1st Amendment v 2nd Amendment
First Amendment v Second Amendment
During the March for Our Lives rallies, there were counter protesters across the United States, mostly men wearing camouflage jackets to cover their concealed carry weapons, who held signs with variants of this: "Without the 2nd Amendment, there would be no 1st Amendment."
History and I beg to differ.
First things first. I hate to get petty and literal (literally) but the founding fathers wrote the bill of rights and their very first, and by way of rank, most important right was the ability of a free people to speak their minds, organize, meetup, march, criticize and ask their elected representatives for change. It also forbade government from establishing a national religion and gave "Fake News" the right to report on affairs with porn stars, bribes, abuses of power, and illegal in kind campaign contributions, but I digress.
Here is the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Theses rights of expression and assembly were on full display across our country on March 24, 2018 as over a million children, men and women, joined the March for Our Lives movement across the world. It was not a well regulated militia that caused these events to take place, it was a well organized group of young people who have grown tired of being victims of cowards with guns who are armed with weapons of war by cowards at our capitols, afraid to do anything that would anger their NRA benefactors. It was not the second amendment on display and fostering change, but the first.
If we look back at United States history, we see the same pattern repeated over and over again. In the late 1800's to early 1900's, women in America met, organized and protested in order to gain the right to vote. They utilized their first amendment rights to redress their grievances and ultimately won the right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment in 1919. They were not a well armed militia. They were a well organized group who used civil disobedience and press coverage of their plight to achieve their goals, not an AK47.
In the 1960's, civil rights leaders adopting the non-violent civil disobedience of India's Mahatma Gandhi, began a campaign to grant black Americans civil rights. Under the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., hundreds of thousands marched and protested against immoral laws that subjugated an entire race. This national, first amendment based movement, eventually resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was non-violent civil disobedience and press coverage of human rights violations and violence towards peaceful protesters that changed a domineering government, not an AR15
Women fought for rights over their bodies, their finances, their career options and reproductive autonomy in the 1960's and 70's resulting in the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 and the. Supreme Court Decision, Roe v Wade, in 1973. The women and men in this movement used their rights under the first amendment to achieve their goals and aims, not a ArmaLite rifle.
The LGBTQ community, long oppressed, physically and mentally tortured, with few rights and many criminalizing legal barriers put in place by an entrenched homophobic system, began their revolution with a riot. The Stonewall Uprising in New York, on June 28, 1969 began with a fed up community who were doing nothing more than assembling and living their lives, albeit in violation of unconstitutional laws, grew tired of being abused and victimized and decided to fight back. First with purses and pennies and then with bottles and bricks. This catalyst to the gay rights movement, began violently but only in response to centuries of violence directed at the gay community and quickly became nonviolent. The LGBTQ community adopted the same civil disobedience that many oppressed minorities had adopted before them. They utilized court action over physical action and eventually and slowly still have achieved some parity and equality in our country. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States decided in the landmark civil rights case, Obergefell v Hodges that gay people had the Constitutional right to marry. The LGBTQ community used free speech, pride parades, and petitions to the courts to achieve their goals, not Bushmasters and bump stocks.
The power of the first amendment has been used time and time again by marginalized people being abused and dominated by a tyrannical government in the 250 year history of our country. People who are wronged have utilized the right to assemble, address the government for redress of grievances, speak freely and be documented and highlighted by a free and truthful press to change our country for the better, not with violence and weaponry, but with words and non peaceful action.
Some may say our armed forces and trillion dollar military industrial complex protect our standing and rights as Americans but, in doing so, you would A: Ignore the arguments of the founding fathers and Anti-Federalists who lobbied for the bill of rights and against a standing nationally funded military and, B: Contradict your own arguments for arming poorly organized and regulated civilian militias and individuals with weapons to defend against tyranny or an infinitely superior armed and better regulated federal militia. One negates the other.
I challenge anyone to come up with similar landmark progressive nationwide changes and defense of civil rights brought about by citizen militias with semi-automatic weapons. The second amendment has not brought about our ability to express our first amendment rights, rather the opposite is true. The first amendment has been used to consistently, bravely, and unflinchingly protect, restore, and continuously right wrongs of an overreaching government and representatives who used their power to strip away liberty. It has been used to restore the dignity and legal standing of oppressed and marginalized people.
To paraphrase Margaret Mead, never doubt that a small well organized group of unarmed and victimized people of color, women, LGBTQ folks, high school kids and parents of murdered children can change our world; indeed, they are the only thing that ever has.
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