Hillary Clinton stepped in deep doo-doo when she brought up the 2nd Amend. This is an issue near and dear to my heart, and it is an issue that I hope Barack Obama will cautiously, but righteously seize on. I'm going to say things in this diary many of you will find repulsive, but I hope, indeed it is my sincerest desire, that you also think about the gravity of what it means to have a true democracy, where politicians are servants of the public good, and not the other way around.
Imagine 1660s in Jamestown and the Chesapeake. You are a Planter in the colony, a well-respected, albeit somewhat less than fortunate lot of society. It is hot, humid, and the colony is set up exclusively for making a profit, as are you.. The people here are not escaping religious persecution. They are not seeking to build a "pure" society like many of their brother colonists to the North. "They", the great masses of the colony at the time, are there seeking to make money, build a better life, and perhaps make good on debts to society, to private individuals, and maybe even to yourself.
About twenty years ago, the first African, non-European language speaking blacks enter the colony in chains on a boat. Most find them unremarkable, as do you. Atlantic creoles had proliferated in the decades prior to this and a black, a brown, or a white were equally confined to the hell on wheels that was the colony at the time. Disease was rampant. The average life expectancy was low. And there were so few Europeans from the lowlands and the Irish isles to do the dirty work that any broad back and strong set of hips one finds is good enough to help eek out a living for their indenture. If anything, the black Africans were remarkable because they were usually non-Christian, and didn't speak the same language: this made them hard to break.
But over the last twenty years, these non-Euro Africans began to come on boats in drove. They were cheaper than the average Irishman, and less likely to cause trouble as they hadn't necessarily become as acquainted with the ills of European society as had others.
Massachusetts had recently passed a law stating that if your mother was a slave, you were too. Now there's an idea! A capital idea indeed! Perpetual hereditary slavery. We could collar this group of chained indentures with a permanent mark of nothingness... make them slaves for life. That way, the only capital you would be forced to spend would that necessary to keep them alive. The profits would all go to you, the Planter, and you'd be rich (finally) after a few years... maybe could even pay off some of your own debts.
And so, you lobby your local representatives hard. Make these non-Christian, dark-colored Negroes a brand all to themselves: perpetual hereditary slaves. And the very first law you the ambitious Planter seek to have passed:
TAKE THEIR GUNS AWAY
Look it up folks. Some of the first slave laws passed in the 1660s were to remove the right to bear arms from those with dark skin. It was THE way to make sure that the slave was a slave in perpetuity. If HE couldn't have a gun, neither could his son, or his daughter, or their sons and daughters, and thus you, the Planter with a musket for yourself and your clan, could keep them in chains at gunpoint.
Barack Obama faces the 2nd Amendment in a unique position. Being the de-facto representative of a history of horrors perpetuated by the denial of this solemn right.
So, I understand where Obama is coming from calling people bitter about the economy. Hell, I'm fairly well off enough, yet more than bitter to see our national treasury drained with the blood of an impossible war.
But I hope Barack also speaks out on the gun issue. Look I have kids, I don't want guns as readily available as they are right now. I don't think anyone in their right mind would want them either. The design of a gun is to kill. Thus, the right to bear arms is it is by definition a right to annihilate. It can't be but that. And it can only be thus seriously reflected on before we give it, and before we take it away.
This is a softball folks. Barry could easily bring this history up and I hope he does. Taking guns away from a population in this country is the first step towards enslaving them. That is our history.
Whether we are better than that history remains to be seen. I believe Barack Obama knows this. And he knows that while he neither wants his children to go to schools where metal detectors are a prudent precaution, he also doesn't want to to step backwards toward a time that is best to be laid to rest.
Like I said, I am sure this diary will anger many. That isn't my intent. My intent is merely to pose this question in its proper relief: Who is a better sovereign safeguard of your Constitutional rights? One who is has seen and lived those rights being tossed away? Or one who makes quick headlines without due regard for the very serious history that infects the entire debate?