Actor Danny Glover said that the Second Amendment was written to strengthen the institution of slavery and help take Native American land, in a discussion with Texas A&M students on Jan. 17, according to video of the talk posted by a conservative student group.

The event was honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. as the national holiday in his honor takes place on Monday.

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“I don’t know if people know the genesis of the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect, to protect themselves from slave revolts and from uprisings from Native Americans. A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that’s what the genesis of the Second Amendment is,” Glover said.

The conservative student organization that took the video of Glover speaking wrote an online petition criticizing the university, and the group’s president called the statement a “far left message.”

In 2008, Mother Jones reported that “what the founders really had in mind, according to some constitutional-law scholars, was the musket in the hands of a slave owner. That is, these scholars believe the founders enshrined the right to bear arms in the Constitution in part to enforce tyranny, not fight it.”

Watch the video, via AggieConservatives, below.

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[Image: Danny Glover on Shutterstock]