Tuesday, June 14, 2016

THE 2ND AMENDMENT: The crazies want you to forget a few things about the 2nd.

http://samuel-warde.com/2016/06/pro-gun-zealots-second-amendment/


1. The Second Amendment is not written in stone.

2.The Second Amendment confers responsibilities along with rights.

Brett Arends from Market Watch flatly insists the “Second Amendment doesn’t give you the right to own a gun” at all. The right to bear arms comes with obligations and responsibilities. He points out that founding father and Broadway pop sensation Alexander Hamilton explained what was meant by the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militia” in great detail in his Federalist No. 29 .     It should be a properly constituted, ordered and drilled (“well-regulated”) military force, organized state by state, explained Hamilton. Each state militia should be a “select corps,” “well-trained” and able to perform all the “operations of an army.” The militia needed “uniformity in … organization and discipline,” wrote Hamilton, so that it could operate like a proper army “in camp and field,” and so that it could gain the “essential … degree of proficiency in military functions.” And although it was organized state by state, it needed to be under the explicit control of the national government. The “well-regulated militia” was under the command of the president. It was “the military arm” of the government.

3. The Second Amendment was ratified so plantation owners could put down slave rebellions.

Alas, the Second Amendment also served a darker purpose than ensuring that our infant nation could defend itself against British invasions without having to keep a standing army around. Thom Hartmann writes in Truthout that the state of Virginia, by far the richest and most powerful state at the time, only signed on only so they could keep their slave patrols.

Watch: Thom Hartmann explains how the Second Amendment was passed to protect slavery.




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