{"id":59363,"date":"2015-10-07T10:29:04","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T15:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=59363"},"modified":"2015-10-03T10:31:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T15:31:44","slug":"is-the-right-to-carry-a-gun-racist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2015\/10\/07\/is-the-right-to-carry-a-gun-racist\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Right to Carry (a gun) Racist?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yes, say Saul Cornell and Eric M. Ruben, in The Atlantic<\/i><\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Gun-rights advocates have waged a relentless battle to gut what remains of America\u2019s lax and inadequate gun regulations. In the name of the Second Amendment, they are challenging the constitutionality of state and municipal \u201cmay issue\u201d regulations that restrict the right to carry weapons in public to persons who can show a compelling need to be armed. A few courts are starting to take these challenges seriously. But what the advocates do not acknowledge\u2014and some courts seem not to understand\u2014is that their arguments are grounded in precedent unique to the violent world of the slaveholding South\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

Public-carry advocates like to cite historical court opinions to support their constitutional vision, but those opinions are, to put it mildly, highly problematic. The supportive precedent they rely on comes from the antebellum South and represented less a national consensus than a regional exception rooted in the unique culture of slavery and honor. By focusing only on sympathetic precedent, and ignoring the national picture, gun-rights advocates find themselves venerating a moment at which slavery, honor, violence, and the public carrying of weapons were intertwined.\n<\/section>\n
The opinion most enthusiastically embraced by public-carry advocates is\u00a0Nunn v. State<\/em>, a state-court decision written by Georgia Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin in 1846. As a jurist, Lumpkin was a champion both of slavery and of the Southern code of honor. Perhaps, not by coincidence,\u00a0Nunn<\/em>\u00a0was the first case in which a court struck down a gun law on the basis of the Second Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court cited\u00a0Nunn<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0District of Columbia v.\u00a0<\/em>Heller<\/em><\/a>, its landmark 2008 decision holding, for the first time in over 200 years, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. Why courts or gun-rights advocates think Lumpkin\u2019s view of the right to bear arms provides a solid foundation for modern firearms jurisprudence is puzzling. Slavery, \u201chonor,\u201d and their associated violence spawned a unique weapons culture. One of its defining features was a permissive view of white citizens\u2019 right to carry weapons in public\u2026.\n

If elected officials decide to restrict the right to carry to those persons who can demonstrate a clear need for a gun, present-day judges should not intervene on the basis of opinions about the right to bear arms from the slave South and its unique culture of violence.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, say Saul Cornell and Eric M. Ruben, in The Atlantic: Gun-rights advocates have waged a relentless battle to gut what remains of America\u2019s lax and inadequate gun regulations. In the name of the Second Amendment, they are challenging the constitutionality of state and municipal \u201cmay issue\u201d regulations that restrict the right to carry weapons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs the Right to Carry (a gun) Racist?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yes, say Saul Cornell and Eric M. 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