The Strange Career of the Second Amendment -- Part I

http://solidarity-us.org/atc/198/second-amendment/
Date Written:  2019-01-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23470

Detailed analysis of the Second Amendment and different perceptions of gun rights in US history.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Both sides of the debate on the Second Amendment in its current form express extreme frustration and can hardly fathom that they live in the same country as their interlocutors. Liberal commentators embrace a powerful role for the federal government in policing and regulating access to firearms. They lament the day that the country came into the hands of the supporters of the National Rifle Association (NRA) who stockpile weapons and resist all attempts at gun regulation.

Conservative supporters of "gun rights" fume that liberals fail to understand the threat of overweening federal power and the dangers inherent in regimes that gain power by disarming the populace. They eschew any attempt at all to regulate gun ownership, background checks, or waiting periods as infringements on personal liberty out of keeping with "the right to bear arms" in the Constitution....

To understand something of the complexity of this debate, and its powerful emotional resonance, we need to look at both the historical context of the Second Amendment's creation, as well as the subsequent history of the issue of guns, gun ownership, and gun regulation in the United States.

This history illuminates a central feature of our fractured society: we have long been two societies. Indeed, each side in the current debate has historical antecedents. The crooked paths along which each thread of the argument has traveled reveals something about the complexity of the tortured history of our republic.