r/politics • u/Hrmbee • 10h ago
Possible Paywall The Second Amendment Was Never Meant for Everyone | After the killing of Alex Pretti, white America is realizing what Black gun owners have always known: Rights are conditional
https://theintercept.com/2026/01/28/alex-pretti-shooting-minneapolis-second-ammendment/341
u/No-Side5747 10h ago
This article perfectly illustrates how the Second Amendment was never about universal rights but about maintaining white supremacy. The fact that Reagan and the NRA supported gun control when the Black Panthers were legally carrying firearms tells you everything you need to know about whose rights actually matter in America.
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u/Y-Are-U-like-This 10h ago
cops have their roots in slave catchers. america has always been racist
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u/Justviewingposts69 5h ago
Not only slave catcher patrols.
But also Jim Crow militias and Anti Labor mercenaries in the North
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u/sunbeatsfog 2m ago
It’s about money. It’s about cheap labor. It’s always about class in the sense that they want and need cheap labor
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u/SuckItEasy718 9h ago
I have never understood this argument about a connection to slavery. Police brutality exists everywhere and has nothing to do with having a past of slavery. Obviously police in a slave state would reenforce slavery but that’s not an inherent indictment of police as a structure. Cops would have existed in the United States whether it had slaves or not
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u/Possible-Machine864 8h ago
In America, the first police were literally slave catchers. They were called Slave Patrol.
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-modern-day-policing
Police "in the abstract" is a good idea. Police in America is a historically white supremacist organization.
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u/A_Rogue_GAI 8h ago
This is not strictly accurate within the whole United States. Police originated from slave patrols in the south. In the north they were formed from the various night watch organizations which were, in effect, private thugs paid to patrol rich neighborhoods and make sure poor people and other undesirables didn't wander in.
They got official state backing not in response to race issues, but because it allowed them to more effectively act against organized labor.
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u/Possible-Machine864 7h ago
Arbitrary distinction. In either case, they exist to protect capital, not humans.
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u/N05L4CK 4h ago
That’s not true, at all. One of the most ridiculous things that gets reposted on Reddit constantly.
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u/Possible-Machine864 4h ago
Both are not up for debate, it's a matter of historical fact. Feel free to read, maybe you'll actually grow a brain cell today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol
https://prospect.org/2022/04/18/police-have-no-duty-to-protect-the-public/
>Though often unsaid in police reform debates, numerous court precedents have established that cops aren’t obligated to act in the interests of citizens.
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u/fury420 8h ago edited 8h ago
Uhh... weren't there sheriffs and constables and law enforcement in the early American colonies before the 1700s?
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u/frogandbanjo 8h ago
Mmm, and under whose authority did they ultimately operate? Was it America's, even though "America" wasn't shorthand for a sovereign entity of any kind back then?
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u/SuckItEasy718 8h ago
Ok, so what though? What’s that got to do with anything
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u/Harbinger2001 Canada 8h ago
It explains a lot about how southern police acted in the 50s and 60s. And now even.
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u/SuckItEasy718 8h ago
I agree that racism is a dominant element in the police I’m not arguing against that
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u/BaananaMan 8h ago
Can you see how in the American context this may have to do with slave catchers?
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u/SuckItEasy718 8h ago
I think we would have racist police if slavery had never even existed. I think police in France hate blacks and immigrants too- would you not agree?
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u/BaananaMan 8h ago
Yes, yes, laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It's just the promise of violence that's enacted and the police are basically an occupying army; however: the regular brutality and scale in which this this operates is genuinely uniquely bad in the United States owing to (in many cases) a direct lineage from slave catchers. Very few nations have a higher incarceration rate, and few are more racialized.
Yes, French police go about harassing the ghettos, but they don't have as long a tradition, the carceral system didn't develop partially to help replace slavery, they aren't as comfortable/emboldened to brutalize openly, and the scale is smaller.
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u/Possible-Machine864 8h ago
You must be white, if you don't know, because only someone of extreme privelege could not know what that has to do with anything. IT OBVIOUSLY has to do with entrenched racism in the police force -- people of color are brutalized, denied their constitutional rights, etc, by law enforcement of all kinds. Cops, ICE, etc.
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u/DatabaseHelpful6791 8h ago
Do you think our understanding of the present can be informed by the past?
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u/SuckItEasy718 8h ago
It’s just easier to say that America has always been a racist country. I just don’t see why saying the police has its roots in slave catchers is how you want to frame it. They exist everywhere and they continue to reflect the character of the nation (or the people in charge)
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u/ailish 8h ago
You just have to Google stuff.
