est. 2007

Barbados Underground

Bringing News and Opinions to the People

The Truth About the US Second Amendment

Submitted by Charles Knighton Obviously what the framers of this amendment intended was that the people…could be constituted as a militia and would be called TO DEFEND THE STATE. Michael Rudder, January 8 Letter to the editor, both sections of the press. Obviously? When we consider that the Framers of the US Constitution and their…

, ,
Submitted by Charles Knighton

2ndAmendmentObviously what the framers of this amendment intended was that the people…could be constituted as a militia and would be called TO DEFEND THE STATE. Michael Rudder, January 8 Letter to the editor, both sections of the press.

Obviously? When we consider that the Framers of the US Constitution and their supporters had recently taken up arms AGAINST THE STATE?

Last year Dr. Ben Carson performed a valuable public service.  When the good doctor likened gun control to Nazi Germany’s confiscation of weapons, he cut to the heart of America’s debate over guns. Advocates of “commonsense” regulations, such as bans on assault rifles, 30-round magazines and armor- piercing bullets, are dumbfounded that these restrictions cannot make it through Congress.

But as Carson made clear, Second Amendment absolutists are not only concerned with their ability to shoot burglars or deer. They insist on their right to buy—indeed, to stockpile— military-grade weaponry because they believe that someday, they may need to wage a guerrilla war against a tyrannical president and the US military, just as their forefathers did in the time of George III.

This is no fringe view. The “insurrectionist” theory of the Second Amendment, as historians call it, is deeply embedded in America’s gun culture. It holds that the Founders expressly built an escape clause into the Constitution, giving citizens “the right to bear arms” so they could violently overthrow the government should it defy the people’s will. A 2013 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll found that 29 percent of Americans agreed with the statement, “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary to protect our liberties.”

As Carson put it in his guileless way, no pile of bullet-riddled bodies can be “more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” since liberty itself is at stake. This belief animates the adamant opposition to gun laws, and until gun control advocates engage it directly and effectively, nothing will change.

36 responses to “The Truth About the US Second Amendment”

  1. Shaft Avatar
    Shaft

    The “Right to bear arms” to defend themselves against the any British future acts to defeat the newly formed US Government…!

  2. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    No need to worry about the 2nd amendment, in the next 20 years the card carrying NRA members in Congress, the 3 branches of government and the political parties would have made sure they all kill each other with guns….the threat within is deadlier.

  3. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    The trouble with the 2nd Amendment lies in the fact that the framers of the US Constitution made it an absolute right. And it reads: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

  4. Dompey Avatar
    Dompey

    Well Well

    Don’t quote me on this one, but it would take a two-third majority in the Congress and every State legislature to overturn the Second Amendment.

  5. ac Avatar
    ac

    what would one expect from Right wing gun touting USA conservatives legislators who have no problem with passing legislation that gives the USA govt permission to sell arms to countries whose foreign policies have destroyed innocent lives including those of children

  6. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    We don’t care about the 2nd amendment of the U.S. constitution. Why are we talking about this?

  7. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Simple….because those arms end up in the Caribbean as illegal weapons, into the hands of young black men, who then kill each other and innocent people.

  8. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Dompey…not going to happen, it’s a billion dollar industry, greed will win. Each and every one of them will fight to the death to keep it and just in case one day they have to overthrow a hostile US government. Did you not see the recent militia standoff in Oregon, they will one day close ranks if they ever feel threatened….it’s no joke.

  9. Jeff Cumberbatch Avatar
    Jeff Cumberbatch

    @Dompey, as a matter of constitutional law, no right is absolute once the state acts “proportionately” in infringing it. This would include consideration of the aim of the infringement and whether that infringement has been effected in the least disruptive way possible.

  10. ac Avatar
    ac

    No right is “absolute” correct ! but the boldness of a guaranteed right constitutes an undeniable privilege and serves as a guideline to protect every individual right within a democracy
    The ‘Right to bear arms therefore falls within such right ! a right given and cannot be easily taken away by suasion of catastrophic events circumstances or occurrences especially when there are governing laws which act as protection to serve and protect society from the circumstances devised by violent acts ,What is crucial in the pursuit of tackling gun violence is finding the appropriate legislation which does not deny society any of their guaranteed rights as framed in the constitution a slippery road which should be avoided at all cost

  11. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Yeah AC……just like the unenviable right for bajans to have access to clean water. The constitution dictates that no government has the right to take away the rights of citizens for their own individual selfish reasons. Citizens have the right under those circumstances to fight for those rights at all times. The government are mere employees, the people are the owners. The US governments understand this quite well, it now the turn of small island governments to understand also that they are employees of the people, that keeps escapes them, but they will learn.

