Thursday, January 17, 2013
2 Amend ratified to Preserve Slavery?????
One of the most outrageous and inaccurate columns I've seen recently is this one: "The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery." I have been researching this topic for 30 years, and there is no historical support for it. I have extensively perused the materials from that time. There is no credible historian anywhere that I know of that has made this assertion. The Second Amendment was not needed to protect gun-toting slave owners and slave patrols. Slaves could not lawfully possess firearms. Some of the states had constitutional protections for arms, but these did not apply to slaves. There is nothing substantial to support this author's contentions. Yes, militias in the South were used to control slaves. This connection, however, cannot be stretched to rationally support the thesis in the presence of an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary. Further, states with few slaves and no slave rebellion problem also had militias and supported the Second Amendment. I can't recall evidence of any abotionist or slave-owner arguing this point .
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What a reach by the author! The second amendment, like the 9th and 10th, had nothing to do with slavery. The article's fabricated history is typical of the progressive left's deliberate demonization of guns. It's right in line with their blaming violent crime and mass shootings on the 2nd Amendment.
ReplyDeleteThe only name I can find is former HCI board member and law professor named Carl T. Bogus who wrote it some 15 years ago.
ReplyDelete44 & GEJ: Thanks! Notice that the quote from Bogus does not mention the Second Amendment. There are other quotes, but none directly address the issue or directly support the thesis. Not one recognized expert on these topics is quoted or cited for the proposition of the connection between slavery and the Second Amendment. Henry's interpretation of hte militia clauses at the bottom of p. 2 is correct. Under the Constitiution both the federal government and states have the power to call forth the militia. States have always had the power to call forth their own state militias.
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