South. One of the Radical Republicans' most important tools was the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which required states to respect basic human rights. While the vague language of the amendment has produced disagreement about exactly what is covered, the Congressional backers of the amendment seem to have intended, at the least, protecting the core freedoms listed in the national Bill of Rights. Announced Representative Clarke of Kansas: "I find in the Constitution an article which declared 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' For myself, I shall insist that the reconstructed rebels of Mississippi respect the Constitution in their local laws."

The earlier Freedman's Bureau Bill had also been squarely aimed at protecting the right to bear arms. The bill guaranteed federal protection of "the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate, including the constitutional right of bearing arms."

The Amendment was quickly emasculated by the United States Supreme Court in The Slaughter-House Cases (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby) and United States v. Cruikshank (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court), The Supreme Court understood the social realities of the South. The Cruikshank decision gave the green light to the Klan, unofficial white militias, and other racist groups to forcibly disarm the freedmen and impose white supremacy.

One state at a time, white racists took control of government by using armed violence and the threat of violence to control balloting on election day. Freedmen and their white allies also resorted to arms. But white Republican governors were usually afraid that employing the black militias fully would set off an even broader race war.

The white South, while defeated on the battlefield in 1865, had continued armed resistance to Northern control for over a decade. When the North, an occupying power, grew weary of the struggle and abandoned its black and Republican allies in the South, the white South was again the master of its destiny.

In deference to the Fourteenth Amendment, some states did cloak their laws in neutral, non-racial terms. For example, the Tennessee legislature barred the sale of any handguns (http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Tahmassebi1.html) except the "Army and Navy model." The ex-Confederate soldiers already had their high quality "Army and Navy" guns. But cash-poor freedmen could barely afford lower-cost, simpler firearms not of the "Army and Navy" quality. Arkansas enacted a nearly identical law (http://www.saf.org/COREbrief.htm) in 1881, and other Southern states followed suit, including Alabama (1893), Texas (1907), and Virginia (1925).

As Jim Crow intensified, other Southern states enacted gun registration and handgun permit laws. Registration came to Mississippi (1906), Georgia (1913), and North Carolina (1917). Handgun permits were passed in North Carolina (1917), Missouri (1919), and Arkansas (1923).

As one Florida judge explained, the licensing laws were "passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers... [and] never intended to be applied to the white population."

That gun control has a very unsavory past does not, in itself, prove that all modern gun control proposals are a bad idea. But it does offer reasons to be especially cautious about the dangers of disarming people who cannot necessarily count on their local government to protect them.

ARTICLE (http://www.reason.com/news/show/32884.html)

[TCB in TN]

It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism;

Correct me is I am wrong but I believe that many of the main LA gov. officials involved were black. I know the mayor was (Ray Naygan), and the gov. was a female dem (Kathleen Blanco), so you KNOW should couldn't ever be a racist :rolleyes: she also had a black director of public safety (Deputy Secretary, Superintendent Col. Stanley Griffin), and a black secretary of transportation, (Johnny Bradberry). While I would love to see FEMA improve in their response, the first and main responsibility for the problems related to Katrina fall first on Mayor Nagin, and the La gov. office. All the poor FEMA response proves is how in-effective the Fed. Gov is in ANY function! Just as you can never depend upon LEA's to protect you, you should never depend upon the Fed for emergency help!

[Deanimator]

Correct me is I am wrong but I believe that many of the main LA gov. officials involved were black. I know the mayor was (Ray Naygan), and the gov. was a female dem (Kathleen Blanco), so you KNOW should couldn't ever be a racist she also had a black director of public safety (Deputy Secretary, Superintendent Col. Stanley Griffin), and a black secretary of transportation, (Johnny Bradberry). While I would love to see FEMA improve in their response, the first and main responsibility for the problems related to Katrina fall first on Mayor Nagin, and the La gov. office. All the poor FEMA response proves is how in-effective the Fed. Gov is in ANY function! Just as you can never depend upon LEA's to protect you, you should never depend upon the Fed for emergency help!
While I believe there were racially motivated incidents during the disaster (police from other communities blocking escape routes from NO), BY FAR the greatest harm was accomplished through sheer stupidity and incompetence by state and local officials, Black and White. Let's be honest; through his blithering ineptitude, Ray Nagin killed more Black people in New Orleans in two weeks than the Klan has in the last HUNDRED YEARS. It was like Stalin hiding under a table, drunk with a blanket over his head during the first days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. There was quite literally NOBODY in charge of New Orleans. Ray Nagin has all of the leadership skills of the Mayor of Old Detroit in "Robocop II".

