Replace #2: Guns & Race in America: How to Save Lives

By Elisha Rountree

Replace #2 proposes the Newtown Amendment, a replacement for the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The book traces the origin of the gun culture in America and its connection to racism. Whites used guns to uphold slavery and expand the country. Replace #2 describes the growing obsession of America with guns in the nineteenth century. When modern America developed in the twentieth century, guns continued to play an important role in maintaining the power of whites during segregation and as a response to urban crime. The interplay of guns, race and crime helped shape the America we live in today. Hollywood's role in cementing the gun culture's hold on America helps explain why Americans own more guns than any other society. Describing the current debate over the Second Amendment and gun control as a stagnant stalemate, Replace #2 proposes the Newtown Amendment as the best path forward to a safer America. This bold proposed amendment would overcome the legal and political might of the NRA by allowing all levels of government to regulate guns as they see necessary. The author calls for a grassroots push to change the Constitution, arguing that lives will be saved with less guns in our future and our democracy will be reinvigorated by the effort.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elisha Rountree
• Release date: Mar 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311236982

Book preview

Replace #2

Guns & Race in America -

How To Save Lives

Elisha Lott Rountree

Published by Elisha Rountree at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Elisha Lott Rountree

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Section I : America's Gun Culture Develops

Chapter 1 : Guns and Liberty

Chapter 2 : Guns and the Frontier

Chapter 3 : Guns and Slavery

Chapter 4 : Guns and War

Chapter 5 : Guns and Indians

Chapter 6 : Guns and the Wild West

Chapter 7 : Bulls eye

Section II: Guns and Race Shape Modern America

Chapter 8 : Guns and Cities

Chapter 9 : Guns and Police

Chapter 10 : Guns and Crime

Chapter 11 : Guns and Gangsters

Chapter 12 : Guns and Hollywood

Chapter 13 : Guns and Mass Shootings

Chapter 14 : Guns and Women

Chapter 15 : Imagine

Section III: Moving on the Spectrum

Chapter 16 : The Second Amendment

Chapter 17 : Why We Need To Change The Second Amendment

Chapter 18 : How to Change The Second Amendment

Chapter 19 : Guns and Our Future

Chapter 20 : How to Participate in Change

Chapter 21 : Changing the Equation

Chapter 22 : p.s. I Love You

Foreword

Guns kill too many people in America today. Or people with guns kill too many people in America today. In this book, I advocate a solution to this ongoing crisis. To do this I use an approach that I hope makes it readable. This is not a book of historical scholarship, nor is it a statistical study of sociology, and it does not pretend to be a statement of political philosophy.

Instead, Replace #2 challenges the reader to think about how America became such a well-armed and violent country, to ponder the tremendous cost of this tradition, and to ask if we can somehow move beyond the current political stalemate to make America a safer place to live. The observations that I make in this book are intended to provoke debate, and yes, some serious soul-searching by readers. This may spark strong reactions and controversy on this most contentious topic, but I do this intentionally to awaken readers to the possibility that if you change your perception of how we got where we are, maybe your attitude toward solutions will change.

I fully expect strong reactions to my basic thesis in this book. All I ask is that each reader hear my argument before dismissing it out of hand. This is not a scientific hypothesis. There are shades of gray in interpreting any idea, historical development, and in suggesting solutions to any problem. Please just ask yourself some questions as you read this: If I am right about the history of America's attachment to the Second Amendment and our gun culture, should it be a sacred text that cannot be questioned or changed? If we can take steps to make America safer and less violent, should that not be a common goal worth striving toward, no matter whether you own guns or belong to any group or political party? Finally, is questioning the Constitution, the motives of the Founding Fathers, and how to build a stronger American democracy off limits, especially if we can save lives, American lives, by doing so?

Please forgive my choice to forego the precision of serious scholarship to make this accessible to the widest possible audience. There are no footnotes, few statistics, and as few quotes as possible. I suggest how people can participate in change at the end of the book, but I do not represent or directly recommend any particular gun control group. So many are doing admirable work, but none are yet advocating what I propose.

Read on, by all means, and thank you for your time. This is a serious issue confronting America, and your careful consideration and participation will be crucial to our future.

Introduction

America has been a racist nation since its founding. America was founded by racists. The founders owned guns. The founders used guns to protect life and property. They protected their lives when fighting to steal the land from the native peoples who fought back. The founders also used guns to keep slaves as property, to keep those slaves from escaping or revolting. Guns meant power in America, and white Americans used guns to keep power for themselves.

