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Ahmaud Arbery and How his Death Ties to the Slavery Era Origins of the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment has Dubious Origins

By Rich MonettiPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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Photo by Patrick Feller

Greg and Travis McMichael and William Bryan have been convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery and face life in prison. Unfortunately, the outcome probably does not point to watershed moment where the racial bias of our system starts to crumble. Yes justice seems to have been served here. But the old system almost prevailed, and while we must continue to rattle the foundations, change also requires we unravel the history that has long allowed injustice to persist.

First of all Ahmaud Arbery is dead and there is no justice in that. So his family have been forced to settle for a guilty verdict in substitute of a loved one.

Not nearly enough, further indignity could have taken hold on the heels of the racial injustice that has reigned for centuries. That said, the facts were all set up to pave a clear path to conviction and that’s even in consideration of controversial the stand your ground laws. “What's critical about Georgia's law (is that) although you are allowed to detain someone as a citizen if you think they committed a crime, you cannot use excessive force,” Georgia Defense Attorney Page Pate said in an interview on The Morning Show in Atlanta. “So even if there was a crime committed and they were trying to hold onto Mr. Arbery to wait for police, you cannot then escalate it.”

In this case, if Arbery takes off, the trio has no legal recourse to prevent the flight. Robberies do not apply either, and you don’t have to be F. Lee Bailey to interpret the certainty.

Or not, because the top law enforcement official in the county was unable to do just that. “They were “following in ‘hot pursuit’ a burglary suspect, with solid first hand probable cause, in their neighborhood, and asking/telling him to stop. It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. Under Georgia Law this is perfectly legal,” wrote District Attorney George Barnhill, according to Bloomberg News.

The DA protecting a former cop and colleague in a clear cut case of murder, the systematic racism screams out loud, and only the leaking of Bryan’s damning video forced the corrupt powers that be into the light of day.

Even so, there’s still plenty of room to hide, and a sea change still requires that future actors don’t have the Second Amendment to cover them.

Blasphemy to a large segment of America. But supporters might not think so if they understood the origins, and how the false narrative perpetuates the problem.

The official mythology takes us back to early days of the republic. A government in infancy required the backing of citizen militia to help protect the new nation from both foreign and domestic enemies. Who knew if the British would return, and the ongoing conflict with Native Americans were far from over.

Police forces didn’t exist either for local protection, and the justifications makes sense. But half a truth is often a great lie and the symbolic representation of the tale computes to an actual figure - three fifths. So like each slave amounting to 3/5 of a person, the second amendment arose of similar compromise, according to Carol Anderson and her book, The Second: Race And Guns In A Fatally Unequal America.

The concerns came out of Virginia, and the fact that the federal government would likely prioritize threats from foreign invaders over domestic unrest. In other words, slave rebellions wouldn’t get the response that an attack from Canada would. As a result, the South only agrees to join the union if the state’s are able to maintain and control their own militias, Anderson told NPR.

So not as holy a right that you were led to believe, the defeated confederacy still had the second amendment to enforce oppression in the new paradigm. The KKK and other groups could continue loading up and worked with state governments to inflict terror and control on the new citizens.

A hundred years and that control has waned. But the duplicitous origins of the second amendment have continued to embolden its descendants, and Anderson lamented the fallout in Wisconsin. “Rittenhouse becomes an avatar, as it were, for the Second Amendment. And you have this rallying around where his legal team argues that he was just being part of a well-regulated militia,” Anderson argues.

A defense that turned out to be a 50-50 proposition. But if we want to turn the odds and shorten the long arc of history, we must all see ourselves as victims and cannot rest on a single victory.

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About the Creator

Rich Monetti

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