Securing and enumerating the individual right to own and bear the means of self-defense in the US Constitution was momentous and revolutionary. Infringing on that right would constitute the winding of the clock back to a time when such rights were denied by despotic and autocratic governments.
This article is from The Editor’s Corner, with insights, short-posts, links, and general ramblings from Editor/Owner Justin Stapley.
In American history, the two groups of people who have had their human rights abused the most are African-Americans and Native Americans. I do not find it at all coincidental that the atrocities and abuses that these groups faced were largely precipitated by systematic denial of their right to bear arms. On several occasions, there has been actual confiscation of firearms at gunpoint.
Specifically, the Jim Crow laws that instituted racial segregation and institutional racism for decades in the post-War South were made possible only after the freed slaves were disarmed.
In fact, the earliest and most vicious raids by the KKK and similar organizations were carried out with the express goal of invading the homes of former slaves and removing their guns.
There are even several instances where, caving to pressure and threat of political violence, Union army soldiers disarmed freed slaves. And yet, each time this occurred, lynchings increased and Southern Democrats bullied the freed blacks away from the polls. This disarmament allowed the Democratic Party to reassert control of the government.
Too many people theorize about (or out and out deny) the idea that a loss of the right to bear arms is a precursor to losing other rights. But this idea is far from theory. It is a fact and a reality of untold millions across the length and breadth of history. It is one that has played out in atrocities and abuses here within our own nation (Including upon my own Latter-day Saint ancestors in Far West, Missouri).
It is even a reality at present in our nation’s inner-cities where, not surprisingly, the law-abiding citizens find their lives and livelihoods in the hands of those who carry guns (the criminals or the police) instead of in their own.
I often hear people talk about being on the “right side of history” or the admonition to not stand in the way of “progress”. I find it audacious and ill-informed that some who would speak of these ideas are also at the forefront of a campaign to shrink or even remove the law-abiding citizen’s right to bear arms.
The inclusion of this right as inalienable in our national doctrine, and as a constitutionally protected enumeration, was a tremendous step forward from when despotic and autocratic governments across the world denied such rights.
That such a momentous and revolutionary idea should all of a sudden be “archaic”, “no longer needed”, or “written for the realities of the 1700s and not for today” after only 200 years is regressive, not progressive, illiberal and definitely on the wrong side of history as it pertains to individual freedom and liberty.
As a final side-note: I find it particularly narrow-minded and short-sighted that many of the same people who claim to be part of an “anti-fascist resistance,” fearful of the possibility that our current president is seeking to instate an autocratic and oppressive regime, are the loudest in saying “it could never happen here” as they demand the surrender of the means to effectively resist such a development should it actually occur.
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