If the Founding Fathers were racist, many of them slave owners representing other slave owners, why should we obey them now since they enshrined gun ownership in the Constitution? The Second Amendment is the second biggest mistake in our founding document. The first is the cowardly, although perhaps wise, omission of the topic of slavery. America has had two great flaws. First, America had slavery. Second, America became obsessed with guns.

Much of American history can be admired as helping people to expand liberty and self-governance. To be sure, liberty was for white males with property, who would tightly control the government that they founded. Yet Americans inherited a respect for the written law from the many lawyers in the founding generation, and over time, the mechanisms written into law allowed the vote to be won by more people, until self governance in America would include all adults.

Slavery of course presented a challenge that divided and almost destroyed the young republic. The Civil War, as a violent crucible, forged a stronger America, the one envisioned by Lincoln that bound the people to each other and the Union for once and for all time perhaps. The feeble attempt to help the former slaves cast adrift in a racist society failed miserably, but the same respect for written law shamed American society to open more doors for their descendents a century later.

That first original sin or flaw in America, slavery, thus has been corrected, with long years of suffering and great bloodshed as the cost. Yet the second great flaw in America still torments Americans today, and we still endure more long years of suffering and great bloodshed as the cost. The liberty enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights permitting gun ownership costs thousands of American lives every year.

This does not need to continue permanently into the future. I believe that the Second Amendment protects a dangerous liberty from a racist past and that we can change it to build a safer America. The first step is to admit that our gun culture evolved from our racist, slave-owning past, and is not something to cherish and perpetuate at any cost. The next step is to boldly change the way our written law permits gun ownership, a move that will drastically reduce gun violence. This has to be done carefully, with a major push to change the Constitution, by replacing the Second Amendment. Only then can America truly emerge from the psychological shackles of its violent racist past. Only then can America shatter the deadly equation of GUNS=POWER. Only then can America become a genuinely safe place, welcoming to all, reinvigorating its democracy and self-governance in the process.

Replace #2 examines the connection between race and guns in American history. The pervasive nature of our gun culture masks the ways in which guns allowed white American men to protect their liberty against all others, not just non-whites but foreigners and even females as well. The violence of the Civil War, the subduing of the frontier and the native tribes, the Wild West, later yielded to the increasing militarism of the United States as world power with the weapons of every type to keep the peace. As America became more crowded and urban, gun culture conflicted with the reality of crime in the city. The answer generally tended to be more guns in the hands of more police, and a passionate defense of gun rights even more focused on interpreting the Second Amendment as a sacred text.

Replace #2 then lays out the solution that will be so hard to swallow for a people weaned on the gun culture from childhood that it will require a radical change in perception. We need to replace the Second Amendment with a new approach to gun regulation. After comprehending the racist past of our shared gun culture, we need to move toward a safer and more limited conception of gun ownership that will make our society safer. The path of amending the Constitution is both difficult and can be slow. Yet this is the only way to fix this flaw ingrained in the very text of the Bill of Rights itself. Just because this solution will require a tough fight does not mean we can avoid it. The new amendment also allows not only gun ownership but creates a federalist approach to state control that may seem burdensome.

Yet, my point in writing this book is to reframe the debate on guns in America. The stalemate is too stuck, with each side entrenched believing that the other is incapable of compromise. If anything, we need to start over, examine our goals and question our cherished beliefs, if we hope to break the stalemate and achieve any progress. If you agree that we are in a violent crisis, and solving this problem will save lives, read Replace #2 and decide for yourself how we can, as a people, move forward.

Chapter 1: Guns and Liberty

The generation of leaders that founded our country firmly believed that the fight for liberty demanded sacrifices, and that life and liberty had to be protected with violence when necessary. Successful men of the colonial era had come through the period leading up to the Revolution convinced that the British Crown and Parliament would not give them the rights of Englishmen without a fight. This conflict hardened their conviction that building a free society depended on the willingness by citizens to defend the country with their lives and their muskets when need be.

So there can be little doubt that the Founding Fathers equated guns with power. Yes, many of them, especially the lawyers, thought strong written laws and political frameworks would guarantee the rights of citizens, but the violent struggle for independence meant that force had to back up written words. Thus, America was born out of violence, with a strong tradition of using force to protect, promote, and expand the liberty of its citizens.

This dependence on force resulted from habits in all the English colonies. Families depended on hunting