boutons_deux
09-23-2013, 05:23 AM
In that sense, the Navy Yard narrative is just one more bloody patch in the grim tapestry that stretches from Virginia Tech to Aurora to Newtown to hundreds of other locations where thousands upon thousands of innocent lives have been taken by gun violence in America.
But a key reason why the nation is frozen in a shocking paralysis, unable to protect even little children, is that the American Right has sold much of the country on a false history regarding the Second Amendment. Right-wingers and other gun-rights advocates insist that the carnage can’t be stopped because it is part of what the Framers designed.
Yet that is not and never was the actual history. When the First Congress passed the Second Amendment in 1789, the goal was to promote state militias for the maintenance of order in a time of political violence, potential slave revolts and simmering hostilities with both European powers and Native Americans on the frontiers.
The amendment was never intended as a blank check for some unstable person to massacre fellow Americans. Indeed, it defined its purpose as achieving “security” against disruptions to the country’s new republican form of government. The Second Amendment read:
“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.” In other words, if read in context, you would see that the Second Amendment was enacted so each state would have the specific right to form “a well-regulated militia” to maintain “security,” i.e. to put down armed disorder.
In the late Eighteenth Century, the meaning of “bearing” arms also referred to a citizen being part of a militia or army. It didn’t mean that an individual had the right to possess whatever number of high-capacity killing machines that he or she might want. Indeed, the most lethal weapon that early Americans owned was a slow-loading, single-fired musket or rifle.
And, the Framers of the Constitution were not some anarchists who wanted an armed population so people could overthrow the government if they weren’t happy with something. Indeed, one of the crises that led to the Constitution was the inability of the old system under the Articles of Confederation to put down the Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786-87.
The Framers – people like George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris – were the Establishment of the day. They also recognized how fragile the nation’s independence was and how novel was the idea of a constitutional republic with democratic elections. They were seeking a system that took political action that reflected the will of the people, yet within a framework that constrained the passions of democracy.
The whole idea of the Constitution – with its mix of voting, elected representatives and checks and balances – was to create a political structure that made violence unnecessary. As the Preamble states, two key goals were to “promote the general Welfare” and to “insure domestic Tranquility.”
Among the false narratives was the one about the Second Amendment, which the Right (and some on the Left) transformed into a supposed device by which the Framers authorized armed rebellion against the constitutional Republic. Rather than people who believed in the rule of law and social order, the Framers were contorted into mad radicals who wanted citizens to be empowered to shoot police, soldiers, elected representatives and government officials.
These “scholars” love to cite provocative comments by Thomas Jefferson, who was not even a participant in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because he was the U.S. representative in France at the time. But these revisionists still will quote Jefferson in a 1787 letter (http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/tree-liberty-quotation) criticizing the Constitution for its commander-in-chief provisions. Jefferson argued that violence, like the Shays’s Rebellion, was to be welcomed. He declared that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/19/how-fake-2nd-amendment-history-kills/
http://www.alternet.org/print/suprising-unknown-history-nra (http://www.alternet.org/print/suprising-unknown-history-nra)
and the Texas murderer who perverted the NRA:
http://www.meetthenra.org/nra-member/harlon-carter
you soft-on-crime gun fellators, "marans", you've been had, you've been lied to, duped, quite fitting proof of how ignorant you are.
2nd Amendment? :lol
home defense? :lol
they're gonna grab our guns! :lol
But a key reason why the nation is frozen in a shocking paralysis, unable to protect even little children, is that the American Right has sold much of the country on a false history regarding the Second Amendment. Right-wingers and other gun-rights advocates insist that the carnage can’t be stopped because it is part of what the Framers designed.
Yet that is not and never was the actual history. When the First Congress passed the Second Amendment in 1789, the goal was to promote state militias for the maintenance of order in a time of political violence, potential slave revolts and simmering hostilities with both European powers and Native Americans on the frontiers.
The amendment was never intended as a blank check for some unstable person to massacre fellow Americans. Indeed, it defined its purpose as achieving “security” against disruptions to the country’s new republican form of government. The Second Amendment read:
“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.” In other words, if read in context, you would see that the Second Amendment was enacted so each state would have the specific right to form “a well-regulated militia” to maintain “security,” i.e. to put down armed disorder.
In the late Eighteenth Century, the meaning of “bearing” arms also referred to a citizen being part of a militia or army. It didn’t mean that an individual had the right to possess whatever number of high-capacity killing machines that he or she might want. Indeed, the most lethal weapon that early Americans owned was a slow-loading, single-fired musket or rifle.
And, the Framers of the Constitution were not some anarchists who wanted an armed population so people could overthrow the government if they weren’t happy with something. Indeed, one of the crises that led to the Constitution was the inability of the old system under the Articles of Confederation to put down the Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786-87.
The Framers – people like George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris – were the Establishment of the day. They also recognized how fragile the nation’s independence was and how novel was the idea of a constitutional republic with democratic elections. They were seeking a system that took political action that reflected the will of the people, yet within a framework that constrained the passions of democracy.
The whole idea of the Constitution – with its mix of voting, elected representatives and checks and balances – was to create a political structure that made violence unnecessary. As the Preamble states, two key goals were to “promote the general Welfare” and to “insure domestic Tranquility.”
Among the false narratives was the one about the Second Amendment, which the Right (and some on the Left) transformed into a supposed device by which the Framers authorized armed rebellion against the constitutional Republic. Rather than people who believed in the rule of law and social order, the Framers were contorted into mad radicals who wanted citizens to be empowered to shoot police, soldiers, elected representatives and government officials.
These “scholars” love to cite provocative comments by Thomas Jefferson, who was not even a participant in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because he was the U.S. representative in France at the time. But these revisionists still will quote Jefferson in a 1787 letter (http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/tree-liberty-quotation) criticizing the Constitution for its commander-in-chief provisions. Jefferson argued that violence, like the Shays’s Rebellion, was to be welcomed. He declared that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/19/how-fake-2nd-amendment-history-kills/
http://www.alternet.org/print/suprising-unknown-history-nra (http://www.alternet.org/print/suprising-unknown-history-nra)
and the Texas murderer who perverted the NRA:
http://www.meetthenra.org/nra-member/harlon-carter
you soft-on-crime gun fellators, "marans", you've been had, you've been lied to, duped, quite fitting proof of how ignorant you are.
2nd Amendment? :lol
home defense? :lol
they're gonna grab our guns! :lol