Gun control has always been a tool of ruling elites, a way of insuring that those whose rights they wish to trample upon will not have a way of fighting back.
Lately I have been reading about Polish and Jewish partisan groups who went into the forests and fought the Nazis during WW II. Without guns their fleeing to the wood would have been meaningless. With guns they were able to contribute to ending the evil Nazi scourge.
From America’s 1st Freedom: http://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2016/1/28/freedom-fighters/
by Dave Kopel
Thursday, January 28, 2016
This feature appears in the February ‘16 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.
He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, an eloquent advocate of the right to arms. She exercised that right heroically, in armed missions to lead slaves out of bondage. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman exemplified the best of America—and fought against the worst.
When Congress passed the 14th Amendment in 1866, why was its protection of Second Amendment rights considered so important? In the Supreme Court’s decision in McDonald v. Chicago, Justice Clarence Thomas turned to Douglass for that answer.
As quoted in Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, Douglass delivered a major speech in New York City on May 10, 1865, one month after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Va. Everyone knew that formal slavery would soon be abolished. But would the ex-Confederate states find new ways to keep the ex-slaves in de facto servitude? That was the question posed by Douglass’ speech “In What New Skin Will the Old Snake Come Forth?”
Presciently, Douglass warned that the ex-slave states would attempt to impose all sorts of disabilities on the freedmen, as they had on free people of color before the Civil War. Douglass explained that abolishing slavery was not enough. There was a need for federal law to stop state and local governments from infringing the freedmen’s rights, especially the right to bear arms.
Without such legislation, he said, “The legislatures of the South can take from him the right to keep and bear arms, as they can—they would not allow a negro to walk with a cane where I came from, they would not allow five of them to assemble together.”
“Notwithstanding the provision in the Constitution of the United States, that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, the black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms.” Until there was a new constitutional amendment to make states obey the Second Amendment, “the work of the abolitionists is not finished,” Douglass said.
As he pointed out, blacks in the slave states had effectively been denied the right of personal self-defense. Because blacks could not testify in court against a white, a white could commit violent crime against a black with impunity, as long as there were no white witnesses. Further, the slave state codes made it a crime for a black man to “lift his arm in self-defence” against a white.
Continue reading at: http://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2016/1/28/freedom-fighters/
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