  12. Alvin Cummins Avatar
    Alvin Cummins

    @Well Well,
    You are an anarchist are you not?

  13. lawson Avatar
    lawson

    The Barbados second amendment states the populace will have the undeniable right to bare arms tits or ass anytime time they damn well please especially during cropover.

  14. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Alvin……anarchy is trying to turn everyone on the island into a yardfowl and taking away their basic human rights. People like me try to open those people’s eyes so yardfowls like you don’t succeed in the violation of human rights….and to answer your question, no am not even an activist, I just hate to see black people still with the ability in 2016, pimp out and sell out their own…….so Alvin, don’t you be trying to put no labels on me because you cannot turn me into a yardfowl or get me to believe in your ignorant, backward, destructive nonsense….I am one nut you don’t want to try cracking…so move on.

  15. TheGazer Avatar
    TheGazer

    Anarchist! Interesting word. I would have used revolutionary, but “one man’s revolutionary is another man’s terrorist”/ Preach on WW&C2. Your comments are quite thought provoking,

  16. Frustrated Businessman Avatar
    Frustrated Businessman

    USA doesn’t have a gun problem, it has a gun culture problem. Other countries in the world have higher per-capita gun ownership and don’t have USA’s social and cultural gun-crime issues.

    This 2nd Amendment issue is a smokescreen, as is Obama’s proposed solution.

    The recent mass-shootings in USA were conducted with illegally obtained guns, just like the ‘gangsta’ shootings here in BIm. Obama’s proposal to ban private gun sales in order to ensure background checks by dealers (who have access to the criminal databases) would not have prevented a single mass-murder, just like banning Coolaid would not have prevented Jim Jones’ mass murder.

    Even if Obama manages to ban private sales and thereby ensure criminal record background checks, those checks will not include mental health records since those are also protected by the Constitutional Right to Privacy.

    The irony obviously being that criminals who use guns to conduct criminal activities never used the background checks anyway when they bought their gun illegally and the mad people who carry out these horrible crimes won’t be on the background check system.

    More political bullshit hiding the real underlying issues.

  17. David Avatar
    David

    @Frustrated Businessman

    Isn’t what you described part of what makes the gun culture.?

  18. Frustrated Businessman Avatar
    Frustrated Businessman

    @Frustrated Businessman

    Isn’t what you described part of what makes the gun culture.?

    No, read the first paragraph again. Has anyone ever accused Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Israel etc. of having a gun culture just because of high per-capita gun ownership? Of course not.

    USA has seen a civil decay in the post-WW2 era like no other 1st-world country on Earth. All levels of civil life have become more insular and insulated in all parts of the country. Whole cities like Detroit and Chicago have become war zones despite draconian gun laws even more restrictive than Barbados. The border issues in the Mexico-bordering states likewise.

    It is not an exaggeration to say that a collapse of the Commonwealth of Free States (as described by the founding fathers) or at least a collapse of the post-1865 Federalised form of gov’t (as championed by Adams and objected to by Jefferson) is a very real possibility. A Texan has nothing in common with a New Yorker or a Californian anyway, some would say a return to a 1780 republic would be better for all.

    Would the violent results in USA be fewer and less impactful if there were no guns? Of course, but a gun-free world is an impossibility, especially a gun-free USA. When gun ownership becomes criminal, only criminals have guns.

  19. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Wrong Frustrated…..the mass shootings in the US were committed using legally obtained guns bought throw legally registered gun dealers……that is the nexis of the problem….check your facts, if they had 2 illegal guns in their possession, they had 4 legally registered firearms.

  20. Frustrated Businessman Avatar
    Frustrated Businessman

    Well Well & Consequences2 January 11, 2016 at 8:32 AM #
    Wrong Frustrated…..the mass shootings in the US were committed using legally obtained guns bought throw legally registered gun dealers……that is the nexis of the problem….check your facts, if they had 2 illegal guns in their possession, they had 4 legally registered firearms.

