WI/What if: reconstruction included a equal gun rights amendment?

Deleted member 84726

A highly implausible but interesting scenario, what would have happened if the radical republicans sucessfully pushed for expanding the second amendment on the civil war/post civil war crises,something like along this lines:

The right of citizens of the United States to keep,bear and carry arms shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,race,color,previous servitude,ancestry,national origin or birthplace.

The right of citizens of the United States to keep,bear and carry arms shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age for those who are eighteen years old or older.

The right of citizens of the United States to self-defend their lives, families and property shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, race,color, previous servitude,ancestry,national origin or birthplace.

The right of citizens of the United States to keep,bear and carry arms shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of arbitrary and/or irrational reasons.

The right of citizens of the United States to self-defend their lives, families and property shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of arbitrary and/or irrational reasons.

The right of citizens of the United States to hunt and to fish shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of arbitrary and/or irrational reasons.

Congress shall have power to enforce this articles by appropriate legislation.

How such amendment would have affected american politics? Would "gun culture" on america be much different from OTL?
 
Skallagrim

Skallagrim

Banned
The wording isn't going to be like that, but explicitly barring states from limiting these rights is a viable option here. It was pretty obvious that southern states would want to limit black gun rights as soon as reconstruction went away, and this would be a way to prevent that.

The obvious result would be that gun rights are far more firmly entrenched. On the flip-side, the exact wording suggested here ("arbitrary and/or irrational reasons") is open to all sort of interpretation. The courts could easily rule that restricting gun rights severely is rational, or that limiting them in general (for everyone equally) is not arbitrary. But then, as I said, that wording is very modern-sounding. In fact, it's far more likely that if this kind of radical proposal gets through, the wording would be something like "shall not be denied or abridged on account of any reason whatever".

So again, the end result would be that the right to own and bear arms could not be limited in any way at any level of government under any circumstance.
 
PuffyClouds

PuffyClouds

dandroide said:
A highly implausible but interesting scenario, what would have happened if the radical republicans sucessfully pushed for expanding the second amendment on the civil war/post civil war crises,something like along this lines:

The right of citizens of the United States to keep,bear and carry arms shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,race,color,previous servitude,ancestry,national origin or birthplace.

The right of citizens of the United States to keep,bear and carry arms shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age for those who are eighteen years old or older.

The right of citizens of the United States to self-defend their lives, families and property shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, race,color, previous servitude,ancestry,national origin or birthplace.

The right of citizens of the United States to keep,bear and carry arms shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of arbitrary and/or irrational reasons.

The right of citizens of the United States to self-defend their lives, families and property shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of arbitrary and/or irrational reasons.

The right of citizens of the United States to hunt and to fish shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of arbitrary and/or irrational reasons.

Congress shall have power to enforce this articles by appropriate legislation.

How such amendment would have affected american politics? Would "gun culture" on america be much different from OTL?
Click to expand...

Well I think you just eliminated the seed for most of the gun control legislation in the US. A more interesting approach would be if they incorporated some of the key concepts of tthe early militia acts into the Constitution. Not only would military style fire arm ownership be sanctioned, the possession and training would be legally required.
 
Skallagrim

Skallagrim

Banned
Jared said:
BE THE ENVY OF YOUR BLOCK:
FIRST PERSON TO OWN YOUR OWN A-BOMB.
Click to expand...

The "ancap paradise, recreational nukes for everyone" memes notwithstanding, the whole culture associated with gun rights could of course be vastly different if the whole issue is intrinsically tied to the matter of blacks defending themselves from lynch mobs. You might, for instance, end up with a present day where a lot of progressives ardently defend gun ownership, while a lot of conservatives want to amend the constitution to curtail it.
 

Mikestone8

Jared said:
BE THE ENVY OF YOUR BLOCK:
FIRST PERSON TO OWN YOUR OWN A-BOMB.
Click to expand...

"The right of citizens of the United states to possess nuclear arsenals shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of stark raving lunacy"?
 
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Deleted member 84726

Skallagrim said:
The wording isn't going to be like that, but explicitly barring states from limiting these rights is a viable option here. It was pretty obvious that southern states would want to limit black gun rights as soon as reconstruction went away, and this would be a way to prevent that.

