Time to Re-Load

“The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment,” by Thom Hartmann, 2019

This short primer is most notable for its legal take on the issue of the Second Amendment and the power of the NRA.  Hartmann details how none of the ‘founders’ thought guns were to be in every citizen’s hands, nor was that the meaning of the 2^nd Amendment.  In the 1970s the NRA was a normal ‘gun safety’ group that advocated reasonable gun laws.  Then it was taken over by the hard right and turned to fear-mongering over crime and drugs, sort of a justification for modern slave patrols and ‘open carry.’  In the process it became the lobby for gun manufacturers.

Re-Loaded

A part of the book could be seen as borrowing from Dunbar-Ortiz’ 2018 book “Loaded” in the relation between guns and native American genocide (100M dead) and centuries of African American slavery.  A key part of overturning Reconstruction was the seizing of weapons by Klan-like groups that were owned by southern people of a darker color.  Like Dunbar-Ortiz, Hartmann also deals with cowboys, mass killers, fascists and crazed young white men, starting in 1966 with Tower shooter Charles Whitman.

Hartmann is an ordinary left-liberal, so his solutions are patterned after reforms in Australia where owning a firearm is the same as owning and driving a car - with registration, training, insurance and licenses.  Yet at the same time he attempts to show how guns are embedded in U.S. society and here he falls short.  His larger solutions involve getting rid of corporate ‘personhood’ and money as ‘free speech,’ while trying to get different people on the Supreme Court.  Hartmann never mentions the bi-partisan militarist U.S. foreign policy and police, nor the role the Democratic Party has in the incarceration state and the drug war.  He thinks overturning all this is possible by simple, reformist means.

Gun-ownership is really a health crisis, as 2/3rds of the 34K yearly gun deaths are suicides.  Yet studying the issue in the U.S. is legally banned.   Studies from other countries show that the more guns in a society, the more suicides, murders, accidents and fascist and crazed mass shootings occur – an almost 1 to 1 correlation.   U.S. states that have more restrictive gun laws have less gun violence than those with fewer laws.  There is also a high correlation between inequality in a society and gun violence.  It is no accident that suicides, mass shootings and fascist activity under U.S. capitalism are all increasing as inequality and misery increase. The ‘right to bear arms’ has become its dialectical opposite, as the contradiction within the Amendment has flowered.  It is now also the right to die by gunfire.

2^nd Amendment

Hartmann looks at how the 2^nd Amendment was formulated.  Jefferson, a slave-owner, was wary of a standing army.  Madison, a slave-owner too, wanted to make the southern slave states happy and so included their ‘state’ language in the 2^nd Amendment.  Patrick Henry, a slave-owner, was the most vociferous in demanding that states, not the federal government, have control over the militias. He was worried that if the federal government controlled the militia, slave patrols in the south would be in danger.  It might also lead to ‘manumission’ for African-Americans if they were in a federal militia.  

The White Wigged Gentlemen

Hartmann notes that the phrase ‘bear’ arms implies a military duty, not an individual duty, as Jefferson wanted federal militias to substitute for a standing army.  Hamilton and a number of states also wanted no part of a standing army.  Jefferson was also for banning corporations and he was far from alone.  Now we have corporations, a standing army and the most guns of any society in the world.  Not sure that: “…the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards freedom.”  In essence, the Constitution was written in the shadow of slavery and that shadow continues to be cast.  It can certainly be seen in the 2^nd Amendment and all the other Constitutional ‘states rights’ issues.

The Text

The actual text of the 2^nd Amendment does not read the way the NRA and gun shops quote:  “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.”

The NRA and the gun shops only include the last half of the sentence. When the Constitution was adopted, the ‘people’ did not include native Americans or slaves.  Indentured European-American servants were added after some internal debates.  Women and lower class European-American men were not allowed to vote, but the men could be forced to carry guns.  It was originally drafted with ‘nation’ instead of ‘state’ until the slavers got their way.  Including the military word ‘bear,” it is very clear that the amendment refers to a civilian militia defending a state instead of a standing army.  It does not refer to everyone owning an AR15.  Yet the ‘originalist’ U.S. Supreme Court codified the NRA interpretation in 2008 in “D.C. v Heller.”  This case was championed by Scalia, which interpreted the 2^nd Amendment to be about individuals protecting ‘hearth and home,’ not serving in a state militia.

Hartmann cities the 1912 prohibition of corporate money that was codified in the 17^th Amendment under President Taft.  It sought the election of senators instead of their appointment by purchase.  1976’s Buckley decision by the Supreme Court contradicted this understanding of corruption.  It declared that indirect expenditures on issues were allowed for campaigns, as money was now part of ‘free speech.’  In 1978, the Supreme Court in “1^st National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti” decided that corporations have ‘free speech’ rights on ballot initiatives.  Those decisions were amplified in 2010 with Citizens United that gave corporations ‘personhood,’ allowing unlimited direct donations.
Corruption was originally defined as buying political representatives with money donations, which inspired the 17^th Amendment.  Now it has an extremely narrow definition, while the Constitution's definition was much broader.  All this relates to how much money the NRA and the gun industry can funnel to Republican and Democratic Congresspeople, along with every other form of legalized political bribery.

The Right of Revolution?

Karl Marx and many subsequent Marxists have always understood the ‘right of revolution,’ which was included in the Communist Manifesto.  This is also mentioned in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, a document having its origins in a revolution itself.  As is obvious from this book, there is no connection between the Declaration’s statement and the 2^nd Amendment as so many right-wingers claim.  Marxists have supported the right of the proletariat to have guns, an outlook also propagated in the Communist Manifesto.  But that does not preclude a rational and modern approach to the health risks of weapons or disarming our own forces of repression.

Other prior reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left:  “Loaded,” “A Culture War Debate,”  “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” “Prison Strike Against Modern Slavery,” “Witty Lightweight Attacks Marxism,” “Is the U.S. an Actual Democracy.”

And I got it at May Day’s excellent used/cutout books section!

Red Frog

February 3, 2020