General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I no longer give two f*cks about your 2nd Amendment rights. [View all]Pacifist Patriot
(24,653 posts)...."Last week at an American Constitution Society briefing on the Heller case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton explained the ugly history behind the gun lobby's favorite amendment. "That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldnt use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery.
This is pretty well-documented history, thanks to the work of Roger Williams School of Law professor Carl T. Bogus. In a 1998 law-review article based on a close analysis of James Madisons original writings, Bogus explained the Souths obsession with militias during the ratification fights over the Constitution. The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population, Bogus writes. Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats. He goes on to document how anti-Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason used the fear of slave rebellions as a way of drumming up opposition to the Constitution and how Madison eventually deployed the promise of the Second Amendment to placate Virginians and win their support for ratification...."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/03/whitewashing-second-amendment