• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

The Hidden Story Of The Second Amendment

OscarLevant

Gadfly Extraordinaire
Banned
DP Veteran
Joined
Mar 3, 2018
Messages
16,876
Reaction score
7,397
Location
San Diego
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Liberal
This 100 page paper was written 10 years before the Heller decision by Scalia.

In my view, Scalia has exceeded the parameters of originalism with his 2008 decision on District of Columbia v. Heller, insofar as the debate between the collective vs individual rights aspects based on framers intent, but, given his ruling, it now has the full effect of law, unless, of course, it is overruled at some future date, which not likely with the current 6/3 conservative court. I think this paper documents precisely why Scalia, accurate in some respects (that the 'right to bear arms' is not absolute and can be regulated), but not in others, violated in own principle of originalism and textualism because of his failure to take a scholarly dive into the subject, (though he appears to, but he falls short of the mark, in my humble opinion) and really discover the why of the second amendment, rather than give credence to the popular romantic imagery "to give the people the right to fight tyranny, whether foreign or domestic', being propagated by the NRA, and second amendment advocates.

From the abstract (quote)
Professor Bogus argues that there is strong reason to believe that, in significant part, James Madison drafted the Second Amendment to assure his constituents in Virginia, and the South generally, that Congress could not use its newly-acquired powers to indirectly undermine the slave system by disarming the militia, on which the South relied for slave control. His argument is based on a multiplicity of the historical evidence, including debates between James Madison and George Mason and Patrick Henry at the Constitutional Ratifying Convention in Richmond, Virginia in June 1788; the record from the First Congress; and the antecedent of the American right to bear arms provision in the English Declaration of Rights of 1688.

The paper gives the depth, context, the circumstances that led up to what James Madison, Patrick Henry, and George Mason were arguing at the ratifying convention on June 2, 1788. The story of the second amendment cannot be understood by reading a few quotes by a few on the sidelines by those whose narrative is to forward a particular political agenda. It's a story that evolved over a couple of years. There just isn't room to get it all down in a forum such as this.

Free to download, it's a good read, I recommend it.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1465114

Americans have an image of the militia -- minutemen rushing with muskets oto the greens at Lexington and Concord to fire the "shot heard around the world". The fact that colonists were armed helped make the Resolution possible. Indeed, it was a British plot to confiscate American militia weapons that propelled Paul Revere on his famous ride. These images blend with other visions of colonial America. Many believe guns and survival went hand-in-hand ni early America ---that settlers depended on firearms to defend themselves from Indians, thieves, and wild animals, as well as to hunt for food. Some assume that the Founders incorporated the right to bear arms in the Bill Of Rights because of an armed citizenry had been important to security in colonial America and essential to throwing off the yoke of British oppression.

Much of this is myth. It is not myth in the sense that the images are wholly divorced from historical truth Rather, myths can be powerful and sinister because they blend fact and fiction.

Myths do not so much misrepresent as mislead, not so much concoct as distort. That is the case with the Second Amendment. When the Bill of Rights as adopted some believed that the right to bear arms was important to defend and feed citizens and their families or to resist foreign aggression and domestic tyranny. But, as this article will show, that was not the principle reason that the Founders created the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment was not enacted to provide a check on government tyranny, rather, it was written to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia ot disarm the state militia and thereby destroy the South's principal instrument of slave control. In effect, the Second Amendment supplemented the slavery compromise made at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and obliquely codified in other constitutional provisions.
 
Thanks, that is interesting.

Can we expand on that to believe that it was implemented in order to enable citizens to protect their property from the govt? (A more close interpretation would be to retain firearms to protect citizens from their property I guess. But a case could be made that not being able to control/retain their property would lead to the destruction...loss...of that property.)
 
I didn't realize state militias were involved with slavery. I thought 'control' was pretty much left to the slave traders and slave owners.
 
every couple of years, someone who wants to denigrate the second amendment, or more likely, second amendment advocates, raise the bogus bullshit of third rate law professor Carl Bogus. Thom Hartmann tried to give this nonsense traction and it never got it because decidedly anti slave states, such as NY, had their own second amendment provisions and supported the Second amendment as included in the bill of rights. In 2016, another poster was trumpeting the bogus BS, so, (since I was back at Yale) I asked the leading constitutional scholar in the USA -Sterling Professor, Akhil Reed Amat-About Bogus during a lecture he was presenting on the Constitution. He noted the NY support for it and said that Bogus's premise was so stupid, no major league legal scholar even bothered with it.
 
Back
Top Bottom