[JWarren]

mrreynolds,

What are you asserting with that Koppel article? a simple quote with no explaination does little to further discussion.

I don't think ANYONE has suggested that much of gun control found its roots in racism. I further do not thing that anyone has asserted that the South has not had its share of racism.

What HAS been asserted is that the South does not have monopoly on racism. Nor does White persons, nor does Hispanics, nor does Asians, nor does ______ (fill in the blank.)

And nothing you posted has refuted that. What exactly are you trying to say?


-- John

[Tyris]

restrict the ability of a majority black city to protect its citizens from gun violence.

Translation: I don't trust blacks with guns.
Fair enough. Neither does the KKK.

-T

[Nikon777]

<<< Black dude with plenty o' guns for the Klan.:neener:

[another okie]

It is useful to distinguish between racism and racial prejudice, as social scientists do.

Racial prejudice is believing that a particular person has certain characteristics because they are of a certain race.

Racism is applying that belief by using power to injure someone.

So someone may be prejudiced but not a racist, if they have no power over someone else of another race. A white man with a black foreman may be racially prejudiced, but has no power over the foreman, so is not racist. I think this is why many people think social scientists teach that only white people can be racists. They perceive that white people have all the power. But of course this not the case. There are plenty of black mayors, police officers, police chiefs, teachers, lawyers, judges, and so on.

If you distinguish between the two it allows to attack the most harmful part, which is racism.

[mrreynolds]

And nothing you posted has refuted that. What exactly are you trying to say?

This thread was not about universal racism it was about what I just posted. Which is what was implied in the initial article. I just learn from history or it's doomed to repeat itself....

[Vern Humphrey]

It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism;

That is absolutely untrue. I am on the Catholic Charities Disaster Relief committee. The primary cause of the problems with Katrina was that the city and state failed in their responsibilities -- so the federal government had nothing to work with -- no viable city and state disasterplans, no system to feed in information, no means to get assistance out to the people who needed it. All that had to be built from scratch.

It wasn't racism that left people in the city for lack of transportation -- while over 200 busses were drowned out.

It wasn't racism that took money for levy upgrades and used it to buy a casino and an airplane.

[JWarren]

This thread was not about universal racism it was about what I just posted. Which is what was implied in the initial article. I just learn from history or it's doomed to repeat itself....


True. But your post #52 seemed to transcend the orginal topic. Perhaps, I was assuming that your Koppel article was addressing the questions that was asked.

-- John

[mrreynolds]

True. But your post #52 seemed to transcend the orginal topic. Perhaps, I was assuming that your Koppel article was addressing the questions that was asked.

No I'm more of a bottom line type of guy ie: nuclear bombs kill not well they kill a few only if they detonate blah blah blah. I think you get my drift. They did not want "men such as myself" to have firearms but on a total seperate level you also have this:

(First op-ed in a NY newspaper which brings up the history of the Sullivan Act.)

Big Tim Sullivan was a notorious Irish gangster whose mob controlled New York City south of 14th Street around the turn of the 20th century. Throwing in his lot with the likes of Monk Eastman, Paul Kelly and Arnold Rothstein, Sullivan became an expert on that dark nexus where organized crime and politics consummate their unholy alliance, and soon became an influential figure in the corrupt Democratic machine there known as Tammany Hall.

He made the relatively easy transition from dangerous street thug and political ward heeler to New York state senator first in 1894. He left Albany in 1903 for a term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and returned to the legislature in 1909 after complaining that he lacked the juice in Washington he'd grown accustomed to on his home turf.