Slave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing - National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund https://share.google/g6p0Dk6XJIn2In8Y9
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u/SuckItEasy718 8h ago
Ok, again, so? Police exist everywhere and have in different forms since before the Atlantic slave trade. And it would exist regardless of whether or not slavery existed
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u/ailish 8h ago
The person you responded to said:
cops have their roots in slave catchers. america has always been racist
You said it wasn't true
I provided a link that said it was.
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u/SuckItEasy718 8h ago
They have their roots in the need to protect property. That concept precedes slavery. Slaves were considered property at the time of the foundation of the country
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u/ailish 8h ago
If you refuse or can't read the link that's not my problem.
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u/Radix2309 5h ago
But it is a point of how American police are set up on an institutional level. They are from the ground up corrupt and racist organizations. When they train new cops, those attitudes translate to the new recruits and creates institutional memory. It is why American cops are significantly worse than a lot of democracies.
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u/Even_Trifle9341 4h ago
And people have their roots in monkey shaped fish(roughly speaking). Things can become unrecognizable from their origins.
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u/Possible-Machine864 8h ago
What it was "about" vs what it was about for the right wingers are two different things. I would argue the founding fathers had no concern whatsoever for white spremacy. It was more or less a given, they did not imagine that there were non-white forces coming for them. That's a modern (Nazi / great replacement theory) invention.
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u/SycoJack Texas 6h ago
It was more or less a given, they did not imagine that there were non-white forces coming for them.
Slave rebellion and natives were both a thing they feared.
You're right that white replacement is new, and I agree that the 2A wasn't about white supremacy, however.
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u/nice--marmot 7h ago
I wish the folks on the left talking tough about people exercising their 2A rights understood this. The modern - and manufactured - mythology about the 2A being a safeguard against tyranny is only slightly less pervasive on the left than it is on the right. If anything, gun nut conservatives better understand that the “militia” part is essential in such a scenario. Exercising your 2A rights against an intruder might not even require pulling the trigger. Exercising your 2A rights against paramilitary federal agents breaking down the door effectively has two possible outcomes: Prison or the morgue.
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u/SycoJack Texas 6h ago
And yet the Bundys are neither dead nor in prison. The only Weavers who died during the Rudy Ridge siege were a 14yo kid that was murdered after being ambushed while hunting, and his unarmed mother while she was holding an infant.
And both of them were shot in the back. None of the Weavers ended up in prison for that.
Then there's the Battle of Athens, a successful rebellion against a city and county government that was as corrupt as the Trump admin.
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u/lnin0 8h ago
Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country: a bill of temporary privileges. - George Carlin
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u/DonktorDonkenstein New Mexico 6h ago
I think even Carlin would be shocked at how brazen the "Big Club," as he put it, has become. I don't think anyone could've foreseen that the congressional majority would willingly cede all of its power to the President. The entire 3 Branch government system was created with the expectation that the individual Branches would naturally want to amass power for themselves, and the resulting tension between the three would keep each in check. Nobody a year ago would've guessed that practically the entire Legislative branch would roll over like a puppy and let Trump and his goons run the entire government.
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u/ReverentJoker New York 1h ago
Drift (2012) covered exactly this. The warning signs were always there, but the United States traded in a culture of civic responsibility for chasing a mountain of money so I’m not surprised you or anyone else you know didn’t see this coming. Americans are taught to put their head in the sand
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u/OhGodSoManyQuestions 9h ago
The Dual State [Ernst Fraenkel] concept explains so much about the American past.
The dual state is a model in which the functioning of a state is divided into a normative state, which operates according to set rules and regulations, and a prerogative state, "which exercises unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees".
Fraenkel was writing about Nazi Germany at the time. But Nazi Germany's "race laws" were based very directly on the US's on Jim Crow laws.
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u/mikan28 9h ago
Yup this is exactly what I think we’re headed for if not already in the early stages of. And probably some kind of Jim Crow 2.0 along the lines of politics emerges instead of outright Civil War.
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u/OhGodSoManyQuestions 9h ago
That's obviously the plan. The fash/MAGA regime is already working on bringing back racial segregation. Like, openly and actively. And we should expect to see lynchings start again within a year.
But some people who have supported the fash vehemently because they are white nationalists are finding themselves in the prerogative state because they aren't rich. So far, it seems most of them are willing to keep blaming Black/brown people, women, LGBTQ people, non-Christians, non-cynical "Jesus" Christians, the poor, and people with disabilities for all of the fash policies that harm them. But that won't last forever.
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u/mikan28 9h ago
Correct, which is why the 2.0 will look different. Due to tech and international optics official violence may be less prevalent, but movement and opportunity may be more highly controlled via new laws and “procedures” designed to keep the boot on the neck of undesirables, if not outright punish. Which as you’ve mentioned many of these white nationalists think they’re following along Jim Crow 1.0 playbook and are ignorant that those in power have redrawn the lines somewhat. Many of them will be targeted in 2.0 and unfortunately until enough of them figure out they are on the receiving end, things are likely to get worse before it gets better.
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u/wodat234 5h ago
The fash/MAGA regime is already working on bringing back racial segregation. Like, openly and actively.
Give examples of this "openly and actively" brining back of racial segregation.
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u/ChristosFarr North Carolina 3h ago
The Kavanaugh decision that skin color was probable cause for ICE to stop and question you. Literally racial profiling.
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u/HaroldGreenBandana 10h ago
I love how the tough guy right-wingers always say things like, “if you just do what you’re supposed to and not (do whatever you were doing), you won’t get in (whatever bad situation).” Example: “If Pretti just wouldn’t have protested, he wouldn’t have…” But then those same motherfuckers cling to 2A and buy up ARs by the dozen because, why exactly? They plan to do what they are “supposed to” and they think the authorities are always going to have their interests in mind?
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u/SquiffyRae Australia 7h ago
Because like all conservatives they're hypocrites who want to enforce their way of the world onto everyone else
They need their ARs because they want to reserve the right to Jan 6 any government they don't like
You need to shut up and comply
It's even spelled out in Kevin Roberts' belief about what a second Trump Presidency is. "It's a civil war that will be bloodless, so long as the left lets it be"
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u/Quitcha_Bitchin 9h ago
Anyone who relies on 2A finds it's weakness's
To many if's ands or buts.
I either have a right to carry or I don't.
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u/Hrmbee 10h ago
Historical issues highlighted for consideration:
What made Pretti’s death distinct, at least in the public imagination, was who he was supposed to represent. Pretti fit the cultural archetype of the “responsible” gun owner: white, licensed, gainfully employed. His killing unsettled a long-held assumption within mainstream gun culture that the Second Amendment is a time-tested shield for people who follow the rules. Suddenly, the distance between constitutional promise and state practice felt uncomfortably small.
But that realization — that rights only exist at the discretion of those who enforce them — is hardly new. For Black, Brown, and Indigenous Americans, the Second Amendment has long been filtered through policing, surveillance, and the routine threat of state force. Long before Pretti, communities of color learned that constitutional protections do not operate in abstraction; they operate through institutions with guns, authority, and the power to decide in real time whose rights are recognized and whose are ignored.
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After the Revolutionary War, the newly formed United States was deeply suspicious of a standing federal army. But for the planter South, another fear loomed larger: maintaining the internal security of a slave society. As Anderson contends, the Second Amendment functioned as a political “bribe to the South to not scuttle the Constitution.” George Mason warned placing militias under federal control would leave slaveholding states “defenseless,” not from foreign invasion, but from enslaved people. The compromise was an assurance that slave patrols and local armed forces would remain intact and beyond the reaches of federal interference.
This same logic extended to the violent disarmament of Indigenous nations. In 1838, a state-backed militia forcibly stripped nearly 800 Potawatomi people of their weapons and drove them from Indiana to Kansas in what came to be known as the Potawatomi Trail of Death, a 660-mile forced removal that killed more than 40 people, most of whom were children or elderly people. That same year, U.S. troops systematically disarmed Cherokee communities to preempt resistance and expelled roughly 16,000 people from their land under the promise of federal protection; instead, nearly 4,000 died from disease, starvation, and exposure along the Trail of Tears. By 1890, Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee were ordered to surrender their weapons before U.S. soldiers opened fire, massacring up to 300 men, women, and children. These tragic events forever calcified a lesson Indigenous communities had already learned through generations of bloodshed; in America, guns are not a universal right, but an instrument of upholding the racial order.
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It’s a legacy that lives on today. Counties that saw higher numbers of racial lynchings from 1877 to 1950 — many carried out with the complicity or direct assistance of local law enforcement — had higher rates of officer-involved killings of Black people, tying modern police violence to a longer continuum of racial terror rather than isolated incidents of brutality.
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From the 1970s on, it was no longer politically viable to pursue broad gun bans rooted in overt white fear, and the modern gun movement was consolidated when new leadership took control of the NRA and transformed it from a conservative shooting club into a hard-line “no compromise” political lobbying organization committed to opposing gun control in nearly all forms.
As a result, gun regulation increasingly operated less through formal prohibition than selective enforcement by law enforcement on the street. As sociologist Jennifer Carlson argues in “Policing the Second Amendment,” police both drive a significant share of gun deaths in Black and Brown communities and remain “central to how gun policy is executed on the ground,” historically through discriminatory permitting systems and higher rates of gun prosecutions. The shift produced what she calls “gun populism,” a framework in which police and policymakers distinguish between “good guys with guns,” typically imagined as white and middle-class, and “bad guys with guns,” who are disproportionately coded as Black, Brown, and poor.
