Alton Maddox: The Second Amendment, Dred Scott and Blacks
To be sure, the Supremes gave the right construction to the 27 words in the Second Amendment. In a secret meeting to write a Bill of Rights, the “Founding Fathers” were preoccupied with rebellious Africans and government tyranny. The right to bear arms gave whites the tools to defend themselves against these Africans. There was also a fear of a standing army. The Founding Fathers had no intention of subjecting whites to rebellious Blacks without giving them the right to possess “equalizers.” Whites had already experienced many African uprisings before the ratification of the Second Amendment, including, but not limited to, rebellions in New York in 1712 and 1741 and the Stono Rebellion near Charleston, S.C. in 1739.... In a historical context, this meaning was disputed in South Carolina after Denmark Vesey was fingered by enslaved Africans for plotting a slave revolt in 1822. The Citadel, a military academy, was established after the exposure of Vesey’s plot, in 1822, to institutionalize the war on Blacks. A similar reaction happened in Virginia after Nat Turner, in 1831, led an army of Blacks, killing every white person in sight. Whites convened an emergency session of the Virginia General Assembly and, within five votes, nearly emancipated every enslaved African in Virginia. By 1839,Virginia had established the Virginia Military Institute. VMI is the oldest state-sponsored military institution in the country. White boys would learn how to apply military science to slave insurrections. Whites recognized that enslaved Africans posed a real threat to national security. Today, it is still an imaginary threat.... During our 400 years in this country, we have gone from involuntary servitude to voluntary slavery. This has happened because we have insisted on only securing partial rights under the First Amendment and no rights under the Second and Ninth amendments. This is called political suicide.