An interesting historical perspective on Second Amendment rights
As we await a ruling from the Supreme Court in the Heller Second Amendment case, I hope to showcase articles and commentary that provide a distinct perspective on the issues surrounding individual gun rights. A great example of such commentary is this Washington Post piece by Chuck Lane, headlined ” To Keep and Bear Arms.” Here is how this strong piece starts and ends:
Nearly 135 years ago, the United States experienced what may have been the worst one-day slaughter of blacks by whites in its history. On April 13, 1873, in the tiny village of Colfax, La., white paramilitaries attacked a lightly armed force of freedmen assembled in a local courthouse. By the time the Colfax Massacre was over, more than 60 African American men lay shot, burned or stabbed to death. Most were killed after they had surrendered.
Though it caused a national sensation in post-Civil War America, this horrible incident has been largely overlooked by historians. It deserves fresh study today not only to illuminate the human cost of Reconstruction’s defeat but also to enrich our understanding of constitutional history. Some of the most relevant lessons relate to the issue at the heart of District of Columbia v. Heller, the case on the D.C. gun control law currently before the Supreme Court: whether the Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.
During oral arguments on Tuesday, the justices debated what the framers of the Second Amendment intended. The members of the court did not mention Reconstruction. Yet during this period, we the people gave the Union a second “founding” through constitutional amendments abolishing slavery, granting blacks citizenship and enabling them to vote. And, to clarify blacks’ newly secured freedom, Congress wrote laws identifying the specific rights of individual U.S. citizens. One of these was the right to have guns.
Before the Civil War, gun ownership was a prerequisite not only of militia service but also of participation in sheriffs’ posses and for personal defense. But it was a right for whites only. Southern states forbade slaves to own guns, lest they revolt. (Free blacks, in the North and South, could sometimes have guns under tight restrictions.) After the Civil War, the same Congress that made African Americans citizens through the 14th Amendment considered the antebellum experience and concluded that equal access to arms was a necessary attribute of blacks’ new status….
In the D.C. gun case, the Supreme Court should find that local governments may enact reasonable and necessary restrictions on dangerous weapons. To be sure, if the justices also back an individual right to keep and bear arms, that will be harder for legislators to do. But as a matter of historical interpretation, the court would be correct.
Critically, Lane is a lot more than an armchair historian here: he has just completed this new book, titled “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction.”