In 1911, the Irish and Jewish mobsters who put him into office faced a growing problem -- the Italians. Immigrant mafiosi newly arrived from Sicily and Naples were horning in on what had once been their exclusive domain. Gunfights on the Lower East Side and the neighborhood around Mulberry Street that was to become Little Italy grew more and more frequent, and it was getting so that you couldn't even shake down a barber shop or a greengrocer without some guy fresh off the boat taking a shot at you.

Not to worry, Big Tim told the boys. And in 1911, he took care of the problem.

The Sullivan Act was passed into law in New York state in 1911 and remains Big Tim's primary legacy. It effectively banned most people from owning and, especially, carrying handguns. Under the onerous conditions of the corrupted law, a peaceable citizen of sound mind could apply for a pistol permit, but if any of a number of elected or appointed officials objected to its issuance, he or she could be denied the license. The law remains in effect to this day and has been used as the basis for gun laws in many other states and municipalities.

One of those is Washington, D.C., which enacted its handgun law in 1973. Like the Sullivan law, it was written as a "may issue" permit statute, rather than the more common "must issue" permit statutes of many states. Under the "may issue" provision, a person can pass a police background check, take a gun safety course and jump through whatever other hoops the law requires, and still be turned down for a permit at the discretion of government officials.

Actual criminals, who have no problem breaking the laws against robbery,rape and murder, routinely ignore the absurd pistol-permitting process.

Last week, a challenge to the D.C. law wound up being argued before the United States Supreme Court. The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Dick Anthony Heller, 65, an armed security guard, who sued the district after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection. A lower court threw the D.C. statute out, ruling it to be unreasonable and in violation of Heller's rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The district appealed, and for the first time in our nation's history, the high court is preparing to rule on what the framers actually meant when they wrote the Second Amendment.

For many, that meaning has long been clear as glass: "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."

Two clauses that some smart editor might have made into two sentences -- the first of which calls for the establishment of a "well regulated militia," thought by most authorities to be the present National Guard, and the second, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," which needs no interpretation at all. Beginning in the 1960s, however, left-leaning legal theorists and postmodern politicians began putting forth the notion that the Second Amendment had nothing to do with individual rights, that it instead was intended simply to make sure that the state-regulated militia members had guns. This ridiculous reading flew in the face of much that was written by Jefferson, Washington and the other men of action who bought our country's independence with blood and ink and gunpowder, but scant attention was paid.

Guns kill people, the revisionists said. We have the police to protect us, and the truths of 1776 have no place in 20th century society.

Big Tim Sullivan's law was mimeographed, retyped and copied out by hand, and sent around to state capitols and city halls around the country, where politicians -- primarily liberal Democrats -- took up his tainted cause.

The old gangster would have gotten a laugh had he lived to see the results of his crooked efforts. But a year after the Sullivan Act was passed in Albany, he went insane -- the result, it is said, of tertiary syphilis -- and was placed in a lunatic asylum. A year after that, he escaped, lay down on some railroad tracks up in the Bronx and was cut into three ragged pieces by a slow-moving freight train.

As a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat of nearly 35 years' standing, I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They are the majority on the first high court in our nation's history to have the courage to tackle the Second Amendment issue head on.

And if the statements they made and the questions they asked last week as attorneys presented their oral arguments in the case are any indication, D.C. residents and those throughout the country may be liberated from the most outlandish and onerous gun control measures the states and cities have been able to pass in the four decades since the silly "Summer of Love" turned this great nation of ours on its head.

To begin with, the five justices clearly indicated that the "well regulated militia" clause is indeed separate from the "keep and bear arms" clause, and that alone is a huge step forward. How exactly they will rule on the specifics of the Washington law is less clear, but any easing of the restrictions it carries will represent a huge victory for gun owners everywhere.

Once the court sets its precedent, New York's Sullivan Act seems a likely next target for challenge by downtrodden gun owners whose rights have been violated for far too long.

Gun control has been a losing issue for Democrats for decades, and in national elections has cost them most of the western and southern states, as well as helping to create "swing states" out of such traditionally Democratic bastions as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

If Sen. John McCain has any sense, he'll use the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority's decision, which will be handed down well before November, as a major campaign issue, pointing to either Sen. Hillary Clinton's or Sen. Barack Obama's past anti-gun stances.

