The Second

What you argue for when you argue for 2A

Carol Anderson, an Emory University historian and the author of “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy,” and “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide,” has written “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” which explores the awful compromise that was the Second Amendment, at a time when the fledging United States very much needed the Southern states to form a union.

Having access to guns — if you were white — was the foundation of that compromise, and foundational to supporting the country’s slave-based economy. You, too, can have a world superpower if you build your wealth on a multiple generations of workers who aren’t paid or treated well, but you also must be willing to resort to unspeakable violence to preserve that economy. And here is where I once again encourage everyone to read “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” by Edward E. Baptist.

“Second” explores some of the same themes, but with an emphasis on weaponry. Historically, access to guns was available — but only to white people and mostly as a means of quelling any potential slave rebellions, of which there were more than I learned of in my history classes. In each of these rebellions, people held in slavery were always — literally and figuratively — outgunned. Southern political leaders, especially, were keeping a fearful eye on the success of the revolution in Haiti, and the Second Amendment was just one of the tools they used.

Our racialized approach to weaponry continues today. Look at awful power wielded by the blood-gargling NRA, and the support that benighted organization gives strictly to white gun owners. It’s threaded through our Stand Your Ground laws, and the gun violence visited upon Black communities by police officers who are then supported in their violence by our judicial system.

Prof. Carol Anderson

This book systematically and carefully walks you through precisely how we got here, and how we remain here. I cannot recommend it enough. Prof. Anderson has done us a service. Read this book.