    How the weapons were acquired is a pointless argument, there are too many school shootings to count or define. My argument regarding the social causes stands. A nation of socially dysfunctional spoilt children who lash out like unsupervised 2-year-olds.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States

  21. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Have to agree with Frustrated Businessman that the problem in the USA is not guns per se, but the high level of red-neck idiocy that pervades the damned place. This is all driven by a flawed education system that denies God and promotes selfish greed above all else …a system which we brass bowls have been slavishly copying, and naturally getting the same damned results.

    Those other countries, some with even more guns per capita, tend to have educational systems that focus much more on social responsibility, higher values than self, and some appreciation of God.

    Unfortunately, the USA has been able to force its values, often ‘vi et armis’, even on the most resilient of these other countries…. with everyone now moving towards the same results that they have….

  22. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Yeah….the problem is also lies with how children are raised in the US, having raised children there myself, but that is very separate and distinct from gun manufacturers flooding the US inner cities with legal and illegals weapons which then trickles down to the Caribbean islands.

  23. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    As long as we understand that arms are big business, you also understand that a billion dollar busness such as that, legal or illegal will not be going anywhere in our lifetime.

    The Bushman, the red necks are not going anywhere either, you have some miniature wannabe ones in Barbados who from time to time pop up like jack-in-the-box, just to let you know they are alive and well and that they control the local economy, ya’ll don’t know what to do with those pretenders…lol….how do you think the US are able to deal if the 50 million or more rednecks they have who are all armed and all want something different, with most being psychotic, racist, illiterare and just plain stupid…..ya think it easy for them.

    Some believe, I don’t, that the problems start in the separation between church and state. I believe, having read the damn confounded constitution while doing a course, that the problems begin and end with the 2nd amendment, which needs to be amended in it’s antiquated form…..the Bushman most of the rednecks to which we allude cannot even read the constitution and are just your garden variety, mislead yardfowls, does that ring any bells,,, lol

    In saying that, parents hands have been unfairly tied in rearing their children for several reasons, some valid, some not, but that’s a whole nother tear jerking story that can get exhausting. That is the price the US is paying for ‘progress’ and greed.

  24. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Having realized that the politicians are primarily responsible for most of any countries problems because of their greed and deceit….even th US electorate are pulling back from the political parties, compounding what I been saying all along.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/americans-pulling-republican-democrat-parties-article-1.2492680

    Political independents on the rise as number of Americans identifying as Republicans, Democrats near historic lows

    A new poll shows that 42% of Americans identify as political independents.
    The percentage of Americans who identify with either of the two major political parties is at or near historic lows, according to a new poll released Monday.

    Only 29% of those surveyed in a new Gallup poll said they identified as Democrats — the lowest level in 27 years.

    On the other hand, only 26% of those surveyed identified as Republicans, just one percentage point above the prior low taken by Gallup in 2013.

    Another 42% of those polled said they identify as political independents, indicating that a growing number of Americans feel they have less and less in common with either major party.

    “Americans’ attachment to the two major political parties in recent years is arguably the weakest Gallup has recorded since the advent of its polls,” the pollsters wrote in a statement accompanying the survey’s release. “The percentage of U.S. adults identifying as political independents has recently reached levels never seen before.”

  25. lawson Avatar
    lawson

    Well Well are you saying if red necks give up there guns everyone in Baltimore and inner Chicago will give up theirs hardly, this isn’t just a redneck problem When you say redneck I think of deep south but that is not where largest manufacturers seem to be located, this is more about money like everything else is. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

  26. Well Well & Consequences2 Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2

    Lawson….a great number of the gun manufacturers and NRA members are rednecks….lol and all greedy.

  27. Frustrated Businessman Avatar
    Frustrated Businessman

    WW&C, excellent info on political participation.

    Your comment on so-called ‘red necks’ is entirely wrong as pointed out by Lawson. They seem to actually be the most peaceful segment of US population, mostly keeping themselves to themselves in mostly rural environs.

    Inner city gang activity and general ‘fatherless unemployable’ lawlessness as well as urban ‘busy-parents’ child abandonment to TV and video games seem on the surface to be the biggest contributors to the anti-social behaviour and violence.

  28. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    Frustrated…you missed the new age redneck, the ones you knew before were the snaggled tooth, inbred, really poor ugly dude and dudette, on welfare from the South or the mountains in Kentucky, those are the dregs and descendants of the old rednecks that sunk into poverty after their ancestors lost whatever wealth they had decades ago. In the last decades redneck has reorganized and gone right back to the days of Klu Klux Klan….you blinked and you did miss it.