And if Clinton and Obama have any sense -- which, thus far, they haven't shown they have -- they will avoid the gun issue like the plague, zipping their lips and acknowledging the Supreme Court's mandate to interpret questions regarding the Constitution. If they don't, they'll be handing the election to the GOP on a silver platter.

Since its ratification by congress on September 21, 1789, the Second Amendment has never before been interpreted as to its actual meaning and intent by the Supreme Court.

Hopefully, once the justices have done the right thing by Jefferson, Washington, and the American people, the matter will not come up again for another 219 years, at least.

ARTICLE (http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/column357.html)

[JWarren]

I think you get my drift. They did not want "men such as myself" to have firearms

mrreynolds,


I do, and I agree with that assertion.

As you reminded us...

If we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.


-- John

[Coronach]

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.Interesting. Since it is a statistical fact (yes, fact) that the vaaaaaaaast majority of shootings are single demographic events (white male on white male, black male on black male), what this means in translation is that they're afraid that loosening gun restrictions will result in more black males committing murders. Hmm. Who was it Mother Jones was calling racist?

Mike

[mrreynolds]

I do, and I agree with that assertion.

As you reminded us...

If we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

No problem if you noticed I said "they" as in those involved as not to falsely accuse present company...

[Beagle-zebub]

Vern,

The state history that I am referring to is not recent, but rather that of the the hurricane that hit in '27. Even Farrakhan's accusation of the levees being dynamited had a shred of credibility, since this actually happened in '27.

[Neo-Luddite]

Honest guys, when I first posted this I had no idea it would go so far --I was just poking a stick at the Mother Jones magazine folks and their logic or lack thereof.

All the same, it has been interesting to follow the discussion thus far. Thanks -- Mike.


BTW--there was a recent PBS special on the '27 flood--I had little knowledge of that event in U.S. history and it was very interesting.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/

[JWarren]

Farrakhan's accusation of the levees being dynamited had a shred of credibility

Seriously, it doesn't have ANY credibility.

If blowing levees had ANYTHING to do with racism, PLEASE explain to me why one of the levees in question was the 17th Street Canal in Metairie-- one of the "Whiter" areas of the Greater NO area. Please explain to me why one of the others was the levee break at the Industrial Canal flooded one of the wealthiest areas of New Orleans. A man who has a hunting camp near me had his million dollar home literally swept away with the Industrial Canal levee broke.

The news puts on air what will get ratings and will draw viewers. You'd do a LOT better if you didn't formulate every view from what you get there. You'd do a LOT better if you didn't get your views from people who are exploiting events to further their own political and societal agendas...


Consider this...

A content analysis of news programs relating to Katrina will give a majority of its coverage to New Orleans. Is anyone aware that Slidell, LA-- just across Lake Pontchartrain had severe flooding?

Or how about this... Where New Orleans got flooded, Biloxi, MS was practically erased from the map. The eye actually hit there. Where New Orleans had water damaged buildings, Biloxi LITERALLY had even the concrete foundations of buildings disappear.

Perhaps we should seek deeper meanings behind our own asymetrical coverage of events?


-- John

[goon]

BTW - I'm a little hazy on this, but didn't the Democratic party originally run on a platform of racism?

[Deanimator]

BTW - I'm a little hazy on this, but didn't the Democratic party originally run on a platform of racism?
"Originally" as in this week?

Some people would say that the Clinton campaign has been throwing down so many race cards that it seems like the World Series of Poker. Of course Obama has set himself up to be the mirror image of that, hanging out with friends of Louis Farrakhan. But then both of them are CHICAGO politicians. Expecting a Chicago politician to NOT be corrupt AND racist is like expecting to find a great white shark that only eats veggie burgers with soy milk...

[entropy]

Expecting a Chicago politician to NOT be corrupt AND racist is like expecting to find a great white shark that only eats veggie burgers with soy milk... :evil:

ROTFLMAO!

2nd Amendment meant to keep slaves down? :confused: Perhaps that was an unfortunate by-product of 2A until the situation was rectified in 1862. I think Condoleeza Rice has a much different take on it, which is why she is an ardent supporter of it.

[Coronach]

FISH ARE FRIENDS, NOT FOOD!

Sorry, had to.

