JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ONCE AGAIN THE SECOND AMENDMENT (A PROTECTION IN AMERICA'S 18TH CENTURY CONSTITUTION ABOUT "THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS") COMES INTO QUESTION - BUT ALL THE DISCUSSION CONCERNS MISINTERPRETATION - THE ACTUAL BACKGROUND AND MEANING OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT - IT HAS LONG BEEN A RELIC - BUT DARK FEARS AND POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCES KEEP MISINTERPRETATION GOING - TODAY'S COMIC BOOK NOTION OF "PATRIOTS" DEFENDING AGAINST TYRANNY

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS



“Hijacking the Second Amendment”

"The gun lobby has hijacked the Second Amendment, which was intended for citizen militias to provide domestic “security” without a standing army. The amendment is a dangerous relic”



Absolutely, it is a relic, if a person interprets it clearly.

But it is deliberately misinterpreted, all the time, and there is no one in authority to correct that misinterpretation.

The ultra-conservative Supreme Court, much resembling a group of Catholic Scholastics from the Middle Ages in their narrow way of looking at matters, certainly will never step in the way of misinterpreting it. Their decisions on most matters are about on a level of enlightenment with the old Dred Scott decision.

As, for example, the decision insanely telling us that “money is free speech,” leaving American politics in the complete service of the wealthy with little room for genuine democratic principles. The voice of the general populace has very little political force in America.

Given the quality of leadership the money principle produces in the Senate, in the House, and in the White House (and, of course, in a court appointed by the White House and approved by the Senate), no wonder no significant progress is ever made in almost anything.

And the Second Amendment has long been rather meaningless because the set of circumstances dictating its creation ceased existing a very long time ago. The idea of private militias had roots in a pre-empire English government that was not fond of spending large amounts of money on standing armies. Elizabeth I, for example, hated spending money on the military. Those ideas were transferred to, and early embraced in, America.

But they became obsolete as America itself, fairly early, turned to empire, as reflected in the thinking of the Monroe Doctrine. The national embrace of violence in a long series of imperial wars and violent activities was no friendly environment for any kind of opposition against guns.

The interpretation of the Second Amendment morphed over time into something it was clearly not designed to be, too, a protection against tyrannical government, perhaps not surprising considering all the wars and imperial conflicts of the government.

Of course, hanging onto that changed meaning, about being against tyrannical government, is today absurd, given the massive armed force that American government now has at its disposal.

It’s almost comic-book stuff to think of gangs of concerned citizens dressed-up in camouflage, armed with with rifles and shotguns or even privately-owned machine-guns, hitting the streets against America’s militarized police forces possessing all kinds of combat gear, armored cars, helicopters, gas grenades, and heavy military-style weapons, to say nothing of the Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, Special Forces, and National Guard. The results would be entirely predictable. Detroit, 1967.

The fact is that America, as a whole, has been very gun-friendly, and the bending and twisting of the meaning of the Second amendment serves that gun-friendly population. It certainly is not the work of just a formal lobby like the National Rifle Association. There are tens of millions of Americans with gut feelings on the matter of guns. And there is a long history.

I think it dates back to the days of slavery when many plantation owners slept with a gum under the pillow or on a nearby nightstand.

They were afraid of slave revolts, even though there were almost none.

Then we had the gun as friendly tool through the Indian Wars.

And the various imperial wars on the march westward. And efforts to seize parts South too. In all of them, the gun was a friend.

And gun ownership remains popular with the violence of decayed American urban areas generating fears, the same kind of fears that create gated communities and much of suburbia and make driving semi-military, somewhat-menacing-looking vehicles like SUVs popular.

The fear of violence is also to be seen in the undisciplined police in so many places in America, police who kill an average of three Americans a day, and there is very little effort to correct that ugly reality with few police ever charged with anything or even dismissed. The fear of violence is seen in notoriously brutal prisons where hundreds of prisoners mysteriously die every year. And it is seen in the world’s highest rate of incarceration.

It doesn't help that America is constantly at war, constantly promoting the values of war even at sporting events like football games, constantly recruiting soldiers for the wars, and constantly spending unholy amounts of money on the Pentagon and security services.

The very air that you breathe in the United States is charged with violence.

It isn't just a "gun lobby" keeping the relic Second Amendment going, keeping it in a state of perpetual widely-accepted misinterpretation.

One could say that the gun-filled, violence-charged American society serves almost as a training and conditioning ground for the rather brutal needs of empire.


On historical aspects of America’s embrace of violence:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/john-chuckman-comment-reference-to-americas-current-inability-to-have-intelligent-political-discussion-in-fact-it-is-an-illusion-to-think-things-were-ever-much-different-highlights-of-an-extrem/



On reasons America’s government is so totally ineffective about any real domestic needs:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/