    Innercity kids alone cannot be blamed for the violence in America, it has become an epidemic, suburban kids have both parents, most anyway, are picking up guns and cold-bloodedly murdering dozens, an inner city kid may stupidly shoot one, your well adjusted upper middle class kid with both parents is a violently vicious serial killer, leaving Daddy at home in the living room to go attend to his kills, so your argument rings hollow, after all we been witnessing.

    There is a serious problem with violence in America, it has always been a violent country, before the advent of innercity kids, even in the 30s, 40s, 50s in Hell’s Kitchen with the Gangs of NY and they were all white, then the Mafia, etc, it has gotten worse because the gun trade led by wealthy NRA members, members of congress and the ultra wealthy and greedy, has expanded, the arms trade has gotten more lucrative….it’s all about money and that’s the bottomline.

    One cannot be blaming kids for violence they were born into, the US has always been violent, for centuries, I cannot remember a time when they were not, can you, as far as I know it’s part of the culture and attraction and has always been.

    I used to live in Hell’s Kitchen at one time, it was something to hear the older generation talk about those days in Manhattan while sitting in Clinton Park reminiscing.

  29. Frustrated Businessman aka Republic my ass. Avatar
    Frustrated Businessman aka Republic my ass.

    Regardless of the racial and social categorisations, the fact remains that 50% of all murders in the USA are committed by 2% of the population: black males aged 15-50. 45% are committed by a similar Hispanic demographic and in both cases more than 80% of the victims were of the same race. I think it’s more to do with inner-city, uneducated, fatherless unemployable ‘gangstas’ just like it is here. And just like here, to call them ‘working class’ is an insult to people who work.

  30. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    No it’s not a fact Frustrated….it’s a lie. Blacks make up 45 million of the US population. The other 255 million is made up of everyone else, you do the math….you only hear about black and hispanic crime, that is what is highlighted. Most vicious crimes from others are not highlighted….it’s a concerted effort to still blame black people for everything as it has been for centuries.

    Again…Barbados is a black majority country. Maybe it’s time to educate the black males better about their parental responsibilities instead of just turning them into yardfowls. It is unfair to label all black males on the island as being the same.

  31. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    I am not trying to change anyone’s mind about the way they preceive black people, but telling lies is low rent.

    The below link outlines acts of violence perpetrated by athletes in the US, if you scrowl throw the photo gallery below the article, you will see whites well represented am8ng the violent culprits, but those are not all the whites that should be highlighted, that you can guarantee.

    Same goes for everyday violence in the US, the majority whites get a pass on their criminal and violent acts being reported.

    http://ow.ly/X1kno

  32. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    http://ow.ly/X1mxv

    The above is what the majority believe a sense of being “white” entitles them alone to in the US, until it blows back in their faces.

  33. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/exclusive-mount-sinai-doc-accused-ejaculating-patient-article-1.2496055

    What a fine upstanding white man, salt of the earth, must have been a black man committed that crime in the US..lol

  34. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/video-contradicts-claims-men-robbed-brooklyn-article-1.2494825

    And let’s not forget New York’s Finest Police Dept who would tell as many lies as they can on a daily basis to meet their daily quota of arresting as many blacks as possible to keep that image current. Fine upstanding white people do that, to make themselves look better.

  35. Frustrated Businessman aka Republic my ass. Avatar
    Frustrated Businessman aka Republic my ass.

    Elbert neglected to say that it was Lincoln who started the American Civil War over the South’s refusal to pay 45% tariffs imposed on the South’s imported goods in order to prop up his voter base in the North while financing big business’ expansion of railroads and mining and that the war had nothing to do with slavery until it was convenient to use slavery as a means to wage war, or that it was Lincoln who abandoned the Gold Standard to create a Central Bank in which he could print money (which was later sold out to private interests and deliberately mis-named the Federal Reserve) but otherwise makes a few good points.

  36. Well Well & Consequences2I Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences2I

    They have always been liars, it’s amazing that people still believe anything they say. It’s amazing that anyone, particularly blacks would even want to identify with any of those 2 parties, although I understand the principles behind the logic, being that blacks had to fight and many lost their lives, just to win the right to vote, which is an inalienable right.

    Selma, starring Oprah Winfrey is slated to show, I think on HBO, this month. One can get a better understanding on why it is essential for the majority whites who everyone thinks is so upstanding, to continue to perpetrate the fraud of denigrating black people, telling lies and setting the young people up for prison..

The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.

Trending

Discover more from Barbados Underground

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading