In 1791, why was the Second Amendment thought necessary to help perfect the recently ratified U.S. Constitution? I suggest it was an afterthought to give assurance for ongoing white hegemony.
Many of the Founding Fathers were uncomfortable with a national standing army. They knew that the national government could build up a national army as needed, but they hoped it could be minimized in peacetime. They preferred state-run militias. They knew that volunteers would man the local militias.
The militias could respond to local challenges. There may have been uncertainty that a national force would respond to the ever-present local threat looming in the 1790s. The local threat was from 34 percent of the population of the South, the men and women held in bondage. For example, Virginia was a large colony and played a significant role in organizing the young country. A significant number of the early leaders came from Virginia. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Marshall all owned slaves.
These men understood that slavery was immoral. They recognized that blacks had been kidnapped from Africa. They knew that blacks were human beings. They knew the slave owners worked the slaves ceaselessly, tore their families apart, refused them education, tortured and raped them.
These Founding Fathers had many rationalizations to help them live with this evil. The economy needed slaves. Slaves were a big investment. Slavery supported lifestyles. It had been that way all their lives. The political leaders, men of the Enlightenment, also knew that the slaves had every right to rise up and claim their freedom.
Therefore, it was advisable for the early fathers, especially those from the South, to secure in the country’s fundamental law a right to bear arms for the local militias. The militia in Virginia, and the militias in the other Southern states, needed to be at the ready to subdue the slaves at all times, to crush any uprising.
Their continued subjugation of the black people required a militia, armed with guns carried by white men because, when the Constitution was written, it was already foreseeable that a national army might not put down a slave rebellion.
At the formation of our country there was a fundamental disagreement about slavery. The Southern states could not be sure the United States would come to the rescue of the South’s “peculiar institution.” Insuring that local militias would continue to have weapons, irrespective of whether the national government might come to their aid, was farsighted protection for slave owners.
The Second Amendment helped keep millions of our people in bondage. We should keep this in mind as we evaluate the precious right to own a military-grade rifle or even the value of the Second Amendment itself. Was the right to bear arms really a sacred right, somehow essential to human liberty? Or was it, in its inception, a sad compromise with justice, to maintain power?
James Madison was a Virginia slave owner and he guided the passage of the Bill of Rights in the Congress. Like the other Founding Fathers he was a great man, but he was a man of his times. Were he to advise us today, he might suggest that the Second Amendment has outlived an original, dishonorable purpose.
Robert C. Steiner
Robert C. Steiner is a former member of the Utah Senate, a fourth-generation resident of Salt Lake City and co-president of Alsco Inc.