January 23, 2013

Slavery, civil rights and gun control



From theGrio:


Actor and human rights activist Danny Glover has created controversy for comments he made on the Second Amendment.  Speaking at a recent event at Texas A&M University, Glover said the purpose of the amendment was to preserve slavery and keep down Native Americans.
“I don’t know if you know the genesis of the right to bear arms,” Glover said during his campus visit. “The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans. So, 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.”
Similarly, responding to the argument that a gun control measure lacks the votes to pass through Congress, Fox News’ Shepard Smith compared guns and slavery.  Smith offered, “If we stuck with the polls, though, we’d have had slavery a lot longer than we did.”
Glover and Smith are not the only people to make a comparison between gun control and social movements such as the struggle to abolish slavery.  For example, others have made references to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.  Whether appropriate or not, slavery and civil rights have become part of the debate over gun control.
With regard to slavery, there is evidence that the Founding Fathers had that institution in mind when drafting the Second Amendment.

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1 comment:

Harry Chavez said...

Mr. Grover have a point there. For instance, the insurance on health care system is already integrated when an individual gets employed. This is one manifestation of the second amendment. Gun control should also get the same attention, though it is an entirely different issue, there should be an efficient way to control and monitor gun ownership if the legislators want to avoid slavery using deadly weapons.