Why don’t they just rise up?

I’ve written before that the Second Amendment was included in the Constitution to allow slave owners defend themselves against slaves. Frank Vyan Walton, writing for Daily Kos supplies a more comprehensive view.

In the movie Django Unchained (which I haven’t seen) a character asks, “Why don’t they just rise up and kill the whites?” Answer: Because the well regulated militias mentioned in the Second Amendment prevented it.

In 1755 and 1757 new state laws required that all plantation owners or their white employees be members of the Georgia Militia and make monthly inspections of slave quarters to look for slaves planning an uprising. By the time the Constitution was ratified in 1789 there had been hundreds of slave uprisings and these state militias had quashed them. Slavery can only exist in a police state.

Some claim that when the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights there was no discussion about the Second Amendment being about slavery. Not so, says Walton. That was specifically discussed by Patrick Henry. And this amendment was necessary to get Virginia’s vote.

Another bit of evidence, says Walton, is the phrase “the security of a free State.” If it indeed was about making sure the citizens could overthrow a tyrannical federal government this phrase should be “the security of a free Country.”

Even after Emancipation white plantation owners wanted to make sure their former slaves didn’t arm themselves and kill off their former masters. That the slaves wanted the oppression to end and not become the oppressors didn’t lessen the owners’ fears.

Walton reviews the ways Southern white men continued their oppression of black people. The 13th Amendment allows for indentured servitude of the “duly convicted,” leading to a prison industrial complex. There was also Jim Crow and redlining with lynchings thrown in.

And when the Black Panther Party for Self Protection walked around with guns the white establishment freaked out. Many Black Panther members, even though they were innocent, were killed or imprisoned. Unarmed black men are still seen as a threat and suffer beatings or death at the hands of police.

Add in stand your ground laws and the legal concept of justified shootings. Black on black and black on white shootings are rarely declared as justified. White on black shooting frequently are. Just ask Trayvon.

As for having a gun in the home for protection, more gun deaths are caused by suicide, gun accidents, or domestic violence than by a threatening stranger.

The Second Amendment has always been about racism and it continues to be about racism.