We read that, in Nebraska, the Ammosexual Right group Nebraska Open Carry was refused service at a restaurant. In support, Nebraskans Against Gun Violence issued the following statement (boldface mine):

“The evidence is quite clear that guns in public in the hands of people with little training or vetting make us less safe and less free,” Nebaskans Against Gun Violence argued. “Armed civilians have stopped zero mass shootings in the last 30 years, but so far in 2014 they have caused hundreds of accidental shootings, including several in businesses that allow guns. There is a legitimate role for guns in our society, but this isn’t it.”

The statement added: “The whole guns everywhere movement is predicated on a historically ignorant understanding of the Second Amendment. The founders wanted to provide for the national defense. They did not want to threaten violence against the elegant democracy they had just created, and they certainly did not intend to militarize our daily lives.”

I don’t mean to pick on Nebraskans Against Gun Violence, since they are, after all, opposing heavily-armed people with insecurity issues. That’s not easy to say the least. But the part emphasized above is wrong, and it’s very important to understand why.

The Second Amendment was the antithesis of national defense, as it’s entire purpose was to keep state militias under state, not federal control. Why? We’ll let Virginian Founding Father Patrick Henry, of “Give me liberty or give me death!” fame, explain (boldface mine):

“If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia.”

The Second Amendment was never about the freedom to own a gun. It was about the freedom to hunt your slaves. Without this ‘freedom’, the entire Southern economy and social order would have collapsed. It is as relevant to the issue of gun proliferation and gun safety as the colonial era Maine law against feeding lobsters to slaves, orphans, and widows is to fisheries management–which is to say, completely irrelevant.

All the glory of the First Amendment is matched by the odiousness of the Second Amendment.

At this point, it is clear that the Ammosexual Right does not rethink or reconsider, they regroup and rearm. If the massacre of schoolchildren and their teachers doesn’t not shame them, nothing will. To successfully oppose them (since we will never convince them), we need to make it absolutely clear how far removed the gun proliferation movement is from the original intent of the Constitution and that the cornerstone of their movement is built upon America’s Original Sin. I am tired of them waving the bloody shirt, especially when it belonged to a murdered elementary school student.