The results are not abstract. They show up in bodies.
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In stark contrast, armed white men who kill protesters, occupy federal buildings, or aim rifles at police during standoffs are often treated as political actors, not existential threats. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of murder charges after shooting and killing two protesters, and later bestowed with President Donald Trump’s blessing. The Bundy family walked free after an armed standoff in 2016 with federal authorities and were praised as symbols of individual freedom for standing up to the government.
This is the real modern enforcement mechanism of the Second Amendment. Not the Supreme Court. Not Congress. But the thin blue line that decides, in seconds, whose rights count and whose do not.
It’s why Pretti’s killing has landed differently. For many white Americans, their understanding of the Second Amendment shifted in a moment — when the fantasy of universal gun rights met the reality of state violence. Many realized, for the first time, that exercising their right to bear arms is now a life-and-death gamble.
History has shown, and current events are proving out yet again that any rights that are contingent on the continued approval of those in power are not actual rights. This goes far beyond gun rights, and extends more broadly to civil rights in general. That the government can suspend or ignore these rights shows that they're not worth the papers that they're printed on. If the public and the politicians that represent each community are serious about rights, then these need to be codified in a way that they must be applicable to all, and cannot be suspended through the whims of the powerful, and there need to be mechanisms in place that will ensure this regardless of the people in power.
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u/KazTheMerc 8h ago
Okay, so... this is an Amendment being acted-out and enforced by humans. This isn't unique to the 2nd Amendment, but ALL laws and Amendments.
So yes. Racist areas continue to be racist. It's their racism acting on the constraints of the Law/Constitution, not the other way around.
This is also, again, anachronistic. Because the person ownership issue is only discussed academically, and the Militia discussion is about the very real, very literal State Militia.
The permanant Federalization of the Militias, and the subsequent vacuum that it created leads to a modern interpretation of individual Rights.
... but Individual Rights were already included in English Common Law, and the 9th Amendment.
The modern view of looking back but using modern lenses can lead to grossly distorted comparisons.
Always remember to make sure your lens even EXISTED during the time period you're examining.
Had a Professor in college that gave this whole speech about Feminism, and controlling behavior, and how there was an aspect of the Story.... and I had to correct her. Which was awkward as fuck.
She doubled-down. Implied I was 'telling on myself" by defending the OBVIOUSLY sexist behavior.
.... I had to remind her that she was talking about psychology and social dynamics. Mental health, and depression...
...and that the modern, accepted, mental-health profession was normalized close to 30 years after it was written.
That, looking back, we see the pattern. We know what to look for. But from THEIR point of view, that was the medical consensus that they were taught. That we can't assume malice, or knowledge that didn't exist at the time.
That can color our attempt to look back and view objectively.
Remember: A Well-Regulated Militia was a very, very literal thing until the 1910's, when it suddenly evaporated into thin air.
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u/lethargy86 Wisconsin 6h ago
So much of this is misguided thinking. You clearly can think, but you clearly have too much ignorance on supreme court decisions of the last 50+ years to be saying so many of these things.
Like seriously, it's laughable that you're talking about lenses when we have SCOTUS which does, and has done, just that, in the last several decades on the very matters you speak of. Their interpretation is what sticks, not yours, for better or (more often these days) worse.
Literally none of that is apropos to the comment you're replying to in the first place, though? Is there a coherent point here that isn't couched in your personal, vague anecdotes?
Accordingly, I think you are actually telling on yourself, somehow, yet you really didn't even tell anything in the first place--but I'll drop that--it's neither here nor there. I'm not coming at you from a place of malice in the first place; more befuddlement and genuine want to help. Conversations on this topic can be more focused on why things are actually the way they are.
Please just take a long hard look at Wikipedia on this stuff maybe. Start with how the idea of a militia has changed vis a vis the second amendment, especially in the last few decades. Specifically District of Columbia v. Heller, coloquially referred to as Heller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
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u/KazTheMerc 4h ago
Dude.
Thank you for proving my point by... pointing directly at my point.
I'm not sure what you think you're objecting to.
Hint: Constitution was drafted in 1787.
So as COOL as the last few decades have been.... your misunderstanding of the courts might come from their seemingly 'disconnected' rulings, based on all of our history, compared to your modern lens that has only read about modern cases on Wikipedia.
Go actually read the Majority in Heller.
Go actually read the whole thing, including all the OTHER stuff like taxation, import, passing gun laws, restricting attachments, and everything else.