:D

[Stevie-Ray]

Ray Nagin has all of the leadership skills of the Mayor of Old Detroit in "Robocop II".Or the mayor of Detroit today, as I'm sure the news around the country is reporting.

[JWarren]

another okie wrote:

It is useful to distinguish between racism and racial prejudice, as social scientists do.

Racial prejudice is believing that a particular person has certain characteristics because they are of a certain race.

Racism is applying that belief by using power to injure someone.

So someone may be prejudiced but not a racist, if they have no power over someone else of another race. A white man with a black foreman may be racially prejudiced, but has no power over the foreman, so is not racist. I think this is why many people think social scientists teach that only white people can be racists. They perceive that white people have all the power. But of course this not the case. There are plenty of black mayors, police officers, police chiefs, teachers, lawyers, judges, and so on.

If you distinguish between the two it allows to attack the most harmful part, which is racism.

Anotherokie,

Something about this post bothered me, and I didn’t have the time to carefully consider it for the last day or so. But while I was pressure-washing my house yesterday, I spent some time thinking about it.

I think I figured out what bothered me: I disagree with your overall premise and definition. Moreover, the proposed premise and definition not only flies in the face of society’s accepted position (which I am not certain I agree with) but it also fails to maintain intellectual honesty. Incidentally, I am not certain Society’s accepted position maintains its intellectual honesty, either.

I rarely accept what “Social Scientists” dictate. Too many Sociologists that I have met are agenda-driven parrots who are incapable of original thought.

This is OT, but I feel compelled to explain.


Racial prejudice is believing that a particular person has certain characteristics because they are of a certain race.

Racial prejudice is not dependant upon believing a particular person has any particular characteristics. The issue is FAR more complex than that. Some people have reactions to different groups due to social issues surrounding them, and others simply do not like those different than themselves. There is a wide distribution of motives for any particular bias.


Racism is applying that belief by using power to injure someone.


Here is where it falls apart.

I reject the qualifier that to be racism, it must be applying power to injure someone. This implies A.) that only a person in a position of power can be a racist, and B.) Racism only exists through action. I find those qualifiers ridiculous. I’ve met plenty of people who could be called racists who have NO power over another person, nor have they taken any action against another person. Yet, they are clearly racist.

I can show you examples in our culture where the term “Racist” has been applied and widely accepted where neither of the above conditions are present. Where society fails the test of intellectual honesty is in cases where that SAME measurement and condemnation is NOT applied to others.

We’re going to get ourselves into a whole pile of it if we ever applied things evenly across the board…especially if we were truly to apply the definitions we have been presented.

I’ll explain.


Most reasonable people would concede that neither the KKK nor any various “Neo-Nazi” organizations have any real power or influence in the USA. To varying degrees, they may have had some influence at one time, but that day is gone. So….

Without power to apply their views or the ability to act on them, one must conclude that neither the KKK nor any “Neo-Nazis” are actually racist organizations. I think we all know differently. I think both groups may actually get their feelings hurt if you told them that they WERE NOT racists.


Now…

Why would an Affirmative Action program where race was a deciding factor in a hiring or acceptance into an institution NOT be considered racist? After all, we see both the Power to preference one race other another and we also see the Action of doing that very thing.

I reject the potential premise that AA is proactively trying to help one and not to hurt another. That is double-speak. Life is a zero-sum game. There will be a “Plus” and a Negative” to each equation. If two persons were equally qualified for a position and Person “A” was chosen over Person “B” for whatever reason, Person “B” is in a worse situation than Person “A.” If person “A” was chosen over Person “B” due to racial difference, then the decision was indeed a Racist one. Period.

Yet the KKK is widely accepted as racists, and AA programs are not.


Let’s bring it closer to home. Applying the criteria of preference and action becoming racist: Many people will vote for Obama in the desire to have a minority President. I’ve seen people on this board state that they would “Love” to see a minority President.

If a person has that preference, and then votes in that manner, they have shown preference, are in a position of power (a vote) and takes action (votes.) Therefore a person who votes for Obama where his race is a considered component in their decision-making process IS a racist.



I think you see my point.

