Actor Danny Glover said that the Second Amendment was written to strengthen the institution of slavery and help take Native American land, in a discussion with Texas A&Mstudents on Jan. 17, according to video of the talk posted by a conservative student group.
The event was honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. as the national holiday in his honor takes place on Monday.
"I don't know if people know the genesis of the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect, to protect themselves from slave revolts and from uprisings from Native Americans. A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that's what the genesis of the Second Amendment is," Glover said.
The conservative student organization that took the video of Glover speaking wrote an online petition criticizing the university, and the group's president called the statement a "far left message."
One thing I'm sure you've all noticed by now is that conservatives talk about the founders as if they were all in complete agreement about everything. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were plenty of contentious issues they were forced to deal with through compromise and the most contentious was slavery.
There's a good piece on the historical argument that the 2nd Amendment protects slavery here, but the short and skinny is that Patrick Henry wanted the Constitution to abolish slavery outright. That didn't fly, so he crafted a Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights with entirely different language than we have now. It spoke of the need for militias to protect against invasion, but the pro-slavery legislators noticed it said nothing about a slave revolt. So they asked Henry about that: He answered:
Not domestic insurrections, but war. If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress insurrections. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress… Congress, and Congress only, can call forth the militia.
In other words, if a majority of congress felt the slave insurrection was just, a slave state facing revolt would be on their own. Needless to say, this didn't fly either. So the current language — which protects slave states against slave rebellion — was adopted as one of those messy and awful compromises we still see in congress today.
But actual history doesn't help the conservative cause of selling buttloads and buttloads of guns. So an alternate history is declared sacrosanct and anything that disagrees with it becomes heresy. It's not history the right loves, it's a sort of revised American scripture, where Madison came down from the mountaintop with two tablets of the Ten Articles of the Bill of Rights, inscribed by the very hand of God Himself, Praise Jesus. Amen..
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Here's PBS's Mark Shields back in December with a terrible and eye-opening stat:
"[T]he reality is — and it's a terrible reality — since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, in those 43 years. … I mean, guns are a problem. And I think they still have to be confronted."
Politifact confirmed the math. I'd also like to add that the inherently American linkage between patriotism and bellicosity has absolutely contributed to our gun culture — in other words, if our leaders continue to tell us that supporting warfare is tantamount to love-of-country, then the use of firearm violence to solve problems becomes embedded in who we are as a people. I would go so far as to suggest that this linkage is the primary catalyst for America's gun obsession and, subsequently, the terror it unleashes.
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Vice President Joe Biden responded to the Onion on Friday during a Q&A with the Onion's "'Diamond' Joe Biden"– the satirical Joe Biden that washes his Trans Am while shirtless in the White House driveway, and tweeted this photo:
Q for @reddit AMA with my @TheOnion pal: A Trans-Am? Ever look under the hood of a Corvette? #imavetteguy –VPpic.twitter.com/xPGMBBYl
I'm so glad I can laugh with this administration.
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A male juvenile is in custody this morning following a shooting in the South Valley that left five people dead. In an email from Bernalillo County officials, a shooting took place on Long Lane SW Saturday evening. Deputies were dispatched and found an adult male, an adult female and three children dead. All victims appeared to have suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Multiple weapons appeared to have been used including an assault-type rifle. The investigation is ongoing and the identities of the victims have not been release, officials said.
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WILL NRA AGREE THIS ASSEMBLYMAN SHOULD NOT HAVE A GUN? PROBABLY, HE IS A DEMOCRAT
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