On Wednesday evening’s edition of Peacock’s Mehdi Hasan Show, the unhinged host Mehdi Hasan invited MSNBC’s favorite race-baiting guest Elie Mystal who serves as the justice correspondent for The Nation to misinform viewers on the founder’s intentions for the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
During a segment on the left’s most hated amendment to the constitution, the chyron asked “is it time to update the constitution on guns?” While that ignorant banner was plastered at the bottom of the screen, Hasan asked Mystal about a passage in his book “Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide To The Constitution.”
An individual right to self-defense with a gun isn’t actually provided by the Second Amendment, @ElieNYC argues. Its original purpose was to preserve white supremacy and slavery. You’re going to want to hear him explain it: pic.twitter.com/7yv7JnRHoQ
— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) June 2, 2022
“In your book Elie, you argue that an individual right to self-defense with a gun was not provided by the Second Amendment but by the conservative Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in its Heller decision” Hasan proclaimed before reading a passage from the historically inaccurate book: “There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery.”
Mystal defended the passage from the book by claiming he read it from Patrick Henry and George Mason adding that “this is what those white guys said when they were debating the Second Amendment. They said that they needed a Second Amendment because they needed the armed disciplined, that was their word, militia to put down slave revolts.”
“They were worried that under the original constitution the federal government had all of the power to raise the militia right?” Mystal asked. “The southerners needed the militias to put down slave revolts because you know Mehdi it’s a little bit difficult to hold people in bondage against their will.”
While Mystal is right that the word militia appears in the text of the Second Amendment, he’s dead wrong about it only applying to state governments or his absurd claim that the Second Amendment was created to protect slavery or white supremacy. He needs to go back to law school or take a history class.
To read the relevant transcript click “expand”:
Peacock’s The Mehdi Hasan Show
6/1/2022
8:06 p.m. EasternMEHDI HASAN: In your book Elie, you argue that an individual right to self-defense with a gun was not provided by the Second Amendment but by the conservative Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in its Heller decision. You also say “there was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery.” Briefly Elie, how do we know that to be the case for sure?
ELIE MYSTAL: Yeah so I’m coming up with that just because I’m reading Patrick Henry and George Mason who is then Governor of Virginia at the founding of the country. It’s not my words. This is what those white guys said when they were debating the Second Amendment. They said that they needed a Second Amendment because they needed the armed disciplined, that was their word, militia to put down slave revolts. And they were worried that under the original constitution the federal government had all of the power to raise the militia right? The southerners needed the militias to put down slave revolts because you know Mehdi it’s a little bit difficult to hold people in bondage against their will.
So you needed some military superiority and the Second Amendment was there to make sure that the states had the power to raise the militia on their own so Virginia could raise its own militia to put down slave revolts in Virginia without having to ask Connecticut or Massachusetts whether or not they agreed with that. That’s why it’s there. That’s why the white folks said it was there. Fast forward to 2008 and Antonin Scalia just makes up an entirely different Second Amendment right out of thin air.