******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
I don't think it's quite accurate to pose this issue as either all or nothing. The entire issue was inseparable from the idea of maintaining a popular militia, which the ruling class abandoned after Reconstruction and the 1877 strike . . . and came to be essentially displaced as the key institution for defense by the gargantuan military machine. Rather than deal with this as the NRA has defined the issue, I think we should discuss that machine. Arguing about whether or not the masses have a right to keep their own muzzle-loaders at home means little when we have a mall guards and campus cops armed like swat teams, a militarized police, and a military fully capable of calling in air strikes to deal with our commemorative 1871 barricade. . On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 9:30 AM, DW via Marxism <[email protected] > wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > The idea that the 2nd Amendment is forever tarnished with "slave patrols" > is silly. That's the only reason to raise it, correct? So that the anti-gun > left can feel at ease at opposing one of the Amendments from the Bill of > Rights. First, let me say I agree with Mark. There was far more application > of this on an every day basis on the Frontier, "West of the Hudson" as it > was noted in the beginning of the film, *The Last of Mahicans*, than were > was with "slave patrols". As slave patrols only involved a very, very small > percentage of slave states populations, popular settler ownership of > muzzle-loading muskets was almost universal outside of the "big" cities. > > If you want to tarnish the 2A then the same can be said of the 1A as this > was reserved *in practice* for white males. As was the whole of the Bill of > Rights. Yet historically the left always defended it save for the 10th > Amendment (States Rights). ALL the amendments represented a kind of > compromise with the various 'stakeholders' of the white population. The 2nd > Amendment had little do with 'slave patrols'. One wonders where this arose > from? It DID have to do *in part* with maintaining slavery, at least from > Jefferson's POV, but nothing so silly as the few thousand part time and > full time members of southern slave patrols. It was to counter Hamilton's > wish for a Federal controlled central standing army to protect the early > U.S. from future British and French military (and economic) pressure on the > new country. Jefferson feared that a permanent army *could* be used to > squash states rights and thus wanted to counter-balance such an army with > the state militia systems (which had provided about half the troops during > the Revolution, though they didn't preform well against British regulars). > Part of the argument also include a Federal imposed ban on Slavery in the > future (no one as talking about Abolition in the immediate sense and when > the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution). > > It should be pointed out that every Supreme Court decision has upheld the > private gun ownership under the 2A and even a 1939 decision by SCOTUS > upheld the "Militia" as being *distinct* from the newly organized National > Guard units controlled by the States. > > The 2A was conceived as a counter-weight to a possible abusive federalizing > centrality of any future gov't of the US (which included the unforeseen > momentum of the Abolitionist movement of which their was no inkling of in > the 1791 when the Bill of Rights was conceived). > > I think those of you who are anti-gun (and would like the current gov't to > get rid of guns) should be more honest and say you would like to see the > 2nd Amendment stricken from the Constitution. A few very honest lefty types > have called for this. I went to a panel at the Zinn Book Fair in October > (sponsored in large party by the ISO and Haymarket) which had a speaker > advocating just that. We had an interesting debate on this issue. But it's > funny how few people on the anti-gun left actually advocate for this. Odd. > > David Walters > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/ > options/marxism/markalause%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
