"The Second": Carol Anderson on the Racist History Behind the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms

[IM2]

Dr. Carol Anderson explains the racist history of the Second Amendment. Blacks couldn't have guns when this amendment was created.

 

[pknopp]

They weren't citizens.

 

[IM2]

They weren't citizens.

Lame excuse.

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

They weren't citizens

Your argument collapses under both historical and legal scrutiny. The denial of Black Americans’ right to keep and bear arms was not a question of citizenship—it was a tool of racial control and white supremacy. The Founders never granted government the power to define who gets rights; rights are inherent, and the 14th Amendment made that crystal clear.

Even before the 14th Amendment, free Black people lived in the U.S. as citizens in several states, served in militias, and owned property—including firearms. Post–Civil War, the Black Codes stripped them of their rights precisely because they were citizens who threatened white dominance by exercising those rights. The 2nd Amendment wasn’t conditional. It was subverted—deliberately—to disarm a group that posed no greater danger than their skin color. Defending that history is not only ignorant—it’s an endorsement of tyranny

I have posted about this very topic numerous times on other message boards so rather than attempting to dig up those old posts, I'll refer you to this site:

The Racist Roots of Gun Control - Clayton E. Cramer

 

[pknopp]

Your argument collapses under both historical and legal scrutiny. The denial of Black Americans’ right to keep and bear arms was not a question of citizenship—it was a tool of racial control and white supremacy. The Founders never granted government the power to define who gets rights; rights are inherent, and the 14th Amendment made that crystal clear.



I have posted about this very topic numerous times on other message boards so rather than attempting to dig up those old posts, I'll refer you to this site:

The Racist Roots of Gun Control - Clayton E. Cramer

That blacks weren't citizens was 100% a terrible racial thing. That doesn't negate what I said.

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

That blacks weren't citizens was 100% a terrible racial thing. That doesn't negate what I said.

You're misunderstanding the root issue. What you think the reason was—lack of citizenship—is not the actual reason. That belief is historically inaccurate.

After emancipation, southern lawmakers didn’t just shrug and accept the end of slavery. They created Black Codes—laws specifically crafted to criminalize everyday behavior only when committed by Black people. These laws were not about justice or public safety; they were about engineering a legal excuse to re-enslave freedmen using the loophole in the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery except as punishment for a crime.

This wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. A new system of forced labor known as convict leasing emerged, funneling Black bodies into mines, fields, and factories under the guise of law. Whole categories of “crimes” (like vagrancy, breaking curfew, or not having employment papers) were written to target Black Americans exclusively, and the system was enforced by sheriffs, judges, and private businesses who all profited from this arrangement.

The idea that Black people were denied rights because they weren’t citizens is a deflection. The reality is that laws were built explicitly to strip them of the very citizenship and freedom they had fought to obtain. Pretending this was a neutral legal technicality ignores the clear historical record of racially motivated exploitation, codified through state law and enforced by violence.

Convict leasing - Wikipedia

Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced historically in the Southern United States before it was formally abolished during the 20th century. Under this system, private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of prisoners, nearly all of whom were Black.

As the Vera Institute of Justice has documented, this practice continues in all but name: "Mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty have created a modern-day abomination—nearly two million incarcerated people in the United States have no protection from legal slavery. A disproportionate percentage of them are Black and people of color. Every day, incarcerated people work—under threat of additional punishment—for little to no pay. Estimates suggest that a minimum of $2 billion and as much as $14 billion a year in wages is stolen from incarcerated people, to the enrichment of private companies, state-owned entities, and correctional agencies.

 

[pknopp]

You're misunderstanding the root issue.

I made a simple statement. I wasn't writing a book.

What you think the reason was—lack of citizenship—is not the actual reason. That belief is historically inaccurate.

After emancipation, southern lawmakers didn’t just shrug and accept the end of slavery. They created Black Codes—laws specifically crafted to criminalize everyday behavior only when committed by Black people. These laws were not about justice or public safety; they were about engineering a legal excuse to re-enslave freedmen using the loophole in the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery except as punishment for a crime.

This wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. A new system of forced labor known as convict leasing emerged, funneling Black bodies into mines, fields, and factories under the guise of law. Whole categories of “crimes” (like vagrancy, breaking curfew, or not having employment papers) were written to target Black Americans exclusively, and the system was enforced by sheriffs, judges, and private businesses who all profited from this arrangement.

The idea that Black people were denied rights because they weren’t citizens is a deflection. The reality is that laws were built explicitly to strip them of the very citizenship and freedom they had fought to obtain. Pretending this was a neutral legal technicality ignores the clear historical record of racially motivated exploitation, codified through state law and enforced by violence.

Convict leasing - Wikipedia

It was a factual statement even if just a basic statement of the situation.

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

I made a simple statement. I wasn't writing a book.

It was a factual statement even if just a basic statement of the situation.

Your statement may be factual but it is not THE REASON for the prohibition of keeping & carrying firearms for people of African descent.

 

[IM2]

I made a simple statement. I wasn't writing a book.




It was a factual statement even if just a basic statement of the situation.

It might have been factual but to blacks it looks like a white person trying to make excuses. I don't think that was your intent but sometimes people need to quit trying to explain what really doesn't have an explanation

 

[TNHarley]

I made a simple statement. I wasn't writing a book.




It was a factual statement even if just a basic statement of the situation.

By 1857, Justice Roger B. Taney decried the notion of Black citizenship in the infamous Dred Scott decision by noting that such a determination “would give to persons of the negro race . . . the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went” (Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)).

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

By 1857, Justice Roger B. Taney decried the notion of Black citizenship in the infamous Dred Scott decision by noting that such a determination “would give to persons of the negro race . . . the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went” (Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)).

This ruling has been cited in some cases as "proof" that the right to keep & bear arms has historically been a right of "the people" and not solely a right of "the state" as has often been alleged and ruled.

 

[eagle7-31]

Your statement may be factual but it is not THE REASON for the prohibition of keeping & carrying firearms for people of African descent.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

the 14th amendment fixed that basically though southern states were trying to work around it.

 

[IM2]

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

the 14th amendment fixed that basically though southern states were trying to work around it.

Words written on paper have never really been obeyed by members of the white population. So quoting words doesn't change the nature of this debate.

 

[whitehall]

When are they going to classify the rest of the Bill of Rights as racist?

 

[IM2]

When are they going to classify the rest of the Bill of Rights as racist?

When are you going to accept that the American history you want to believe is not completely true? What was done should not have been done, so you don't get to tell us how Africans sold slaves without accepting what whites did also.

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

the 14th amendment fixed that basically though southern states were trying to work around it.

The southern states did work around it for nearly 100 years. Remember the "separate but equal" doctrine that SCOTUS sanctioned for another 58 years (1896–1954) before reversing itself in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. And it wasn't fully eliminated, at least on paper, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1968 became law.