Second Amendment

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  12/17/2021
  

  America as a Tactical Gun Culture

  by Chad Kautzer

  "Vigilantism is fueled by an individualist notion of sovereignty more dangerous than any military-grade weaponry. It rejects the freedom of others as equal to one’s own and views any attempt to support such equality as tyranny."

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/5/2021
  

  Forget "Ghost Guns" and other Media Panics. Gun Capitalism is the Underlying Problem of a Violent Society

  by Andrew C. McKevitt

  A long series of moral panics over the dangers of specific guns (and their imagined users) has hidden the real danger to Americans: the profitability (and legality) of selling deadly weapons.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/16/2021
  

  How Much is the NRA to Blame for the Gun Culture?

  Two new books help to shed light on how the NRA, partisan politicians, and the gun industry "took a political base of hunters and nurtured a new, expanded audience of gun guys," and how they made Americans live in their world. 

• 
• 11/14/2021
  

  Will SCOTUS Force Us All to Find Out How Polite an Armed Society Will Be?

  by Jim Zirin

  The Supreme Court's oral arguments in a challenge to New York State's gun laws suggest the court is willing to defy precedent and history and assume a power that the Constitution reserves to the people and states, forcing all communities to accept the concealed carrying of firearms.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  11/9/2021
  

  Secret NRA Tapes in Wake of Columbine Show Decision to Attack Critics for "Politicizing" Mass Shootings

  The NRA faced a crossroads after the Columbine shootings in 1999. They chose a scorched-earth posture that has guided their response to every mass shooting incident since, documented in recordings of high-level strategy meetings.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  10/27/2021
  

  There's Little Doubt: The Second Amendment Threatens the First

  by Diana Palmer and Timothy Zick

  "In short, the visible presence of firearms increases the risk of violence and death when exercising one’s First Amendment rights."

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/3/2021
  

  If the Justices Really Value "Originalism," They Can Only Vote One Way in Guns Case

  by Saul Cornell

  "If the justices professing to believe in originalism are sincere about their method, this case offers the rare opportunity to prove that originalism is not always a prescription for results-oriented judging that follows a conservative political agenda."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/26/2021
  

  Gun Culture is Priming Americans for Authoritarianism

  by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

  American gun culture devalues human life, desensitizes us to the presence of deadly force in our daily lives, and underlines the message that our fellow citizens are dangerous enemies.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  8/28/2021
  

  How Racism Permeates the Politics of Guns

  Historians Carol Anderson and Yohuru Williams are featured in a new documentary examining the ways that American gun rights discourse has been filtered through racism. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/28/2021
  

  Was the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms Designed to Protect Slavery?

  Randall Kennedy reviews Carol Anderson's "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America," and charges that Anderson overstates the influence of suppressing slave rebellion on the drafting of the Second Amendment. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  5/7/2021
  

  How the Modern NRA Was Born at the Border

  by Sierra Pettengill and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  Sierra Pettengill's new short documentary "The Rifleman" connects racist violence at the US-Mexico border and the politics of influential NRA leader Harlon Carter, who for decades concealed the fact that he was convicted at age 17 of murder for shooting a Mexican youth in Laredo. She discusses that story with historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

• 
• SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
  3/23/2021
  

  Letters From an American: March 23, 2021

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Beginning in the 1970s, the National Rifle Assocaition evolved into a political lobbying organization increasingly enmeshed with the conservative movement. Two recent mass shootings are a tribute to the organization's success. Congratulations. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/26/2021
  

  Out of the Barrel of a Gun

  The resurgent militia movement and renewed attention to the threat of political violence compels a reckoning with the vast number of firearms in America and with the political significance of guns. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/11/2021
  

  The Gun-Rights Movement Fed America’s Insurrectionist Fever Dreams

  by Firmin DeBrabander

  "The gun-rights movement cleared the path for insurrection. It blew a hole in the rule of law—and Donald Trump’s would-be soldiers clamored through it. And then scaled the walls of Congress." 

• 
• SOURCE: Duke Center for Firearms Law
  10/14/2020
  

  Amy Coney Barrett on Guns

  by Jake Charles

  A Second Amendment scholar examines the SCOTUS nominee's historical interpretation of prohibitions on individual firearm ownership, concluding that her record shows a commitment to gun rights but uncertainty about how she might rule on particular cases.

• 
• SOURCE: Duke Center for Firearms Law
  10/7/2020
  

  Why Heller is Such Bad History

  by Noah Shusterman

  Antonin Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller ignored the actual history of the early American militia in order to invent an individual right to gun ownership.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  10/1/2020
  

  A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans

  It is difficult to know how many of the people--many retired or active military and law enforcement--listed in an Oath Keepers database are active members of the far right group, but the organization's history and the prospect of political violence mean it should be taken seriously.

• 
• 9/20/2020
  

  The Second Amendment has Never Covered Kenosha Shooter Kyle Rittenhouse

  by Noah Shusterman

  If his lawyer wants to argue that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in the spirit of those eighteenth-century militias which went outside the law and defied their state government, and especially those who did so in the interest of promoting white supremacy – his case would be historically solid. It would not, however, be an exoneration.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/3/2020
  

  In Act of Heresy, N.R.A.’s Former No. 2 Calls for Gun Control

  “The N.R.A. fueled a toxic debate,” Mr. Powell writes, “by appealing to the paranoia and darkest side of our members, in a way that has torn at the very fabric of America.”

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/18/2020
  

  One of these Stories about Guns in Public Places is not Like the Others. Here’s Why.

  by Jonathan Blanks

  As guns have become an increasingly common sight at protests and government buildings, it’s clear that carrying them means different things — and presents different risks — for black and white Americans.