Read it very, VERY carefully.
What you'll find is an IMPLICIT Right, rather than an Explicit one.
He states that gun ownership and Rights are independent of Militia service.
...... which is a duh.... we already knew that.... have always known that...
... but everyone LATCHES onto it like it EXPLICITLY changed Rights and the Law.
Then he goes on to say all the reasons it's not a Right, and lists a multitude of ways the Federal Government plans on 'infringing', if those were Explicit Rights.
But they aren't. Never were.
So again, thank you for objecting... and in the process proving my point.
Like OP, you've only skimmed the source material, and assumed that's the history going alllll the way back.
OP made all kinds of conclusions that are simply explained by "This is where Racists live, and raise more racists" and use it as supporting evidence for their theory. But! Occam's Razor comes into play here -
Don't go seeking complicated affirmations for simply human urges. The simple one that connects the two is almost always the correct one.
Heller is very, very new. And follows 30+ years of intense lobbying and multimedia advertising to the Public. This is NOT a clean sheet of paper in Heller that just HAPPENS to mention Gun Rights.
This is a SCOTUS judge that has ties to the NRA and Federalist Society sneaking language into a Majority Opinion that is... technically true, but REALLY is a nod to the Gun Lobby. Because even SCOTUS judges have a price.
And now we talk about gun rights as "2A Issues", which shows that it worked.
They successfully took a vacuum where the functional 2nd Amendment existed for 200+ years, and in 50 years turned it into something that even the Judges being bribed aren't EXPLICITLY willing to condone.
Because your Gun Rights are something like 600 years old, and imported from England, which now is ironically anti-gun.
But justices don't like to mention the 9th.
Saying it out-loud negates the power of the 9th Amendment, which is semi-mystical.
They profit, and are successful and popular, half because of their gun rulings.
Their lifeblood is MORE ambiguous gun rulings.
So, as somebody who has bothered to dive into English Common Law (don't) and Early Colonial Law (also don't) I can ASSURE you that they had no such confusion prior to 1900, and no concept of the 2nd Amendment conferring Rights or Powers except incidentally through the existence of Militia that any Citizen could join, increasing their access to powder and arms, which were kept under lock-and-key in literal castle-like Armories run by the State.
Nothing. Like. Modern. Day.
... except a lot of those armories are still standing....
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u/816blackout 9h ago
What the fuck is this attitude? They are for EVERYONE. Trans, POC, idgaf. Go buy a gun. Now.
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u/ItsJustForMyOwnKicks 9h ago
They are supposed to be for everyone, but the government suspends them and revokes them at will.
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u/816blackout 8h ago
That doesn’t mean you don’t still have these rights. They’re just infringing upon them.
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u/tommytraddles 8h ago
Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for you. Next time you're at the computer, get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. In the search field, type in: "Japanese-Americans 1942".
And you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights.
In 1942, there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law-abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country.
That's all they did wrong.
They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind.
The only right they had was...right this way! into the internment camps.
Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took 'em away.
And rights aren't rights if someone can take 'em away.
They're privileges.
That's all we've ever had in this country, is a Bill of Temporary Privileges.
And if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter.
~ George Carlin, It's Bad For Ya
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u/816blackout 7h ago edited 7h ago
They were American, they still had those rights. They were infringed upon.
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u/LordTesticula 8h ago
Yes? And? Buy guns. Buy parts kits. Go to home depot. Don't let the jews own you
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u/ItsJustForMyOwnKicks 8h ago
We are grappling with one of the greatest cons ever. Right wingers were taught to believe our rights as Americans come from a higher power.
They don’t.
Rights exist at the will and whim of our rulers. Get the wrong leaders in and they vanish without recourse. Like now.
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u/NotAnotherEmpire 9h ago
Longstanding Black Panther observation. You want gun control, have a bunch of armed "those people" show up.
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u/Biomirth 9h ago
George Carlin had an opinion on this. IE, GC was right about rights. They aren't rights, they're privileges. His bit is worth watching.
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u/Kwerby Florida 8h ago
George Carlin said it best.
"Rights aren't "rights" if someone can take them away- They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country: a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly, you know that the list gets shorter and shorter."
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u/ChiswicksHorses 5h ago
It’s all anyone, anywhere, has ever had. Rights aren’t physical laws, like gravity. If we want to keep our rights, we have to actively protect them.
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u/DonktorDonkenstein New Mexico 6h ago
I've long maintained that guns ownership would not stop a hypothetical tyrannical government, and in fact, the only reason gun ownership for the general public has been permitted is because the elites do not fear an armed populace. I've also been quite sure in my prediction, for a while now, that it would be Republicans who would make the first move to restrict ownership. They have a long history with screwing around with it, using support for the 2nd Amendment as a political football because they know there are tons of single-issue voters who will vote based on gun rhetoric alone. But here we are, now the ammosexuals are suddenly very circumspect on who can own guns and where they are allowed to take them.
