uly 22, 2013 -- Updated 1150 GMT (1950 HKT)
Jefferson had bigger issues to deal with than guns: fears like banks and an elite group controlling a vast amount of wealth. Sound familiar?
"There are definitely ways you can make Jefferson be a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street or the NRA, but to do so is to take him out of his own time and put him into a debate that is quite alien in his time," Cornell says.
And, depending on what year Jefferson wrote the quote, Cornell explains, you'll get a different vibe from his writing. "Jefferson writing out of power sounds a lot like a tea party member. Jefferson writing as president sounds a lot like George Bush and Barack Obama."
Thea Patriot, commenting on CNN
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep
and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against
tyranny in government." Thomas Jefferson
For the gun rights advocates who love this line, the good news is that Jefferson did quote it from someone else. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation's website, Monticello.org, has an entire section featuring "spurious" quotations attributed to Jefferson, including this one. It's a passage from Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria's "Essay on Crimes and Punishments."
In the 18th century, before people tweeted everything, "people had notebooks where they wrote down anything they thought was important," explains Cornell. Jefferson was just quoting Beccaria.
Jefferson agreed that keeping guns out of people's hands only helped the bad guys, according to Cornell in his book "A Well-Regulated Militia."
But the phrase takes on different meaning when translated from the Italian, according to an article by Washington University law professor David Thomas Konig. Jefferson wasn't questioning the constitutionality of anti-carrying laws; he said they were impractical to uphold.
How did Thomas Jefferson, a man 200-plus years past his prime, become a
darling on both sides of today's gun debate. Blame the Internet. FULL STORY
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AURORA ANNIVERSARY AMID GUN DEBATE
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CNN iReport
updated 1:00 PM EDT, Fri July 19, 2013
(CNN) -- Thomas Jefferson may not have penned the
Second Amendment, but the paradoxical Founding Father comes galloping
into the present whenever there's a gun debate. Quotes attributed to him
and tied to the right to bear arms litter the social sphere. But how
did a man 200-plus years past his prime become today's gun-debate
darling?
"Jefferson becomes this great political Rorschach in which people pour into him different things," says Saul Cornell, a professor at Fordham University who studies early American political and constitutional thought.
People read into the inkblots of antiquity, molding Jefferson into who they want him to be on the subject of guns.
"Basically, what the Internet has done is democratized or Starbucks-ified discussions of the Founding Fathers. Everyone can talk about them without actually knowing anything about them," Cornell says.
It's the Wikipedification of knowledge, and it doesn't matter if it's true.
Real or fake, the Internet has spoken; it's loudest after tragedies like Aurora and Newtown. Read these Jeffersonian quotes fueling the debate. What do they say to you?
"Jefferson becomes this great political Rorschach in which people pour into him different things," says Saul Cornell, a professor at Fordham University who studies early American political and constitutional thought.
People read into the inkblots of antiquity, molding Jefferson into who they want him to be on the subject of guns.
"Basically, what the Internet has done is democratized or Starbucks-ified discussions of the Founding Fathers. Everyone can talk about them without actually knowing anything about them," Cornell says.
It's the Wikipedification of knowledge, and it doesn't matter if it's true.
Real or fake, the Internet has spoken; it's loudest after tragedies like Aurora and Newtown. Read these Jeffersonian quotes fueling the debate. What do they say to you?
What he didn't say
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."Jefferson was no fan of tyranny, but he wasn't the author of this famous quote about it, according to Monticello.org. Thanks a lot, Internet!
Jefferson had bigger issues to deal with than guns: fears like banks and an elite group controlling a vast amount of wealth. Sound familiar?
"There are definitely ways you can make Jefferson be a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street or the NRA, but to do so is to take him out of his own time and put him into a debate that is quite alien in his time," Cornell says.
And, depending on what year Jefferson wrote the quote, Cornell explains, you'll get a different vibe from his writing. "Jefferson writing out of power sounds a lot like a tea party member. Jefferson writing as president sounds a lot like George Bush and Barack Obama."
Thea Patriot, commenting on CNN
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep
and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against
tyranny in government." Thomas Jefferson
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... only disarm those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one."Pause when you see photo memes of Jefferson saying "no" to gun control. Truth is, he wasn't the one who said this first.
For the gun rights advocates who love this line, the good news is that Jefferson did quote it from someone else. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation's website, Monticello.org, has an entire section featuring "spurious" quotations attributed to Jefferson, including this one. It's a passage from Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria's "Essay on Crimes and Punishments."
In the 18th century, before people tweeted everything, "people had notebooks where they wrote down anything they thought was important," explains Cornell. Jefferson was just quoting Beccaria.
Jefferson agreed that keeping guns out of people's hands only helped the bad guys, according to Cornell in his book "A Well-Regulated Militia."
But the phrase takes on different meaning when translated from the Italian, according to an article by Washington University law professor David Thomas Konig. Jefferson wasn't questioning the constitutionality of anti-carrying laws; he said they were impractical to uphold.
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