I’ll sum it up with this. I don’t mince words. I believe that our over-complicating issues and heavy use of confusing terminology hinders our ability to address racial issues in our society.

I think this is why many people think social scientists teach that only white people can be racists.


I submit that this is one of the most idiotic concepts that have ever come out of any school of thought. I detest definitions that have built in qualifiers where it may only be allied unidirectional. Given the bandwidth, I can show a plethora of examples of how racists are common in ALL demographics. I consider the above sentiment itself a racist view.



Let’s cut to it. Racists exist in every group. Moreover, racists do not have to be OF the race that is advocated for. I have a close family member who was a large city school superintendent during the Civil Rights Movement. While white, he will ALWAYS advocate the black position over a “white” one in any given scenario. I submit that he is a white person who is actually a “black” racist.

Gets kinda complicated, huh?


Now, I’ve been called a racist on this board. I think there was a thread not too long ago where some jack-leg named ‘fishhook” or something felt that he was qualified to take measure of me.

I frankly consider myself far less racist than what I routinely see in our society. Did I say that I wasn’t racist? No. I would not be so bold to make that assertion. I wouldn't make that assertion about any of you, either. Frankly, I wouldn’t make it because I believe EVERY PERSON in our society is a racist in some form or the other. I would not be so bold as to make such a pronouncement about myself because I would not make such a pronouncement about ANYONE irrespective of their race—ESPECIALLY those that are quick to call others racists.

So there it is. It is LONG past time that we stop playing games, Cowboy Up, put our emotions away, and have a REAL discussion of racial issues in our society. As I see it, two major components are missing from our character that prevents such a discussion.

The first is respect for one another irrespective of our race.

The second is the ability to have a truly Bi-Directional Symmetrical Communication.


At any rate, there it is. I realize that this is Off-Topic, and I apologize. Or is it Off-Topic? The mission of THR is to bring unity to the gun-owner community. Can unity exist without addressing issues that churn under the surface? Perhaps it is due to the elections, but I am seeing lately an increase of threads that specifically have race as a component on THR and other gun boards. Perhaps it is healthy to have a meaningful discussion where if nothing else, we can give respect to one another equally.

But no… this is OT for THR. I apologize to Oleg and our Moderator Staff. I’ll say a few dozen “Hail John Moses Browning’s” and promise that I’ll not continue on this thread in penitence.



-- John

[trinydex]

Yoy can't get further left in the mag field than Mother.
Everything they say can be taken with large grains of salt and Socialism.
Great reading in place of an enema.See their history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_(magazine)
i would be offended if such lack of reasoning is directly affiliated with socialism.

It seems to me that people who turn to government to control their lives have little interest in taking control of it themselves. Thus, we have well over half a century of government welfare, affirmative action and prefferantial treamtment of certain segments of the population with little, if any, growth seen from those communities as a whole. It's sickening.
you know i have to wonder about people that whine about affirmative action. you say it's done nothing, but then in california you have whiners that want to abolish it because it was TOO effective and the asians are just dominating and devouring the UC system. which is it? it worked or it didn't? you hate it either way...

and the fact is it's not even an informed opinion, it's all generalizations because there are poor and uneducated asians too. in fact in california, asians occupy both extremes... kinda like whites, whoa.

ROSS IN RANGE
Race, Values, the O.J. Verdict, and Right-To-Carry, or
A Statistician Explains a Conundrum
By John Ross


this entire article is a shame. i particularly despise the part that suggests white america would not have a raving celebration that someone got off the hook for murdering a "racial other." GET REAL, it'd BEEN HAPPENING. let's not cover up reality of much of the evil that REALLY exists in the world with overarching generlizations about political and social opinion which cannot be known for fact or justified as such.

the unique socioeconomic context of the oj trial was people SHOULDN'T have had a clear cut verdict they were "voting" for. rich dominant culture should have been rooting for a rich man to win. rich dominant culture should also have been rooting for the "other" to lose.

poor minority other should have voted for not guilty, but poor minority other should also have held the rich bastard accountable, to promote a moral equality in justice.

we can all see that nothing is "as it should have been"

Imagine that during The Howie Long Trial there is the revelation that one of the black cops involved with Howie�s arrest disliked whites and had used the terms "white devil" and "honky" in the past.
please imagine with me if it's even possible that while howie is being called honky and white devil he is actually socioeconomically and sociopolitically inferior. and then i'll show you someone who's really got some racial bias under his skin.

