Washington DC – -(Ammoland.com)- Harvard professor Jill Lepore’s latest article in The New Yorker is one of the most convoluted, revisionist, anti-gun “historical” pieces I’ve ever read.
A mixture of emotional appeals to gun control and equally emotional attacks on guns, combined with an agenda-driven, twisted history of the Second Amendment, her article is literally as difficult to read as one of Joe Biden’s speeches is to follow.
But at least Biden is funny.
In pure academic, deconstructionist style, Lepore flails about in her article “Battleground America,” reframing the Founders’ views on guns and the emergence of the Second Amendment, while opining on gun ownership by men, gun ownership by women, the Chardon High School shooting in Ohio, a history of the approaches various states have taken toward gun laws, the approach our judicial branch has taken toward the same for two centuries, the evils of the NRA, the death of Trayvon Martin, the differences between handguns and rifles, and the amazingly vast, albeit heretofore unknown, public support for closing the gun show loophole, among other things.
She even talks about her first-ever trip to a gun range, which took place while she was writing the article.
If you wonder how one article can contain so many divergent points and still make sense, you’ve already overthought things. It’s not supposed to make sense: rather, it’s supposed to paint gun owners and defenders of the Second Amendment as people who would rather risk the lives of school children than face the Founders’ true intent for guns in this country.
As I’m sure you’ve guessed, Lepore doesn’t believe the Founders believed in an individual right for gun ownership, the litany of court cases saying otherwise notwithstanding. Instead, she actually seems to believe that locking guns up in a central location, where townspeople can flee to them in time of need as did the Minutemen, is the avenue our Founders intended for us to take.
To prove her point, she tries to use quotes from James Madison, the very founding father who boasted of “the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.” Note: He didn’t say that Americans had weapons stockpiled in central locations. Nor did he say that Americans had caches of weapons in their town halls which mayors could pass out in emergencies.
Rather, Madison said that “Americans,” i.e., the people themselves, were armed.
About AWR Hawkins
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.
His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.
If you have questions or comments, email him at [email protected].
A very curious response to an article that I found entirely lucid, coherent, informative, and convincing. Hawkins's response goes to show that even a PhD is no guarantee of real thinking—or thinking at all. The second amendment is seriously outdated: It was written when there was no standing army, either on the federal or the state level; thus defense against England could only be guaranteed by the arming of citizens who could, in a crisis, form a militia. Furthermore, the authors of the constitution had no way of anticipating what technology would finally yield in terms of weaponry. It is… Read more »
Sure! -On the road to totalitarianism..Give away one of our God-given rights and the "Government" will take all the others. Once gone and we'll NEVER get them back. The RIGHT to defend self, family, and friends -nobody of a sound mind would throw that to the wind! The Second Amendment is the most important of them all! When push comes to shove, the Second Amendment guarantees the continuation and health of the other nine. When the evil-doers come through your door at 3am some morning, wearing masks, brandishing weapons, and hellbent to maim or kill you and/or members of your… Read more »