The social impact of the Second Amendment

[Elderberry]

Nation of Change by Michael T. Hertz -June 12, 2020

The state should be permitted to disarm its citizens to the extent it judges necessary to protect its own strength to protect its society.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  In the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the “Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”  This decision bolstered the American tendency to bring guns into society, a propensity which has caused the United States to be a world leader in the ownership of guns, killings due to guns, and shootings by policemen.  These factors have led indirectly to the high number of deaths of colored people by guns.  Blacks represent only 13% of the population yet are 51% of homicide victims, of which 85% are killed by guns.

Despite these facts, some people question whether stricter gun control would protect African Americans or make them more susceptible to racism and police brutality.  These concerns seem to miss the point: fewer guns in society means that police need fewer weapons, and the existence of large numbers of guns means that police are in greater fear of being shot, which means that they are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.  If guns were not permitted on the street, and violation of that law were heavily punished, police would not need to draw their guns if they had them.

Americans have had an insane love of weapons since their nation’s start.  “As the cultural historian Richard Slotkin has argued, the American national narrative is the frontier myth. Beginning with the Puritans, “the Myth of the Frontier emphasizes the necessary linkage between two themes as the basis for spiritual and secular regeneration, taking up the ‘free’ or ‘virgin land’ of the wilderness, and defeating the savage natives in a war of races,” he wrote in “Gunfighter Nation,” the last volume of his frontier trilogy.”

More: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/06/12/the-social-impact-of-the-second-amendment/

[Cyber Liberty]

Hopefully people like Michael T. Hertz can be kept well away from any levers of power.  Naive people should not be put in charge of anything beyond a lemonade stand.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Rabid anti-Americanism on display here.

Reducing arms empowers a government which tends to go full authoritarian, exactly what despots desire, and entirely the point of the 2nd Amendment.

Mexico effectively bans firearms outside the home except for military and police, yet it is the #1 most dangerous place in the world for murder.

This idealist notion that banning guns will keep people safe is destroyed by real data in history.