On the Second Amendment and the men who wrote it [column] – LNP | LancasterOnline
As the bloodstain of gun violence spreads across America, pushing the number of dead and wounded to staggering heights, I find myself among the millions of people struggling to understand how we got here and what we can do to stop the anguish.
The public response to each new firearms outrage has hardened into a petrified litany. One side cries out for gun control, while the other denies that gun restrictions make people safer, and recites the Second Amendment as proof that the founders of our nation, the men who wrote the Constitution, wanted all of us to be armed.
The only contact I had with guns growing up was sneaking into my parents bedroom to stare at the old hunting rifle Dad kept in his closet (which he never taught me to shoot), and my uncles .22-caliber rifle, with which he and I killed a rabbit in his southwestern Pennsylvania yard when I was 11. The rabbits pitiful, dying shriek made me feel bad for a while, but I got over it. I share this brief history to highlight the fact that no one preached the Second Amendment to me or taught me that I had a sacred right to own a gun.
With the death toll from gunfire rising hourly, I decided to take a look at how the Second Amendment came to be.
My main source was Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, by historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
What I found is that the government (the British in Colonial times, then the Americans during and after the Revolutionary War) expected men to own a gun, and not only own one, but know how to use it. Not all men, of course, only white men. Why the requirement and why the restriction?
Its pretty simple, really. As early European (mostly British) settlers pushed west across the Colonies, they forced the Indigenous peoples off land they had occupied for thousands of years. As we all know, the Native Americans pushed back. Fearful of the well-trained Native warriors, the settlers organized citizen militias to protect themselves and their families.
As land speculators (including George Washington) and settlers pushed relentlessly westward, the militias, with the blessing of British and then American authorities, engaged in genocidal so-called savage wars to wrest the land from the Native peoples. The Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, confidently predicted around 1825 that Native Americans would be exterminated within 50 years, adding that their disappearance from the human family (would) be no great loss to the world.
A similar scenario played out in the Southern Colonies (and then states), where white men were also expected to own a gun and serve in militias to ward off and eliminate Native Americans angered by the theft of their land. But the Southern economy, built on the backs of enslaved Africans, added another duty serving on slave patrols. African people had resisted enslavement from the moment Portuguese traders armed with guns and the blessing of Pope Nicholas V arrived on the West African coast.
White fear of slave rebellions was so great and the uprisings so numerous that Thomas Jefferson cited domestic insurrections in his list of grievances against England in the Declaration of Independence. He also blamed the English king not settlers or land speculators for bringing on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Slave patrols scoured plantation slave quarters regularly and were obligated to punish any enslaved person found in possession of a weapon or suspected of plotting an insurrection.
I think this brief review tells us several important things.
First, there can be no doubt that the Founding Fathers assumed every man in America (especially land owners) not only had a right, but a duty, to be armed to assist in the common defense against Native Americans, enslaved Africans and, of course, any threats from other nations.
Second, armed citizens were expected to serve in their local militias.
And third, Native Americans and enslaved Africans (and even free African Americans), as the feared enemies of white people, could never be trusted with firearms.
Learning this history helped me understand why the founders included these words in the Bill of Rights: 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.
But does knowing all of this help staunch the blood flowing from the widening wound of gun violence?
One thing it does for me is rule out any thought of taking guns away from the citizenry. This nation was born in gunfire, and it doesnt really matter if some of us are troubled by the fact that the birthing process involved fearful, racist white men aiming those guns at Native Americans and African Americans. We have gunpowder in our DNA, and, as the bumper sticker goes: You can take my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
So, as solutions go, Id say thats a nonstarter.
What about other gun control measures, the ones perennially rejected by many gun owners, conservative politicians and the gun lobby?
In my research, I was surprised to come across an article on the pro-business website Business Insider analyzing 10 strategies proposed to stop gun violence. (Note: I expected the website, founded by former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget, to lean toward the firearms industry.)
According to this analysis, an assault weapons ban would likely to be effective as a means of keeping the highly lethal weapons beyond reach for good and bad actors alike.
Also likely to be effective: a high-capacity magazine ban, which would decrease the number of fatalities a shooter could inflict in a single attack.
Funding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research into gun violence could be effective, Business Insider said.
The analysis also said that universal background checks would be likely effective, and cited research from the nonpartisan Rand Corp. that showed that states that require background checks on all gun sales had 35% fewer gun deaths per capita between 2009 and 2012.
Also likely to be effective: red flag laws, which would enable authorities to remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.
But not likely to be effective, according to this analysis: arming teachers, active-shooter drills and banning violent video games.
A more promising option: having students, faculty and staff report potential threats.
I see some glimmers of hope in this list and in the latest conversations in Congress about measures that might reduce gun violence in American society. But it seems to me that we need to address something else first: the incomplete understanding among many Americans of how the Second Amendment came to be, and their refusal to consider actions that might at least reduce the flow of blood and loss of life.
As long as they continue to value what they believe is their absolute right to own a gun over the lives of Americans being killed by gunfire, I dont see how we can turn this thing around.
I pray that someone in America will find the words, the key that unlocks the fearful hearts of those opposed to gun regulation, and bring us together not only to save lives but also to redefine who we are as a people, a people defined not by the lethality of guns but by love and peace and safety and justice for all.
Call me naive if you want to, but thats my hope.
Mark Kelley is a retired journalist and journalism professor now living in Lancaster. He holds a Ph.D. in journalism and mass communications from Syracuse University and served as the main anchor for WNDU-TV in South Bend, Indiana.
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On the Second Amendment and the men who wrote it [column] - LNP | LancasterOnline