Finding First Causes of the Second

 CAROL ANDERSON, of Emory University, recently published "The Second: Guns and Race in a Fatally Unequal America", a seminal monograph which provides the most compellingly illuminating description to date of the origins of the second amendment. The second amendment, like the rest of the American constitution, was carefully crafted so as to lure members into the club, and to keep them therein, members as diverse as Massachusetts and Virginia, as Georgia, as night and day. If the slave owning south would sign up, their slaves, for purposes of adding up people to determine representation in the House of representatives,  would be generously considered three fifths of a human being, each and every one. Generous indeed, considering the alternative, which was nonexistence. But, it must be constitutional for gangs of plantation police, armed to the hilt, to go forth into the countryside hunting down AWOL slaves, or the deal is off. Thus, white gangsters become a militia, para military law enforcers, albeit well regulated, to assuage the civilized sort. Bad laws require enhanced enforcement, bad institutions even more. In 2021 the sacred, inviolable right of every American citizen to go out and about bearing arms has been chiseled into supreme court stone, some might be surprised to learn, only as recently as 2008. Before then, it was inexplicably assumed that to exercise the right to bear arms, a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, one ought to actually belong, as least nominally, to such a questionably contrived creature.  For the elucidation of our constitutional "originalists", whose originality does not encompass using muzzle loading muskets in our modern world, the framers intended that arms should be borne almost exclusively by militiamen, under strict supervision, to hunt down freedom seekers and to return them to the alleged benefits of christian bondage. Nobody back then wanted the streets clogged with gun toting private citizens. the arms should be left at home, under lock and key, just in case.Self styled tough guys and gals could parade around proudly, with arms, at home. Professor Carol Anderson is an African-American woman who probably therefore has reservations about the second amendment, but does not say so in her book, whose purpose is history, not opinion. We do know, however, that James Madison was not enthusiastic about the Bill of Rights, which he thought would be widely ignored. On a recent NPR interview, she intimated that she is not a strong supporter of the second. Why would she be? It was intended only as a carrot extended to the enslavers, permitting them to reacquire their properly, convincingly. And then, when you reflect on the fact that American gun culture has never been particularly African-american friendly, what could possible motivate her to , say, join the NRA?  Governor Ronald Reagan was all in on gun rights, until the very moment when the Black Panthers started strolling the streets of Oakland, carrying assault rifles.