The Second Amendment: Being Necessary to the Security of Bigotry

In the United States of 2016 (still entirely relevant, though gun sales in the US have gone down because we are under a Republican administration[9/17]), there are two issues that elicit some of the most volatile and contentious debate: race and guns. Both of these topics come up in the media and public discussion with remarkable frequency. Both of these topics have distinctive, opposing perspectives with incredibly passionate supporters on both sides and complicated ideologies and rhetoric used to back up each position. In regard to race there are groups such as Black Lives Matter being opposed by various conservative media organizations and police advocates, both with firmly held positions and arguments. As for guns, there are those who position themselves as gun rights advocates in opposition to those in favor of stricter gun control. A year ago I wrote a post  entitled, “A Well Regulated Militia”, in which I made the case that the Constitution is not an immutable document and that perhaps we ought to reconsider the viability of the Second Amendment in today’s society. Since then, there have been over 10,000 deaths caused by guns in the U.S. , including the worst mass shooting in the country’s history (Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida 6/16). At the same time, incidents of police officers killing African-Americans with disproportionate frequency has continued to draw national attention and public outrage. While these two issues are not always related and there are some who would correlate the two from the opposite viewpoint, it is my intention to suggest that the very nature and purpose of the Second Amendment is to at least disadvantage, if not oppress, African-American citizens. 

 The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:
 “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.”
 The framers of the Constitution had many constituencies to appease during it’s creation. At the time, there were those states in which chattel slavery of blacks was legal and an integral part of their economy, and those states in which it was not. The states in which it was legal relied on groups of armed citizens known as “militias” to control the massive population of slaves. It was their responsibility to keep track of the slave population, search the houses of the slaves for weapons, prevent an organized slave rebellion, and return escaped slaves to their masters for punishment. So when the Constitution was being formed, the slaveholders from the Southern states who were part of the discussion, voiced their concerns about the necessity for a strong militia and their fears that if the Federal government had a say in regard to their slave control militias, the delegates of Northern states would not understand what they saw as a necessity. One of these slaveholders, Patrick Henry, expressed such fears suggesting:
“May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery?...This is a local matter. and I can see no propriety in subjugating it to Congress.” “In this situation, I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.”
In this impressive display of tyranny, oppression and, unbeknownst to him, prescience, Henry successfully made the case for including a protection of the right of states, not the Federal government, to regulate their armed civilian militias. 

 The argument that is often heard from today’s gun rights advocates that the Second Amendment is more about the ability of the citizens to rebel against a tyrannical Federal government in such a case that their rights were being infringed upon comes into contention with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. While the Fourteenth Amendment is more important in that it makes anyone born in the United States a citizen with the ability to vote, serve on a jury, and possess all the rights and freedoms of any other citizen as well as further establishing the results of the emancipation of the slaves, there is a less frequently discussed clause. In several places it is mentioned that participation, engagement, or aid in 
“insurrection or rebellion against The United States... shall be held illegal and void.” 
which seems to suggest that any such actions would forego one’s rights as a citizen. This would create a “Catch-22” scenario in which one only maintains the right to bear arms by abstaining from participation in rebellion but one is only given cause to use said arms for the very purpose of insurrection that would render those rights obsolete. So if that is the case, for what reason other than the subjugation of oppressed people, which was clearly made illegal by the Emancipation Proclamation as well as the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments collectively, would there be to have an armed civilian militia? 

 In more recent history, and one might argue to this day, the African Americans population has been relegated to the position of second-class citizenship through the creation of various state laws that have effectively and in many cases, purposefully disenfranchised and curtailed their rights as citizens. There have been innumerable examples of this and even after these laws or practices are dissolved or overturned in each case, they elucidate the deeply ingrained biases, systemic inequalities or simply unconscious racist tendencies that persist in different cohorts of our society. Some of the more blatant examples show just how unabashedly bigoted a large percentage of our population is enthusiastically willing to be. Shortly after the freeing of the slaves, the regulation of state laws was unspecific and given little oversight which led many Southern states to enact what were known as “Black Codes”. The goal of these laws was explicitly to restrict the rights of black people. There are numerous examples of these blatantly oppressive laws including a Mississippi law that stated that any non-white person was prohibited from owning any weapon, including guns and even dogs, for fear that they would be used in a violent fashion. There were restrictions and obstacles in several states that made it impossible for many blacks to vote or participate in government, limiting the ability to assemble in groups, as well as many laws that made it easier for the police to arrest blacks for minor infractions. As the years went by, the form that these laws took became ever so slightly more subtle. “Jim Crow Laws”, which were in place all the way until the civil rights era in 1965, enforced racial segregation with facilities available to blacks being generally of inferior quality and availability. The “War on Drugs” started by Richard Nixon and accentuated by Ronald Reagan, began the ever so slightly more subtle method of mass incarceration of the black population by focusing on inner cities and low income neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by minorities. Further still was the practice of “Stop and Frisk” based on the 1968 Supreme Court ruling of ‘ Terry v. Ohio’, which gave the police the ability to stop civilians based on “reasonable suspicion” as opposed to the usual “probable cause”. This, unsurprisingly, resulted in rampant racial profiling. Even just this year there was an example of Voter ID laws in North Carolina which were clearly enacted to make it more difficult for minorities to vote. In light of the country’s very consistent history of allowing states to create laws targeting black Americans, is it so strange to imagine that the founding documents of our country would be even more unabashedly racist? 

 On the other hand, the Black Panthers made a very good case for the Second Amendment as a tool for the black community to protect themselves against such laws. Beginning in 1966 The Black Panther Party, concerned with the treatment of the black community by the judicial system and the police force, called for an arming of the black community. Very similarly to the idea of a militia to defend against a tyrannical government, armed “to the teeth”, Black Panthers would follow police officers on their patrols, making sure that the rights of the citizens whom the police would stop were enforced and protected. While we see ever present examples of police abusing their power today, which would reasonably lead one to think that this approach might be appropriate now, it sets a dangerous precedent. Having these civilian “police patrols” armed with guns only further ignites fears and galvanizes the already tense relationship the community has with police officers. But considering the outrage today concerning law enforcement and their overwhelmingly discriminatory practices and procedures, there is without doubt something that must be done to reform the police. In order to be confident that a police force can be trusted with an unbiased approach to the equal protection of all members of the community, regardless of who they are, there would need to be a sufficiently diverse and informed system of oversight, bureaucratic checks and balances and a carefully crafted, unanimously agreed upon training process. And to take a page from the Black Panthers, perhaps a more effective approach for our current day society would be to have police watch patrols armed with cameras instead of guns. 

 The primary concern regarding the Second Amendment in today’s America is the indisputable fact of an underlying racial bias inherent in our culture. To suggest that we should all have access to guns undermines the point that there is a clear difference in the perception of racial minorities and how they are viewed by a large portion of the American public. Before there can be equal opportunity for those of all races to carry weapons, so much of the institutionalized biases that are plaguing our country need to be addressed and dealt with accordingly. Until then there is an inherent disadvantage to those citizens who are not viewed as white. Given the racial prejudice inherent in our society, is it reasonable to assume that an armed civilian population can be trusted with making judgements on who they believe elicits the kind of terror or alarm that would make someone draw and fire a weapon? There have been far more than enough examples to suggest otherwise.