Re-interpreting the intent of the Founding Fathers based upon the social and political rhetoric of today. She is interpreting is as she WISHES it to be.

absolutely shameful, because it is by fundamental philosophy of government that i find the second amendment to justified. debasing it off some post facto or on the basis of add on reasonings that don't get to the origins of the political philosophy is like saying someone is wrong after you redefined the meaning of what you were discussing.

The NFA was a response to the Mafia, and the GCA was a response to the Civil Rights Movement. The Second was about kicking butt- whether it be tyranny or King George.
i want to throw more gas on the fire. WHAT IF it WAS made to keep blacks down by arming white slave owners? our country has obviously made the mistake about slavery... we corrected it. now that 2nd amendment is afforded to blacks and whites alike (let's take an ideal world without exceptions for example first). do we abolish the 2nd which is or at least CAN be used for freedom and liberty just because it was originated (in a ficticious sense) in racial or racist motivation? the FACT is it's not racist now right?

Yet, somehow it is assumed that only a White person can be a racist. Yet it is accepted that the South is the whipping boy for the country’s societal ills.
i'm of the opinion that anyone can be racist. but when it comes to racial violence, or violation of an individual's rights or livelihood can only be perpetrated by those who have power.

it's easy to dish out and accept any number of racial innuendoes, in fact it's even legal to some extent as part of free speech (as opposed to spitting or something else which is assault--another type of violence--and has NO place in anywhere). i am willing to accept this "problem" (as surely it is a "problem") for the sake of liberty, freedom and that free speech should not be infringed.

that aside, when we start violence at BEYOND words and thoughts, who are the perpetrators of what?

As far as race, my opinion is that it's only an issue because people make it an issue.
The world is full of ignorant morons.
They'll target you because you're Asian, or because you're blind, or because you're a woman.
Or they'll target you because you're the white protestant male who is the source of all their problems.
Either way, morons are morons.
In an ideal world they'd all be smart enough to google "moron", see their pictures associated with that term, and rehabilitate themselves.
But alas, this is not an ideal world.
this is certainly an oversimplification and that also suggests something about your ability or desire to solve the "issue" which in my opinion comes from understanding... a little more than just naming everyone else a moron...

My dad always told me that "People are just people, you have good and bad from every country, race, and religion." I have found that to be true. I grew up in a pretty much all white town, blacks were not wanted here, but it was not really an overt thing. I played sports and traveled around the state and ended up making a lot of black friends, I worked out and got into a little boxing/martial arts, and made some Asian, and Latino friends. In the process I found that my dad's words were very true. So while I grew up around some who were prejudice, I was both taught and learned to give people a chance. Now then I spent some time with some of my black friends from the Chattanooga area, went and played ball in a few places where I was the only white guy there, and I can honestly say that I was treated by some there in a very "impolite" fashion, all for being white, and NOT staying where I should. Had the same type of experience with both Asian's and Latino's as well.

i think there are many stories like this, in fact all stories must be like this. the fact is that humans form groups, social collectives that they think can benefit them. you see it in high school, church, work, government, countries, states, ethnicities, nations etc etc etc. in fact this is natural and logical. problems with these scenarios are that we are in a small world these days. no one is an island, although many wish to be. it's hard to find people who agree with you. it's hard to find a line of reasoning that doesn't cross paths negatively with others. there's too many individuals.

with all this in mind, is tolerance not necessary? and by making that statment, isn't that what this is all about? tolerance? and my punch line, does tolerance not come with greater understanding of everything?


