The freedom, curse, tyranny of bearing arms

Given, however, an estimated 300 million legal guns, compounded by ever-rising volumes of illegal guns that already saturate society uncontrollably, the notion of “gun control” equates somewhat to “closing the barn door after the horse is gone.”

All of the adverse consequences and uncivilized behavior associated with this so-called “freedom” beg the question: What was the original function and intent of arming citizens that made the constitutional framers appear so wise in the first place?

Humanity Repudiated

Conventional logic suggests that early Americans obviously needed guns to hunt and protect themselves in the wilds. Also, in a newly formed republic, arms were presumed necessary to defend the preciousness of America’s democracy from possible tyranny.

Although such reasoning seems practical and plausible, there is an unpopular but overriding truth about “bearing arms” that’s deeply affixed to defending another of America’s preciousness: institutionalized slavery.

Bluntly put, the Second Amendment traces to a historical period when bullets and Bibles were necessary to forcibly control and psychologically manipulate huge swaths of enslaved populations that eventually exceeded four million, which the same Constitution openly repudiates the humanity thereof as further proof.

Contrary to “defending freedom,” the looming threats of uprisings due to “denying freedom” to Africans and Native Americans posed America’s greatest domestic security concern at that time.

Simply put, without guns and a well-armed white society, the scale of chattel slavery would have been plainly improbable. And, given the magnitude and duration of slavery’s unchecked brutality, the government’s accompanying decision to “bear arms” could itself be easily characterized as more of an “act of tyranny” than an “act of freedom.”

In further tracing the source of gun violence, there are other true but controversial historical factors that predate the Constitution. Foremost, guns were massively exported to Africa (upwards to 150,000 annually in the 1700s) as Europeans arrived over the centuries as traders, explorers, and missionaries, as they Frankensteined into colonizers and enslavers who helped forge the incongruent cornerstones of today’s “democratic” world.

Guns were thus integral products of the slave-based Triangular Trade involving Africa, Europe and the Americas which morphed into the most violent yet lucrative and sophisticated system of commerce theretofore. Some enslaved Africans arrived in America as highly skilled blacksmiths and smelters who were forced to help make the very guns and ships that perpetuated this cyclical inhumane trade for enslaved laborers.

Contrived Process

By design, this system involved a contrived process whereby Africans would kill Africans with guns, while world audiences of apathetic Europeans watched as their nations simultaneously benefited economically as a natural by-product.

Understanding the racial dichotomies of this long and hostile history, it is not by happenstance that slavery ended in 1865 and the National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded six years later, in 1871. Certainly, however, the NRA and the vast majority of gun owners do not shoot up moviegoers or kill schoolchildren or stockpile ammunition to fend off blacks in a future race war.

Yet, it is not inaccurate to conclude that the curse and apathy and elongated shadow from centuries of gun violence against and amongst black people exist unbroken today.

With or without a black president, African Americans should have consequently self-declared our expendability as an urgent and distinct national crisis long ago and then uncompromisingly demand that this purported “government of the people” provide and apply distinct resources of remedy.

Failure

In other words, President Barack Obama’s “gun control” measures (background checks, mental healthcare, assault weapons ban, reduced magazines, etc.) prompted by the Newtown tragedy are great general steps.

However, they fail dismally to recognize and fail substantively to redress the longstanding circumstances that cause gun violence to be the “Leading Cause of Death Among Black Teens.” To think otherwise is delusional.
Despite all the prestigious educational and political institutions that are now integrated, America’s curse of racial gun violence continues unabated.

Decades ago, however, Dr. Carter G. Woodson cautioned us against contributing to our own “undoing” and “worthlessness” through Western institutions. In this case, African Americans are apparently being institutionally fashioned to be unfit to undo this curse that is paradoxically being camouflaged as freedom.

*Pictured above is Ezrah Aharone, an adjunct associate professor at Delaware State University and the author of two acclaimed political books, Sovereign Evolution: Manifest Destiny from Civil Rights to Sovereign Rights and Pawned Sovereignty: Sharpened Black Perspectives on Americanization, Africa, War and Reparations. He may be reached at EzrahSpeaks.com