The obvious result would be that gun rights are far more firmly entrenched. On the flip-side, the exact wording suggested here ("arbitrary and/or irrational reasons") is open to all sort of interpretation. The courts could easily rule that restricting gun rights severely is rational, or that limiting them in general (for everyone equally) is not arbitrary. But then, as I said, that wording is very modern-sounding. In fact, it's far more likely that if this kind of radical proposal gets through, the wording would be something like "shall not be denied or abridged on account of any reason whatever".

So again, the end result would be that the right to own and bear arms could not be limited in any way at any level of government under any circumstance.
Click to expand...
Good points,altough, to be honest based on the interpretation of the other amendments is very easy for the courts to say that limiting/abolishing gun rights of former criminals and the insane is non-arbirtrary and rational, for example.
 
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WillVictoria

dandroide said:
Good points,altough, to be honest based on the interpretation of the other amendments is very easy for the courts to say that limiting/abolishing gun rights of former criminals and te insane is non-arbirtrary and rational, for example.
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But, to play devil's advocate, whether someone is a criminal is partially dependent on the state. If the south wanted to limit African American gun rights here, the easy answer is to find some racist doctors to declare people insane and to have all white juries convict African Americans of crimes they didn't commit to have their guns taken away.
 

Deleted member 84726

WillVictoria said:
But, to play devil's advocate, whether someone is a criminal is partially dependent on the state. If the south wanted to limit African American gun rights here, the easy answer is to find some racist doctors to declare people insane and to have all white juries convict African Americans of crimes they didn't commit to have their guns taken away.
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Yes,but how would it would affect other cultural/political issues on the long term such as immigration or women suffrage? The ideia that even a woman can defend her family is not consequence-less.
 
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WillVictoria

dandroide said:
Yes,but how would it would affect other cultural/political issues on the long term such as immigration or women suffrage?
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The gun debate would probably be wrapped up in the voting rights for felons debate. Today many people oppose "convicted felons can't vote" and "people can't vote in prisons" laws arguing it disproportionately disenfranchises African Americans, and the gun debate will get the same tenor.

Even IOTL the idea of crime organizations and criminality is wrapped up in who is the undesirable immigrant in America this week (see the Irish, Italian, and Eastern European mobs/mafias back in the day or the various gangs oft associated with African American and Latino communities).

The gun debate might cause new political coalitions to form. For example, you might see the urban and rural areas team up at some point in the support of gun rights (urbanites as, if there's still a great migration and white flight, they're disproportionately targeted and rural people have their strong gun culture and distance from the "other" leaving them feeling ok to give guns to those in the cities) while suburbanites argue for keeping guns away from the criminals.

In the end, though we're left to a similar battleground as today about what stops "a bad guy with a gun": a good guy with a gun or gun control. If we're just looking at modern-day political coalitions, a demographic like the modern day Democratic party (heavy with minorities and urbanites) would probably be for the "good guy with a gun" solution, but how white suburbanites will react when it's city-based people of color (vs. IOTL where it's mainly rural/suburban white folks) advocating for more guns overall is certainly an interesting thought experiment.
 

Deleted member 84726

Gender equality would probaly arise earlier on the US,guns are after all one of the greatest equalizers of the sexes, so in western/expansion/conquest states women could be much more affluent.

As for racial issues, ATL-civil rights moviment(s) will probably use this articles to show themselves as "patriotic"and similar imaginary.
 
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DominusNovus

Skallagrim said:
The "ancap paradise, recreational nukes for everyone" memes notwithstanding, the whole culture associated with gun rights could of course be vastly different if the whole issue is intrinsically tied to the matter of blacks defending themselves from lynch mobs. You might, for instance, end up with a present day where a lot of progressives ardently defend gun ownership, while a lot of conservatives want to amend the constitution to curtail it.
Click to expand...

That presumes that Conservative and Progressive motivations are driven by race more than anything else.
 

Deleted member 84726

Skallagrim said:
The "ancap paradise, recreational nukes for everyone" memes notwithstanding, the whole culture associated with gun rights could of course be vastly different if the whole issue is intrinsically tied to the matter of blacks defending themselves from lynch mobs. You might, for instance, end up with a present day where a lot of progressives ardently defend gun ownership, while a lot of conservatives want to amend the constitution to curtail it.
Click to expand...
Please no current politics
 
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