<RANT>But that wall only works one way. Only whites are silenced. I for one am sooooo sick of the nonstop accusations of racism from black "activists", especially when just about every white person in America walks on eggshells when it comes to race and fears making the slightest error that could even remotely be construed as racist. Meanwhile even prominent blacks (Sharpton, Wright, Jackson, Berry) openly exhibit their racism like it was a Nobel Prize, and rank-and-file blacks feel perfectly justified and righteous in their race-based hatred and denigration of "whitey" and "crackers."</RANT>
are you not already displaying the same type of "verbal or mental" racism? and so what if they hate you so much? antigunners are prejudice in the same way. what is with the frustration? you want to be able to express your racism without feeling bad? what are we really talking about here? people that are insistant on expressing their racism without feeling bad will do so. if you feel bad for it then stop, if you don't then carry on. there are plenty of people on both sides, doing both expressing and keeping silent. what's wrong??? you want ALL the blacks that are being openly racist to get checked? not gonna happen, just like it won't happen that ALL the whites that are openly racist get stopped...

let's be real here.


Here is where it falls apart.

I reject the qualifier that to be racism, it must be applying power to injure someone. This implies A.) that only a person in a position of power can be a racist, and B.) Racism only exists through action. I find those qualifiers ridiculous. I’ve met plenty of people who could be called racists who have NO power over another person, nor have they taken any action against another person. Yet, they are clearly racist.

I can show you examples in our culture where the term “Racist” has been applied and widely accepted where neither of the above conditions are present. Where society fails the test of intellectual honesty is in cases where that SAME measurement and condemnation is NOT applied to others.

We’re going to get ourselves into a whole pile of it if we ever applied things evenly across the board…especially if we were truly to apply the definitions we have been presented.

I’ll explain.


this is why i don't use the racist/prejudice nomenclature. i use the racist/violence nomenclature. you are not allowed to condemn someone for speaking freely, but once they cross the--boundary and that threshold IS LOW--it should become unacceptable to intolerant.

Most reasonable people would concede that neither the KKK nor any various “Neo-Nazi” organizations have any real power or influence in the USA. To varying degrees, they may have had some influence at one time, but that day is gone. So….

this is where the definition of power being used is the social science definition, or ethnic studies definition. it's a very humanties way of putting things. the fact is power in this sense is enforcing something on someone else. this can be putting a gun to their head, or making a law that says they can't have guns. it can be spitting on them or it can be cussing them out so bad that they cry. all these things are violence caused by "power" of an individual or a group. regardless... once it crosses that threshold of thought and speech, it should be unacceptable to be so intolerant.

If a person has that preference, and then votes in that manner, they have shown preference, are in a position of power (a vote) and takes action (votes.) Therefore a person who votes for Obama where his race is a considered component in their decision-making process IS a racist.
it won't be violence until obama passes some antiwhite laws (which i don't hope he tries to do). and in that case you can call them racist or prejudice but they're not enacting any violence yet.


in response to your "closing arguments" jwarren.

i agree with you and i just articulated differently, to me, understanding brings tolerance, to you, respect and communication bring tolerance. it's all the same. the endgame is to be able to live amongst one another, not even to like each other, just live side by side without someone violating someone else.

in that sense i think people need to stop playing down the other side. every time i hear some stuff about race card, i think to myself, why mention it??? we know it for what it is, even if it is sometimes bull**** but take this thought...

as minority there were many times in life when i was the subject of some racial violence in either a childish or professional way, either or. that brought about in me a sensitivity, one that is commonly observed by both "victims," "perpetrators" and bystanders of racial violence/violation.

this hypersensitivity ripples through the generations like a wave, depending on what time the first pebble is dropped and how much understanding and education comes over the life time. if there's anything we know about ripples in a pond its that they subside. youthful ferver brings big ripples, and yes there are surges and resurgence of racially motivated agendas on all sides. but it's like youthful democrats turning into aged libertarians... eventually things settle out if the right efforts are placed towards understanding, respect and communication.

one problem with the race subject is that it's ugly and gets ugly and this natural progression towards moderation and tolerance is many times hindered, slowed or just reversed all together because of the ugly nature of the debate and the grouping nature of humans.

[JWarren]

trinydex,

I like your line of reasoning based upon a violence model.

However, I do have to make an editorial comment.

It is clear that our society does not view the concept of racism in those terms.

Having my masters in Public Relations, I have kinda made a "hobby" of examining the double-standards we accept without examination in our society.

I suspect that if we applied your model, we would get a much different application of the terms. I suspect that many people would have to be "re-categorized." It would be interesting.


Thanks for your take on it.


-- John