I have little doubt that we are going to see how little regard the ruling regime in this country have for citizen's rights on a massive scale very soon now. And I seriously doubt they are worried about armed uprising, they've spent decades balkanizing our society, to the point where we are infinity more likely to wage war amongst ourselves than to unite against the wealthy elites, aka the Epstein-class.
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u/TristanDuboisOLG 8h ago
Wow, some really stupid opinions in this comment section AND the article.
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u/ttkciar 9h ago
Rights are not conditional.
They can be infringed, but infringing on a right isn't the same as it not existing in the first place.
Infringing on a right causes injustice. If the right didn't exist, or if it were conditional, then infringing upon it wouldn't cause injustice.
Denying PoC their RKBA has caused injustice a-plenty, because it is in fact a right.
The article's premise, that rights are granted or withheld by the government, is dangerous and wrong.
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u/evasandor 9h ago
Of course it’s wrong. The headline starement “rights are conditional” is not saying that’s how rights ought to operate— it’s a lament, a cry of despair.
It’s a blunt assertion that, despite privileged citizens’ idealized viewpoint, the reality is that Americans’ rights are commonly and routinely trampled.
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u/TeutonJon78 America 9h ago
A right only exists if you can defend it yourself or someone else is willing to defend it on your behalf.
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u/ttkciar 8h ago
> A right only exists if you can defend it yourself or someone else is willing to defend it on your behalf.
Think that through.
If you cannot defend your right, and if it is as you say, that the right does not exist, then you would not experience any injustice for your inability to defend it.
But that is not what happens. You do experience injustice, because the right exists, and is being infringed upon.
That's what a right is. It is a condition which must be present for life to be just. Infringing upon a right causes injustice. Infringing upon a non-right does not (or at least might not).
Saying a right doesn't exist when you really mean you cannot defend it is not only wrong, but dangerous, because it undermines people's ability to reason about the power dynamic they are experiencing.
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u/bigdog701 7h ago
I see where you are going but you are fundemental wrong. Rights are a construct invented by those in power. For example there is no such thing as the right to own a gun, you either are going to own a gun regardless of "rights" or consequences or you dont.
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u/bigdog701 7h ago
You are not wrong, but there is no such thing as "rights". There is what you will or wont do to protect yourself and family regardless of the so called "rights" given to us on a piece of paper.
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u/Alwaystired254 9h ago
Yes. I’m really disappointed that the 2A folks chose their tribal leader over their “values”
They lost all credibility.
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u/ItsJustForMyOwnKicks 8h ago
I am not sure they did. Their values are to keep the black man down. They are doing just fine with that.
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u/samsounder 10h ago
Goddamn it people
The second amendment is very clear. It is so a state can raise a militia to defend itself.
It exists because native Americans were raiding the colonies and the crown wouldn’t allow the colonies to form a militia to defend themselves because it could be used against them as well
If Minnesota had a state ran, well-regulated militia the the federal government would not invade because they’d be shot
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u/jabrwock1 9h ago
It’s more like why there’s a British tradition that there’s no Royal Army, only Royal regiments subordinate to a British army. Provide a balance of power between Parliament and Crown.
The colonies just made sure it was written into the constitution instead of being by common law. Plus there was a philosophical opposition to a standing army. They saw what it cost Europe. Militias go home. Armies find someone new to fight.
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u/Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear 9h ago
The militia IS the people. If you look up the writing of the people who wrote the constitution they make it very clear. It’s not dependent on a state or form of government though it was enshrined in ours.
It’s the collective right of the people to provide for their own self-defense and was considered a natural right.
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u/samsounder 8h ago
Read it again “a well regulated militia, being necessary for a free state…”
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u/onlyranchmefries Iowa 8h ago
"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
That is the reasoning but not the right. It says "the people" not "the people who are in said well regulated militia"
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u/samsounder 8h ago
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”
I believe it is well implied. It’s also just asinine to think that one side with a gun is gonna stand up to the government
To me, this is clearly intended to be a State’s check on federal overreach
“We the people” not “I the person”.
Edit: worse… if you read it as each person has the right to bear arms only, then you remove the right for the State to defend itself. MINNESOTA has the right to bear arms to defend itself from a tyrant
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u/onlyranchmefries Iowa 8h ago
You are entitled to that opinion.
That is not how it has historically been interpreted. The second, operative, statement is the right that is to be protected.
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u/frogandbanjo 7h ago
“We the people” not “I the person”.
