Dec 23, 2020
On this episode of the Resistance Library Podcast Dave and Sam
discuss gun control and the effect that racism has had on gun
control in the U.S.
“There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people
control.”
- Stacy Swimp, President of the Frederick Douglass
Society
Every schoolchild knows that the Declaration of Independence
declares that the basic equality of man is
“self-evident.”
The United States Constitution enumerates what the inalienable
rights only alluded to by the Declaration. An inalienable right is
one that exists regardless of whether or not it is recognized by
the state. For example, you have a right to free speech regardless
of whether or not the Constitution recognizes it. Thus any
restrictions on free speech are curbs of this pre-existing right,
not an actual elimination of that right. One of them is the right
to keep and bear arms. Another is the right to a speedy and public
trial.
However, particularly with the Second Amendment, there’s long been
a struggle between the ideals of America and the reality on the
ground with regard to race. What’s more, minorities in the United
States are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. Both of
these things together make it crucial to understand self defense
and the Second Amendment from the perspective of race in
America.
Part of the problem is that, unlike European nations which grew
organically, America is an invention of a handful of Englishmen.
They founded the nation on a set of ideas and there has always been
a tension between those ideas and the reality. This is, in some
sense, unavoidable: reality will always have trouble living up to
an ideal. A failure to live up to that ideal in the past according
to terms established today doesn’t make the entire project – or any
specific part of it – worthless or suspect.
Before we get into the meat of the matter, we should note that the
American ideal has expanded the Second Amendment
(and
the rest of the Constitution for that matter) to
de jure
include all Americans. One can be skeptical of the notion of
“progress”
while seeing the moves to repeal race-based restrictions on
firearms ownership as big steps in the right
direction.
Finally, it is worth noting – and we will do so at length later –
that none of the racially-motivated laws on the books in America
are uniquely American. Racism, in the sense employed by the average
person not the expanded version used by left-wing ideologues, was
not a uniquely American institution, but the norm throughout human
history.
You can read the full article “Gun
Control and Racism: The Laws and Taxes Meant to Limit Minority Gun
Ownership in America” at Ammo.com.
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