Thread based on my guns research.
White men with military style weapons are presenting themselves as citizen-protectors (in @jdawncarlson's phrasing) and good citizens eager to assert a politucal right to guns. 1/17

This linkage between guns and good citizenship is not a new thing. It is also not a Lockean liberal thing. Libertarianism does not have a moral theory of the nation, nor does it have a theory of arms bearing. 2/

A key political tradition that is all about martial prowess is civic republicanism. Republican ideology was central to the American Revolution. Historians Bernsrd Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Lance Banning have provided extensive evidence. 3/

Civic republicans believed that the best defense agaist tyranny was a virtuous citizenship. Virtue had two components: political participation and military training, the bearing if arms 4/

A virtuous citizen was willing and prepared to defend the republic because this selfless acts of civic engagement made him virtuous and thus qualifued to recognize the public good. 5/

Republicans abhorred greed and a market economy because they believed that it incentivized people to put private gain above the public good. This led to "dependence" and "corruption" which destroyed republics from within 6/

Republicans in America amalgamated civic republicanism with white supremacy to create a new narrative, whst I call ascriptive republicanism. 7/

Ascriptive republucanism argued that whites deserved political freedom and citizenship because they fought for it, while Blacks didn't because they chose enslavement and dependency. 8/

Thus whites were virtuous citizens while blacks were the antithesis of citizens and a danger to the body politic. /9

Ascriptive republicanism erased Black resistance to slavery and black armed service. Blacks free and enslaved fought in every American war. That was wiped out. 10/

Black insurrections were interpreted as instigated by foreign enemies (Spanish, French, Brits), but not as attempts to gain freedom 11/

Jefferson called the Haitian revolutionaries "cannibals"; because they were intent on massacring white people. 11/

This duality of white man with a gun being a citizen and black msn with a gun being a political and social threat was etched in constitutions, laws, politucal tracts, educational curricula, militia traditions, and popular culture 12/

It is a very deeply held set of attitudes that are hard to get rid of. So for many whire gun owners, this ascriptive republican tradition is what's behind the gun activism. It is a performance of good citizenship. 13/

Blacks have tried to force through a universalist republucan narrative that had room for them. Douglass beseeched blacks to join the Union Army to prove deservingness for citizenship. DuBois asked them to sign up for WWI. 14/

@hakeemjefferson writes about the politics of respectability. Republicanism is another name for it. 15/

But when it comes to guns, it doesn't work. My experiments show that while a white man with a gun is a patriot, a black man is a criminal. The Panthers showed it in 1967 when they showed up at Sacramento. 16/

Now we have created even more of a mess, because with expansive gun rights interpretations and stand your ground laws, we have embolded these ascriptive republican narratives. Not good for the Republic, not good for Wisconsin today. 17/17