Elie Mystal: Second Amendment Was Created to Preserve White Supremacy

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. The original intent was to keep slavery and white supremacy alive. 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 said that the passage was from his book and claimed that it was from Patrick Henry. George Mason also added the following: “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. His only options are to return to law school, or to take history classes. 

To read the relevant transcript click “expand”: 

Peacock’s Mehdi Hasan’s Show 
6/1/2022
Eastern, 8:06 

MEHDI 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. It’s what these white men stated when debating about the Second Amendment. The reason they required a Second Amendment was that they had to have armed disciplined militias in order to subdue slave rebellions. The federal government has all the authority to fund the militia, according to the original constitution. Because it was difficult for Mehdi to keep people under bondage, the southerners required militias in order to suppress slave rebellions. 

The Second Amendment provided military supremacy. Virginia was able to organize its own militia and put an end to slave revolts by raising their own. That’s why it’s there. That’s why the white folks said it was there. Jump forward to 2008, and Antonin Scalia makes up a totally different Second Amendment from nothing.