HISTORY BOOK CLUB
Rockport Public Library
Rockport, Massachusetts
Program for Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Wednesday, November 28,
2018: Guns in American History. E.g. American
Revolution and the Minutemen; Going West with new technology: six guns,
repeating rifles, Twentieth Century automatic weapons after World War I:
pistols, rifles, Tommy guns, The St. Valentine’s Massacres of 1929 and 2018.
Control vs. freedom of gun use. and Machine Gun laws, mass shootings in
America: rifles, pistols, military style weapons, Guns laws in 21st
century America. [Suggested
by William Tobin]
A Well-Regulated
Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America 1st
Edition, Kindle Edition by Saul Cornell (Author).
2006.
The
Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, "A well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Saul Cornell
has done his homework. He has researched the Second Amendment from before it
became law. Thoroughly.
People who view
the Second Amendment with religious fervor probably have no idea what this
amendment was intended to do. They argue that it gives them the right to own a
gun for self-defense, hunting, or if necessary, to take up arms against their
government.
Neither do
those who call for “gun control.” They argue that this Amendment simply
protects a collective right of the states.
The Founding
Fathers put the Second Amendment in the Constitution to ensure that Americans in each colony armed
themselves and maintained readiness to muster in a “well-regulated militia” to
defend their town, or state from the enemy, whether British, French or Indian.
Without a standing army, it was America’s single line of defense.
Were we to
restore the original meaning of the Second Amendment, neither side would like
it and there would be chaos from shore to shore. Gun rights advocates would be shocked to see
that they were required to register their arms, to muster and train with their
“well-regulated militia” and allow inspectors to come into their homes to
inspect their privately-owned weapons, as they did in Revolutionary days. Gun control advocates would be unhappy that
they were required to own a gun, learn to use it, and muster frequently as part
of the “well-regulated militia”.
The Founders
feared a standing army of professional soldiers as a potential threat to
freedom. They saw that in the years before the Revolution when the redcoats
marched through the streets of towns.
Their militias, when they were well trained and equipped, were the
“Minutemen”. When they were poorly trained, sloppily equipped and poorly led,
they were simply a mob.
Early in the
nineteenth century the Second Amendment began to take a different shape, as
legislatures, in response to fears of a threat to social stability, sought to
regulate firearms and knives. This led to a violent backlash that led to an
intensified commitment to gun rights.
At this the
author pronounces that the gun rights ideology is the illegitimate and spurned
child of gun control.
The blurring of
the distinction between the constitutional right to bear arms for public
defense and the individual right to bear a gun in self defense took shape in
the Jacksonian era (the 1830s). Public debate over gun control has run up against
this ever since.
To understand
the intensity of this debate one must consider the fiery debate in the early
years of our government regarding federalism and anti-federalism. Strong federal government vs. states rights.
The anti-federalists viewed the Second Amendment as revolutionary, giving the
state militias the power to resist federal authority by force of arms.
You can see
that we have a good bit of that sentiment in America today.
The end of the
Civil War brought on new ways to view the Second Amendment. Republicans wanted to extend all rights of
citizenship to newly freed blacks, but Democrats worked all kinds of ways to
withhold their rights, including the right to bear arms. South Carolina and Mississippi created “black
codes” which severely limited blacks in many ways.
This brought on
the Fourteenth Amendment, which simply sought to spell out the equal rights of
newly freed Americans. However, in the
south, it was bitterly opposed by whites. If you look at yesterday’s run-off
election in Mississippi, you can see we haven’t progressed too far in the way
we handle racial differences.
Author Cornell
takes his readers on a detailed trip with the Second Amendment through history
and ends up at modern times.
On one hand today we have gun rights advocates. With heat
provided by the National Rifle Association, this has become an ideology, far
from the original intent of the Founders to provide a “well regulated militia”
wherein each able-bodied man was expected to own a firearm, and know how to use
it, and assemble periodically with his local militia, and submit to all the
regulations expected of such an organization.
On the other
hand, we have gun control advocates, and they have been around as long as there
have been guns and have every right to be heard. However, it appears that the
right of a citizen to own a gun is deeply embedded in our culture. America is awash in guns, but we need to
figure how to allow law-abiding citizens the right to own and use guns, and
still put in place safeguards to curtail needless deaths by guns.
The author
brings up the question: What to do about
the obsolete Second Amendment? Clearly, we now have a standing army, with
soldiers (and sailors and airmen… and women) so there is no need for a militia,
even one that is well-regulated. Then he
begins to answer his question by suggesting that we leave the amendment alone
but work on what really needs fixing.
