Trump neither read nor understood the Second Amendment but
uses it as just an excuse for "law-abiding" folks to lock and load…
Trump tweeted that he had released his position papers on the Second Amendment:
The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.
The problem is, that is not what the Second
Amendment says at all and Trump proves again and again he did not
actually read the Second Amendment before he wrote his position papers
on it.
There, the rest of us can plainly read:
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.
Trump forgot about the “well regulated militia”
being the reason for bearing arms. And forgetting about the militia
means Trump misunderstands what those arms are for. He goes on to claim:
The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental
right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution
doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it
away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that
the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend
ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and
simple.
Plain and simple…no, not really plain and simple at all.
What is a militia Trump has ignored, you ask? Rather
than going to a modern dictionary to see why they needed guns (in case
the Second Amendment isn’t clear enough on that), let’s open up Samuel
Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1768):
MILITIA. F. [Latin] The trainbands; the standing force of a nation
TRAINBANDS. F. The militia; the part of a community trained to martial exercise.
So the militia is the standing force of the nation.
And in the absence of the Continental Army during the Revolution, the
militia was precisely that, sometimes standing up to the British,
sometimes melting away, taking their guns with them.
It is important to note here that the Founding
Fathers were suspicious of standing armies, so after the Revolution, we
had a “well regulated militia” instead. This militia had its backsides
handed to them by a Native American force at the Battle of the Wabash in
1791.
The United States Constitution, of course, was
drafted in 1787 during the primacy of the militia, and ratified in 1788,
both events occurring before President George Washington decided we
needed an actual, professional army in 1792. So strictly speaking, the
Second Amendment speaks to an era that had ceased to exist by 1792 with
the establishment of Mad Anthony Wayne’s “Legion of the United States”
(not renamed the United States Army until 1796).
It is a shame the Founding Fathers did not bother to
change the Second Amendment to reflect the new reality, that Americans
no longer needed to be armed like an army because they no longer were an
army. Today, of course, we not only have a standing, active-duty army,
but we have the Army Reserve and a new sort of militia, the National
Guard.
Needless to say, unlike 1776, we no longer have to
carry our own weapons to National Guard training. The Army provides the
weapons these days. Technically speaking, the Second Amendment describes
a reality that no longer prevails.
The problem Trump has here is that he sees guns as a
means of defending our homes against intruders, and that is not how
guns are written into the United States Constitution. Communities in the
18th century would muster the able-bodied men with their weapons on the
village green and drill like soldiers.
And they had to: they were the closet thing to
Samuel Johnson’s standing army. But armies were never intended to
control our own people, but to ward off outside enemies.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, wants to use guns
to control crime. Bernie Sanders wants fewer prisons, and to eliminate
private prisons. Donald Trump wants to throw more people into prison.
And he makes a careful distinction
between white folks with guns, who are okay in his book, and “other”
people with guns, or “drug dealers and gang members” as he calls them.
We need to get serious about prosecuting violent
criminals. The Obama administration’s record on that is abysmal.
Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out
of control. Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist
and turned loose on the street. This needs to stop.
Then there are the “okay” people:
Why does that matter to law-abiding gun owners?
Because they’re the ones who anti-gun politicians and the media blame
when criminals misuse guns.
Like the Oath Keepers aiming guns at federal
officers? That sort of non-violent? Or offering to “protect” Kim Davis
from re-arrest? Or trying to intimidate a judge at his home by gathering
outside, armed? Or entering into government offices, armed, to
intimidate lawmakers? Those were all actions carried out by white people
with guns.
Yet Trump believes no white man with a gun can be wrong, proposes:
[E]mpower law-abiding gun owners to defend
themselves. Law enforcement is great, they do a tremendous job, but they
can’t be everywhere all of the time. Our personal protection is
ultimately up to us. That’s why I’m a gun owner, that’s why I have a
concealed carry permit, and that’s why tens of millions of Americans
have concealed carry permits as well. It’s just common sense. To make
America great again, we’re going to go after criminals and put the law
back on the side of the law-abiding.
Common sense tells Trump to turn a bunch of
untrained yokels with guns, who as often as not shoot themselves or each
other by accident, or are shot by their wives or children by accident
because they leave their loaded weapons lying around, loose on
criminals. Trump thinks this is the answer to crime.
Trump complains in
his papers that “law-abiding gun owners…get blamed by anti-gun
politicians, gun control groups and the media for the acts of deranged
madmen,” but has no problem assigning group guilt to blacks or Mexicans
or Muslims for the actions of a violent few.
It’s just that in Trump’s white supremacist world,
white folks with guns can do no wrong. And Trump doesn’t want to confuse
people with terms like “assault weapon” or “high capacity magazine”: he
says “Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice.”
The old adage Keeping up with the Joneses just assumed a terrifying new dimension.
Trump neither read nor understood the Second
Amendment, but uses it as just an excuse for “law-abiding” (read: white)
folks to lock and load while we clear everyone else off the streets,
and oh, by the way, that concealed carry permit should be valid in your
neighborhood too, even if your community says no, because, you know,
it’s a “right.”
Never mind the Second Amendment’s failure to mention “concealed carry,” because why would a militia conceal its weapons?
We need to thank Trump for releasing his position papers on the Second Amendment. They are very…illuminating,
to say the least. We now have a fuller understanding of Trump’s “us vs.
them” world and how he intends to “manage” it. White folks with guns
are just protecting themselves and maintaining law and order. Other
folks…well, there are always those prisons Republicans love so much.
Let’s see – Übermensch on the streets with guns. Untermenschen in the prisons. That’s Trump’s America.
Does that sound at all familiar to you? It should. Welcome to Germany, 1933.
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