The Second Amendment’s Fake History

Exclusive: A numbness followed the latest mass
shooting – this time at a community college in Oregon. Many Americans
were frozen in futility as powerful political forces asserted that the
Second Amendment prohibits any gun laws. But that claim is historically
false, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

False
history continues to kill Americans, as we saw once again last week at
Umpqua Community College in Oregon where a disturbed young man whose
mother had loaded the house with loaded handguns and rifles executed
nine people and then committed suicide – one more mind-numbing slaughter
made possible, in part, by an erroneous understanding of the Second
Amendment.

A key reason why the United States is frozen in
political paralysis, unable to protect its citizens from the next
deranged gunman and the next massacre, is that many on the American
Right (and some on the Left) have sold much of the country on a false
history regarding the Second Amendment. Gun-rights advocates insist that
the carnage can’t be stopped because it was part of what the
Constitution’s Framers designed.

A
painting of President George Washington leading a force of federalized
state militias against the Whiskey rebels in western Pennsylvania in
1794.