Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes that in 1801, Thomas Jefferson urged his fellow white colonists to see their home as "an Empire for Liberty." Of course, not for the Indigenous or the enslaved Blacks. In Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment , "Male colonial settlers had long formed militias for the purpose of raiding and razing Indigenous communities and seizing their lands and resources." See it, seize it! That's what superior people do!
" Virginia," writes Dunbar-Ortiz, "forbade any [white] man to travel unless he was well armed." Why, because the Indigenous people fought back!
The power to control the Indigenous along with the enslaved Black was at the core of the nation's foundation. This exercise of power meant the development of militias and the demand for citizens, white male citizens, to be armed and on the lookout for Indigenous and Black people.
The late Mayor Daley, seemingly echoed an historical order to shoot to kill!
In 1658, "the colony required every settler home to have a functioning firearm." Eventually, a good many Americans were armed as requested by their government. Ownership of guns, in time, began to be thought of as "a sacred right." Guns captured territory from the Indigenous. It allowed for the young men to become brutish in their response to the Indigenous population, so women and children, babies, could be gunned down too. Slave patrols made the young men something to be feared! Someone who could exert "physical force" against the "undesirables."
There are over 300 million privately owned guns in the US, writes Dunbar-Ortiz, almost as many as there are Americans. And, of those with guns, how many see themselves as adjuncts to law enforcement? How many of those with guns want more law enforcement? Heavily armed police, exerting force against the "undesirables"?
How far have we come from the days of the European settlers?
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