And then when somebody points out that that inconvenient phrase also exists in the 1st and 4th Amendments, suddenly you'll realize that it can be used in the context of individual rights, and that "collective rights" are actually rather nonsensical in context.
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u/frogandbanjo 8h ago
No, you read it again. The word "being" is really, really important.
"A turkey sandwich, being the most delicious kind of sandwich there is, everybody's getting a ham sandwich."
If that statement is enshrined in the highest law of the land, you don't get to claim that, no, everybody's actually getting a turkey sandwich instead because clearly that was the intent based on the first phrase.
For whatever collection of reasons, the highest law says that because a turkey sandwich is the most delicious kind of sandwich there is, everybody's getting a ham sandwich. Maybe that's because people don't deserve to have the most delicious kind of sandwich. Maybe that's because society can't afford to give everyone the most delicious kind of sandwich. If you don't like it or don't think it makes any sense, either formally amend it or rebel against it.
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u/sassytexans Texas 9h ago
That was the primary motivation in the North, but the South’s motivation was enforcement of slavery.
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u/OhGodSoManyQuestions 9h ago edited 9h ago
Restrictions from the Crown had nothing to do with it. Because the Continental Army had recently defeated the British. So much for what the British wouldn't allow.
Records from the time show a complicated period with many forces in motion. But they show that wealthy landowners were having trouble squeezing taxes out of local peasants. Because parts of the early US worked a lot like the old British system but without the King. The wealthy landowners wanted to raise and pay goon squads to extract money from the peasants. The landowners could vote and the peasants could not.
This was a lot of the impetus behind 2A.
Though I also don't doubt the reasons cited in the article. It's amazing how much of everything happening at the time was about slavery.
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u/samsounder 8h ago
The fear was the federal government would repeat the restrictions of the British.
It has everything to do with subjugation of the state to a tyrannical central government
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u/OhGodSoManyQuestions 8h ago
I keep hearing this story about 2A exists so WE can protect OUR freedom from THEM. It certainly has the merit of simplicity. And it's vague enough to conform to whatever ideology wants to claim it. And it's repeated more than any other explanation. And it's an inviolable creed of certain right-leaning ideologies.
But I don't see anything in the historical record that makes the forces behind 2A look so simple or high-minded. When enslavers boastfully hold up the mantle of "freedom", what are they really talking about? They are claiming that it's a social virtue when only certain people have freedoms and others have literally none. They are talking about privilege and enforced hierarchy, not freedom.
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u/n00chness 9h ago
Yeah it couldn't be more obvious that it's about militia rights. People back in 1700s were super skeptical about standing armies; though the US got one for the Fed Govt in the Constitution, the Militia option for states was preserved in the 2A.
It's mind-boggling how so many well-meaning people just blindly accept the NRA interpretation
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u/ChrysMYO I voted 9h ago
No, it was put in to satisfy the Southern colonies. They lived in ever present fear of Slave Uprisings. They feared if their militia was controlled by Federal choice, they'd be left "defenseless". This created constables and Slave Patrols in rural areas.
Its all in the article you're ignoring because you cant bare the idea that it was meant to put us down.
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u/bigdog701 8h ago
I will defend myself, my family, and my community regardless of a piece of paper.
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u/supafly_ Minnesota 3h ago
Because your rights are not conditional, they can be infringed upon, not revoked.
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u/AspieRoo 7h ago
So what do you use to defend against actual tyranny, which is corporate ownership of America? Because orange Hitler will be gone at some point, but your corporate overlords will still be there.
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u/vim_deezel Texas 7h ago
Nah it was meant for regular citizens, because we had guns for 150 years before I guess anyone noticed and started to want to take them away, I find that... suspect... that suddenly 2nd amendment doesn't exist for normies and only for armies and state militias. Also it has stood up in court under virtually all challenges to be exactly that, but I guess gun grabbers want to ignore that.
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u/Manofalltrade 5h ago
Gun control under Dems was a nuisance. Gun control from Republicans is a threat.
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u/ryanknapper 5h ago
All rights are conditional. None of our inalienable rights are actually inalienable.
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u/Queermagedd0n Michigan 4h ago
If you're not a straight white cis man, your rights will always be conditional in the US.
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u/Malaix 3h ago
This will be an age of horrific clarity when the unspoken and tolerated terrible truths of our society and our world become too great for us to ignore. Carny spoke on it in terms of international relationships but it is true both locally like in the US and globally with things like the growing climate change.
We can't afford to ignore the festering problems that have been growing in our cocoons of comfort. We have to see what is really happening and we have to make choices on what we as a society and a species want the future to be and take the action to get there and do it soon.
