Posted on 03/25/2013 8:46:34 AM PDT by Seizethecarp
The most arresting idea in Adam Winkler's impressively learned study of US gun law, Gunfight, is the suggestion that contemporary American gun culture was more or less invented by the Black Panthers.
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the party founders, had studied law and discovered California allowed the carrying in public of loaded rifles and shotguns, provided that the guns were not pointed at anyone. They seized on this law to stage theatrical confrontations with an Oakland police force they deemed hostile and oppressive - and then, most dramatically, in May 1967, to walk armed into the chamber of the California State Assembly. Police tried to intervene, but Newton and Seale recited the authorizing law, and pushed ahead.
Only today, the armed person challenging the power of the police is much less likely to be a young black radical, and much more likely to be an older white conservative.
"The gun is the only thing that will free us," declared the Panthers.
"The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions. " That sentence is quoted not from the Black Panther manifesto, but from an article published just a few weeks ago in National Review by Kevin Williamson.
Before 1965, it would have occurred to precisely nobody that the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to organize private armies independent of the state. People often describe the Second Amendment as ambiguous, but the Americans of the 1790s knew exactly what a militia was. As the federal Militia Act of 1792 enacts in its very first section, a militia was a military force organized by a state government and subject to that government's authority.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
I’m pretty sure a Supreme Court justice in the 1940’s ruled that the Second Amendment was intended to keep the government in check, should a president decide to make himself a king. The author is re-writing history.
>>> contemporary American gun culture was more or less invented by the Black Panthers
Really!!!
I didn’t know that.
//////heavy sarc
“is the suggestion that contemporary American gun culture was more or less invented by the Black Panthers. “
No. It was invented by a bunch of fellers in Lexington and Concord in 1775.
THey think if they brand guns “a black thing” we will turn against them (since we are all mindless racists).
Is there anything in the 57 United States Of Obama that isn’t caused by, motivated by, or due to, race and/or racism?
This guy must be getting some pretty good weed.
I see the frumpster is still an idijt.
Bring out some historic anecdote (or two), play around with words, and manage to completely miss the point, as usual.
Hey, David, the root of government distrust dates back a long time. Esp with the current regime, they haven’t done A THING to earn that trust.
Frum is an idiot.....not one of Holders people, just a run of the mill idiot.
Yeah, 2nd AM is for DEFENSE, not offense.
However, it is helpful to our cause to note that MANY gun control efforts were directed at Blacks, as part of Jim Crow laws.
Frum is a Canadian conservative-turned-liberal who frequently seeks to lecture his former friends for the benefit of his new ones, in this case by inventing a connection (Black Panthers/white gun owners) so preposterous that only an idiot could believe it.
“not one of Holders people”
Perhaps this was his way of submitting his resume. lol
Not forgetting or discount that.
But.
The article is about the ‘root of anti-government gun culture’, or so I thought.
Winkler is a revisionist trying to ignore the actual founding of this country in favor of his childhood heroes the Black Panthers.
Actually, I believe the anti-government gun culture would go back farther than that; at least to the Pilgrams.
Before that, actually. The people who landed at Plymouth Rock left England because they did not accept the absolute power of the state. Their contemporaries would show they meant business by putting on trial and cutting off the head of their tyrant king less than 30 years later.
In the 17th Century, the American subjects of England were required to swear an oth of allegiance to the new English republic and the Parliament, When the monarchy was restorred to the throne, they were once more required to swear a new oath of alleggiance to the Catholic monarch of England. In both cases they were the citizen soldiers of the colony. They were the police force, the militia, and the first responders to any disaster. They were required by law to keep and bear arms in defense of their communities and in obediance to the English government’s orders to wage war. Their weapons were required to be military weapons as dictated by law. In the event of insurrection, rebellion, civil war, or internaitonal war, these citizen soldiers were responsible for the care, maintenance and utilization of their military weaponry on behalf of themselves, their communities, and their loyalist and/or rebellious governments.
The author of the article crafted an article that seeks to rewrite history with half-truths and strawman arguments.
Not just blacks, but in general poor people. Ya had to have money to for a permit.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.