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CoreyWhittFirstEssay 3 - 22 Mar 2022 - Main.NereeseWatson
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| | | But if you are going to step into the question what the Second Amendment "means," you enter one of the most contentious fields of Anglo-American legal history, and better sourcing will help you. Joyce Malcolm's To Keep and Bear Arms s the best starting-place for the strong individualist claim into which the Supreme Court bought for the first time in Heller. The "discredited" work of Michael Belleisles, Arming America—which lost its Bancroft Prize and destroyed its author's reputation over serious lapses in accuracy—is nonetheless an important outline of the contending argument, that American gun culture arose after the Civil War, and that any contemporary understanding of the constitutional provision is inherently separated from any "original" 18th century guise it may seem to take on. This then raises questions about who has the right to be armed. This leads to the important work of historians such as Robert Cottrol and Don Kates, who have argued that the history of disarming Black Americans was one of the most fundamentally important instruments of white supremacy, so that the personal right to carry firearms is a necessary civil right if Black folks are to be safe here in their own country. All this work is history in the service of political action, but I have known all these scholars since I was a graduate student, and all of them—including Belleisles—are professional historians, trying to understand. If you want to think about this question deeply, you need them all.
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> | Hi Corey,
Thank you for your vulnerability in sharing your experience. Your essay really shows the collective implications of protecting an individual right so fiercely that might not even have true constitutional support. I feel as though strong Second Amendment Rights' protection also feeds a vicious cycle where other people feel the need to be armed to protect themselves from other gun owners. This is mostly in the interest of the military-industrial complex, lobbyists, and the new self-defense/school supplies entrepreneurs.
Best,
Nereese | | |
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