As I pointed out in my book "The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment," the reason the Second Amendment was written and passed was to protect the slave patrols of Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.

In most cases, the slave patrols were volunteer vigilante groups, drawing from the population of local farmers and other white people whose economic survival depended on the larger plantations.

In other words, they were civilian vigilantes, whose main job was to suppress any possibility of Black uprisings.

That same Second Amendment did his work yesterday in Kenosha, Wisconsin when a white vigilante shot and killed two people just after police had given him a bottle of water and thanked him for showing up.

Video shows the man walking toward the police with his hands up after the killings, still carrying the gun and used for the murders as protesters are yelling at the police that he had just shot some people, but the police ignore him and keep on going.

After all, he's just a white guy with a gun. No danger there. Must be one of us. Just move along.

The seeds of yesterday's murders were sown back in the 1970s when the NRA made a radical shift from being a sports organization to being an advocate for weapons manufacturers.

The organization, which we now know was incredibly corrupt, poured tens of millions of dollars from the weapons manufacturers into lobbying and supporting politicians and judges who would advocate their view that the Second Amendment meant that pretty much any random white man who wanted to own a gun and carry it in public was entitled to.

They wrapped the idea of carrying weapons in the flag, suggesting that an armed populace was a patriotic populace.

What we know now is that an armed population, particularly during times of political strife, is a danger to life and liberty.

Guns and other weapons of war should never be part of political protests. America needs to update its laws.

-Thom