Curiosly such dinamic can also result in a strong gun consensus by the 80/90 decades as rural people,minorities,feminists,traditionalists, libertarians and the wasp middle class will all have "gun cultures"".
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WI/What if: reconstruction included a equal gun rights amendment?
- Thread starter dandroide
- Start date
On a different aspect which states would be more and less likely to respect this addition? The south would try its best to ignore it of course, but what about the north and the west?.
I see states such as the OTL-Washinton being very ok whit it while others like Utah(cause mormons) or California(because anti-asian/immigrant sentiments) being more southern-like.
I see states such as the OTL-Washinton being very ok whit it while others like Utah(cause mormons) or California(because anti-asian/immigrant sentiments) being more southern-like.
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I’m more wondering how this would affect the gun economy.
Would some shops or suppliers discriminate against blacks or charge higher prices? Would this lead to the arms business focusing on minorities overall or dividing it up?
This would definitely damper the stereotypical gun culture we have here, though it would still be tainted with the racist double standard.
Stand your ground rules would either get uglier when it tries to be used to defend Afro-Americans or they will be get rid of entirely.
Would some shops or suppliers discriminate against blacks or charge higher prices? Would this lead to the arms business focusing on minorities overall or dividing it up?
This would definitely damper the stereotypical gun culture we have here, though it would still be tainted with the racist double standard.
Stand your ground rules would either get uglier when it tries to be used to defend Afro-Americans or they will be get rid of entirely.
Shops and suppliers will definitely discriminate at first, and as far for racial integration on national level it will problably depend on the wider culture.
Although thanks to the explicit protectations it may became integrated first than the overall society in less-racially obsessed places.
I doubt these rules will be just abolished, they are more likely to be like the right to vote: to useful to get rid of overall but arbitrarilly denied until group x(women,asians,blacks...) fight the good fight for it.
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Skallagrim
Banned
This is exactly why I'd expect the hypothetical amendment to be worded very "tightly", with no room for exceptions and evasions. If your goal is to make sure post-reconstruction southern states don't disarm blacks, then you can't leave exceptions-- because as OTL has demonstrated, quite a few judges and juries were all too willing to convict blacks for (next to) nothing, or to declare them legally incompetent, just to limit or take away their rights.
I didn't presume that and I didn't call anyone that. I gave an example of completely reversed trends, compared to OTL, that could result. It's an example of how different things could easily get, and how difficult the outcome of this POD would be to predict.
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Regarding gun culture altogether, it would be tied to the notion of civil rights (which is why I suggested it might become a progressive cause). Both the constitution and (in the present) political culture would make anti-gun legislation a lot more difficult. After all, it would be very easy to paint anyone trying to ban gun ownership as secretly pursuing a racist agenda of "disarming the minorities". (Conversely, one might expect the pro-gun position to have overwhelming support among African-Americans, and quite possibly all or most other minorities.)
So progressive=destroy any liberty/autonomy safeguard that existed before? This is kinda deterministic.
No, but the coredifferences in the philosophies of the two sides are unlikely to change over one issue.
While reversing one trend (position on gun rights), you kept another the same (the racial demographics of the political spectrum). There is absolutely no reason to think that would be the case, particularly if you’re using terms lime Progressive and Conservative. Simply put, if Conservatives are still even remotely ideologically similar to their real world positions, then they would still be pro 2nd Amendment (and this alt-2nd). If they’re not similar, then they’re not Conservative.
But if they view gun rights as a civil rights issue (African Americans are being unfairly prosecuted in part to keep them away from guns and not allow them to defend themselves from vigilante racists) it changes the political calculus. It doesn't automatically mean urbanites will want everyone and their great grandaunt Judith to own a gun, but gun access for the criminally convicted might be seen similar to restoring voting rights for felons or the incarcerated.
Maybe, but that's unlikely as even in OTL, there is stronger, direct support in the federal constitution for an individual right to keep and bear arms wile addressing voting rights less directly, banning now poll taxes or discrimination on account of race or sex.
Nailed it. Both sides would have reasons to be pro-gun in such america.
Skallagrim
Banned
I really think you're reading quite a lot into something I mentioned to illustrate potential differences, and I really don't want to turn this into some side-debate. I can see worlds where the POD given leads to conservatives who still support gun rights (and where this is just not a divise issue between both big 'camps' in national politics), and I can see worlds where conservatives take on the position that only the police etc. should ever own guns. This latter position would indeed mean that these conservatives aren't very "similar to their real world positions", but doesn't mean that they are therefore "not Conservative", as you claim. In fact, that situation (conservatives being the 'strong government' party that's big on the state having a violence monopoly) is closer to to what "conservatives" believe in most countries in OTL. The OTL situation in the USA, where conservatives have tied themselves to the individual right to bear arms, is actually not that universal, globally. Even back in the early USA, the Federalists were widely seen as the conservatives. They were social conservatives. Those were the big government guys, who loudly advocated sending the army to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. I can easily imagine worlds where the political divide swings back to something like that, with the conservatives being clearly recognisable as such, but also being famed for supporting strong government and claiming that only the police (or state power in general) should be armed, and that individuals owning weapons is a dangerous idea of radicals. (You know, like that zany Jefferson guy who liked the Frenh revolution. The fact that he's lionised by conservatives in OTL is really a fluke. In many worlds, i imagine jefferson being seen as a radical progressive idol, while the conservatives worship Hamilton and his legacy.)
Then that position would not, by definition, be conservative within the American spectrum.
Skallagrim
Banned
That sense of what a certain word means only applies on OTL. In fact, the "American spectrum" you refer to is only that spectrum as it exists in OTL. But we shouldn't apply OTL sensibilities to a scenario with a POD in the 1860s. It makes no sense. Over a period of nearly 150 years, attitudes and conceptions not only can change, but almost certainly will.
Will later Progressives see Reconstruction (or anything done to sustain it) as a particularly progressive measure?
OTL, Progressives of the TR/Wilson era showed little interest in Black rights, while the last effort on their behalf (1890) was sponsored by Henry Cabot Lodge, whom no one ever accused of Progressivism. There just wasn't much linkage between the two issues.
Constitionalism is inherently Conservative. If the Constitution has stricter protections for the Right to Bear Arms, then that will be the Conservative position.