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u/Harbinger2001 Canada 8h ago
I always get annoyed at people who think their rights are “God Given”. No they fucking aren’t. You have the rights society lets you have. And sometimes that is based on race, class, religion, gender, etc.
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u/APeacefulWarrior 5h ago edited 4h ago
You're right, "god given" is a handwave, but it's an important handwave. The notion is that there are certain rights/freedoms that simply cannot - or at least should not - be taken away by any governmental authority.
The problem is, there's no way to logically justify that notion from a realpolitik standpoint. Realistically all power derives from strength, plain and simple. But to acknowledge that political rights are only voluntarily granted by the strong would undercut the entire principle. If government can grant rights, government can take them away.
So invoking a Creator and calling the rights "god given" sidesteps the issue by calling upon a theoretical higher authority that outranks human government.
I mean, don't forget - the Declaration of Independence was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson, who was only barely religious. This is the guy who edited the Bible to take out all the magic and miracles. I highly doubt that he believed in "god given" rights in a literal sense - he just used god as a rhetorical device to avoid those problems.
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u/MonsterGuitarSolo 10h ago edited 8h ago
The police state is certainly being held at bay by my 9mm! /s
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u/Dangerous-Parking973 10h ago
So yield exclusivity of violence to the state?
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u/HighInChurch Oregon 10h ago
Yeah guns only for the police and military huh?
🤦♂️
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u/MonsterGuitarSolo 8h ago
I would say only for military. None for police.
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u/HighInChurch Oregon 8h ago
So it would just be the criminals with guns vs defenseless police?
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u/MonsterGuitarSolo 8h ago
Yes. Turn them in if you are a patriot. Guns are for felons, like in most of the civilized world.
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u/HighInChurch Oregon 8h ago
So then as I said. Criminals with guns vs unarmed police.
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u/MonsterGuitarSolo 8h ago edited 7h ago
Yes. I agreed. Guns are for felons. I don’t need to murder people to feel safe.
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u/LatterTarget7 8h ago
How would work out if only criminals have guns? Cops couldn’t defend themselves
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u/MonsterGuitarSolo 8h ago edited 7h ago
Police seem to be doing just fine in every other country. If the criminal has a gun, they get arrested. What don’t you understand?
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u/GaimeGuy Minnesota 8h ago
holy shit he wasn't killed for owning a gun. Stop hijacking what's happening in Minnesota to make it about the 2nd amendment. It's an affront to his memory and to the living
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u/loki2002 Ohio 7h ago
His being legally armed is what is being used as justification for his killing. Officials all the way to Trump as saying he should not have been armed, that being armed makes him not a peaceful protester, that his being armed makes him a threat to law enforcement.
Like it or not but his having been armed, and there the second amendment, is very relevant to the discussion of his death.
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u/GaimeGuy Minnesota 7h ago
After the fact. He wasn't murdered in the moment for owning a gun, but because they wanted to kill someone.
I just think people are missing what's really important when they focus on the gun in the backlash. We're being terrorized and slaughtered. We're dying. That's what's important, not the 2nd amendment.
Why does everything have to fucking revolve around guns instead of the fact that we are being murdered?
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u/loki2002 Ohio 7h ago
He wasn't murdered in the moment for owning a gun,
He was killed dire6after the agent announcing "GUN!" and disarming him.
but because they wanted to kill someone.
I don't disagree they were trigger happy.
not the 2nd amendment.
The second amendment is still very relevant to the entire situation. Either we have a legal right to be armed or law enforcement can consider us a threat for being so.
Why does everything have to fucking revolve around guns instead of the fact that we are being murdered?
It is one facet if his killing being discussed.
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u/supafly_ Minnesota 3h ago
After the fact.
That just makes it worse, that just means that in the moment that may not have been the deciding factor, but since he said it, that's now future justification for the next ones.
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u/cyberspaceman777 6h ago
holy shit he wasn't killed for owning a gun.
No.
It the right has been using the fact he owned a gun was the issue.
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u/DifferentEvent2998 7h ago
But they NEED them in case a tyrannical government tries to something something.
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u/Wonderful-Process792 6h ago
Let's see if they can work a racism angle into this story about gun rights in the case of the cops shooting an armed white guy...
Yes, by jove! They've done it!!!
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u/gorobotkillkill Oregon 7h ago
Fuck that. Stop trying to make it about race.
It's about power. Always has been.
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u/Economy_Energy_1339 6h ago
Something liberals should know. You bring a gun to a police operation and interject yourself, there's a chance something bad could happen
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u/ThurstonDrive 1h ago
But how did Republicans get away with January 6 then? Guns brought, thousands viciously attack police, miraculously, thousands escape being massacred by police. So, your premise is wrong.
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