Second Amendment

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• 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. 

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• 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.

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• 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." 

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.”

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• 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.

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• SOURCE: Boston1775 (blog)
  6-7-18
  

  A check of databases show the Supreme Court erred in saying the Second Amendment protects the individual ownership of guns

  Two new databases of English writing from the founding era confirm that “bear arms” is a military term.

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• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  3-27-18
  

  Gun-control advocates believe their activism will mirror the fight for gay marriage. They’re wrong.

  by James Kirchick

  The better comparison is Prohibition — and we all know how that turned out.

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  3-24-18
  

  The Lessons of a School Shooting—in 1853

  by Saul Cornell

  How a now-forgotten classroom murder inflamed the national gun argument.

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• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  3-26-18
  

  How the marches for gun control are like the protests against Vietnam

  As in Vietnam, students have a stake in this fight.

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• SOURCE: NYT
  3-22-18
  

  America Passed Gun Control in 1968. Can It Happen Again?

  by Jason Sokol

  The King and Kennedy assassinations spurred the passage of the Gun Control Act.

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• 3-14-18
  

  We Shouldn’t Be Surprised that Young People Are Leading the Charge for Gun Control

  by Bill Heiden

  Most importantly, history shows that this kind of street action works.

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• SOURCE: guns.com
  3-13-18
  

  Patrick J. Charles, author of a new book on guns, defends militia-centric understanding of Second Amendment

  “There’s been people on both sides who’ve misappropriated historical evidence over time or failed to fully contextualize it.”

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• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  3-12-18
  

  Jonathan Zimmerman says students should go on strike to win gun control

  by Jonathan Zimmerman

  West Virginia teachers won by striking. There’s a lesson in that.

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• SOURCE: NYT
  3-5-18
  

  7 Times in History When Students Turned to Activism

  History is full of movements led by students — albeit usually in college, not high school. Some were successful and others brutally crushed, but even the latter still resonate.