The Second Amendment addressed a population committed to service to the
community. Yes, men had the right to bear arms, but they were expected to
attend musters and train to use those arms.
He asks: What
if we instituted a system for each young person to perform some form of public
service, either military or civilian?
The typical gun
rights adherent today has no connection to the concept of a well-regulated
liberty.
Cornell advises
that fashioning a regulatory system for guns that recognizes the deeply
contested role of guns in America today must (1) not demonize gun owners or
proponents of gun regulation. Registration, safe storage laws, and limited bans
on certain types of weapons are all consistent with the original vision, while
wholesale gun prohibition or domestic disarmament are not.
The author goes
on to suggest that the simplest way to regulate firearms would be to return to
the model used by the Founders, installing a form of taxation of firearms,
requiring citizens to pay the costs of public defense and providing a framework
to monitor this system of taxation. This would allow society to shift part of
the cost of gun violence back to those gun owners who do not act responsibly.
For instance, Congress could provide a series of generous tax incentives for
those who take gun safety courses and encourage sensible gun storage by giving
a tax break to those who lock up their guns.
Cornell also
suggests that a way to regulate guns without getting the government into it
would be to require that guns be insured, with insurance rates adjusted
according to the degree of safe or unsafe use.
The notion that
the Second Amendment somehow belongs to a small number of gun rights advocates
is simply wrong. The Second Amendment belongs to all Americans. Defining a way to handle this is something
all Americans have a stake in.
-end-
HISTORY
BOOK CLUB FUTURE TOPICS
2018-2019
2019
Wednesday, January 30, 2019: Horses in History. The clattering of hooves pierced the
dark stillness of the Austrian night. It is the fall of 1855. The gilded Ambruster
Dress Carriage, a beautiful vehicle trimmed in glimmering black paint and
shiny gold leaf showed that Emperor Franz Joseph was arriving. Read any book about horses, from Caligula to
Triple Crown, from Richard III to Pony Express, from mythology (Pegasus) to
literature (Arabian Nights) or music (Von Suppé’s Light Cavalry
Overture), from battle tactics (Genghis Kahn, Templars, conquistadors,
light cavalry of Napoleon) to transportation and military logistics, from money
making business of breeding to prestige and rivalry of kings and sheikhs, from
fundamental needs in agriculture to the vanity of Derby fashion. [Suggested
by Janos Posfai]
Declaration of Independence
Wednesday, February 27, 2019: Wednesday, February 27, 2019: Visiting the Founding Era of America. Looking at the events
that led up to the American Colonists’ rebellion against Great Britain, and the
work of our Founding Fathers to create a nation. Read any book about those days when Minutemen
at Concord and Lexington fired the first
shots of the Revolution at British Redcoats, then chased them back to Boston….
the days when the Founding Fathers labored over the Declaration of
Independence. Or, read about the U.S. Constitution brought together, in
one remarkable document, ideas from many people and several existing documents,
including the Articles of Confederation and Declaration of Independence. Those
who made significant intellectual contributions to the Constitution are called
the "Founding Fathers" of our country. These include George
Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine and
Patrick Henry. Rockport Public Library
will schedule a special moderated discussion focused upon The Declaration of
Independence, featuring a noted historian and scholar, on Sunday, February 24
or in case of snow, March 3. [Suggested
by Christiann Guibeau]
17th Century Surgery
Wednesday, March 27, 2019:
Wednesday, April 24, 2019: From Fur Trappers to Fishermen to
Settlers: How Montréal began; Plymouth; Salem; Gloucester; New
Amsterdam; The early colonization of America.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019: Progressive America in the first two
decades of the Twentieth Century: Teddy Roosevelt and
the Robber Barons; Woodrow Wilson and World War I.
Wednesday, June 26, 2019: Westward Ho: the westward expansion of America; Manifest Destiny; The Louisiana
Purchase and Lewis and Clark; James K. Polk; The Union Pacific.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019: The Crusades—what caused them? The
Seljuk Turks; Pisa, Genoa, Venice and Amalfi; Byzantium and Jerusalem; The
Children’s Crusade; Attacking the Jews in Germany; The Popes and Kings; Saladin
and Richard I of the Lion Heart; how the Christians massacred Moslems and Jews
and made Moslems intolerant.
Wednesday,
August 28, 2019: Intelligence Gathering and Spying in History: Julius Caesar’s Spy Network; Sun-Tzu, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
Espionage Act of 1917, the KGB, MI-5, the OSS, CIA, Pinkerton’s Union Spies,
Confederate Spies.
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