It was a statement that many in the media talked about, but virtually no one challenged. Actor Danny Glover, talking about the Second Amendment, saying that it was designed and crafted in order to protect slave owners. Is that true? This is Full Disclosure.
The 66 year old Glover was speaking to students at Texas A&M University. And, that is where he told students that the Second Amendment was actually crafted by the founders in order to protect slave owners from uprisings. Here’s what he said:
- “The Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, I don’t know if people know the genesis of the right to bear arms. 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.”
So, is that statement true? Well, no. There is no mention, as you probably know, in the Second Amendment of slave owners, of slaves, of people of color. In fact, there is no historical evidence whatsoever to what Danny Glover said. Not only that, but Glover himself didn’t bother to offer any historical evidence to back up his claim.
But, as long as we’re on the subject, there is a lot to say about history, guns and gun control, when it comes to minorities.
You see, as for gun control, there is a racist history that goes back into the 1700’s, and predates the founding of America.
- 1751, French Black Code – Required Louisiana colonists to stop any blacks, and if necessary, beat “any black carrying any potential weapon such as a cane.”
- After Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, Virginia’s response was to prohibit free blacks from “keeping or carrying any firearm of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead…’
In fact, if you’re honest with yourself and you go back and look at historical documents, the facts are pretty simple. From the Revolutionary period all the way until the civil rights period, nearly every single gun control law that has been enacted across the nation has been done so to disarm blacks and hispanics.
Take for instance, a law in 1840 in North Carolina:
- That if any free person of color, shall wear or carry about his or her person, or keep in his or her house, any shot gun, musket, rifle, pistol, sword, dagger or bowie-knife, unless he or she shall have obtained a license therefor from the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of his or her county, within one year preceding the wearing, keeping or carrying therefor, he or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be indicted therefor.
Laws like that were passed all across the nation, again, from the Revolutionary period, all the way to the civil rights period. Those laws were not extended to white Americans, only to people of color. And that, by the way, historical fact, did not escape an Ohio judge, who in 1920 ruled on a case of a hispanic man of Mexican descent who was convicted of having a handgun while asleep in his own bed. But, the dissenting judge wrote this. He said that:
- Laws in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, New York and Ohio had been designed “for a decisive purpose to entirely disarm people of color.”
So, what you need to know here is that what Danny Glover said is not only untrue, it’s historically the converse of what is true. You see, the Second Amendment has no restriction in it. It does not restrict anyone from having a weapon, or carrying a firearm, based on color, on creed, even on gender. No, the Second Amendment only places a prohibition on one group; the federal government. Explaining that the government of this nation shall not try to restrict people from keeping and bearing arms. And that is Full Disclosure.
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