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The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America
From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment—and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception.
In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.
From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless—revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.
Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don't), their life—as surely as Philando Castile's, Tamir Rice's, Alton Sterling's--may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson's penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.
In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.
From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless—revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.
Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don't), their life—as surely as Philando Castile's, Tamir Rice's, Alton Sterling's--may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson's penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2021
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About the author
Carol Anderson
10 books849 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Carol Anderson is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Professor Anderson’s research and teaching focus on public policy; particularly the ways that domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice and equality in the United States.
Carol Anderson is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Professor Anderson’s research and teaching focus on public policy; particularly the ways that domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice and equality in the United States.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 256 reviews
June 17, 2021
The 2nd Amendment was designed for white people
This is my third Carol Anderson read and, although brief, she delivers on the premise that the right to have an armed militia originated with white fear of black slave rebellion. The 2nd amendment has always been tinged with protecting white people and punishing black Americans for insisting on the same gun rights. Anderson gives us a brief history tour of how the south was afraid that the federal government would overreach and insisted on their own militia to ensure the viability of their economic model built on slavery. The southern states were also afraid that black slaves would arm themselves in a rebellion as a sort of sleeper cell militant group of the federal government. Basically Anderson casts the 2nd amendment as nothing more or less that a grand bargain to ensure violence against black bodies so that the south would join the union. Growing fears of slave insurrection in Haiti as well as Gabriel's rebellion, Nat Turner and the 1811 slave rebellion were a constant source of anxiety for white Americans in the early history of America. Shay's and the Whiskey rebellion made something very clear: the right to bear arms was only a white institution.
The entrenched racism was bolstered by the fugitive slave act which allowed southerners to hunt, kill or re-enslave their northern fled fugitives. Dread Scott ruling helped ensured that black Americans could not be legally be citizens so the 2nd amendment did not apply.
Fast forward to the Black Panthers who legally bared arms who were vilified in the bay area and whose local gun laws were written simply to get "militant" black Americans from having firearms. Modernly we have example after example of the NRA and state-sanctioned support of white Americans to legally carry and use their arms for violence while black Americans can never appear unarmed before the police, even when their weapon is simply a remote control of a bag of skittles. Self defended rulings are 10x more likely to be determined for white killers.
Once again, the American hypocrisy is palpable. The bald face truth is staring us in the face: white people are terrified of black people, whether they are armed are not.
This is my third Carol Anderson read and, although brief, she delivers on the premise that the right to have an armed militia originated with white fear of black slave rebellion. The 2nd amendment has always been tinged with protecting white people and punishing black Americans for insisting on the same gun rights. Anderson gives us a brief history tour of how the south was afraid that the federal government would overreach and insisted on their own militia to ensure the viability of their economic model built on slavery. The southern states were also afraid that black slaves would arm themselves in a rebellion as a sort of sleeper cell militant group of the federal government. Basically Anderson casts the 2nd amendment as nothing more or less that a grand bargain to ensure violence against black bodies so that the south would join the union. Growing fears of slave insurrection in Haiti as well as Gabriel's rebellion, Nat Turner and the 1811 slave rebellion were a constant source of anxiety for white Americans in the early history of America. Shay's and the Whiskey rebellion made something very clear: the right to bear arms was only a white institution.
The entrenched racism was bolstered by the fugitive slave act which allowed southerners to hunt, kill or re-enslave their northern fled fugitives. Dread Scott ruling helped ensured that black Americans could not be legally be citizens so the 2nd amendment did not apply.
Fast forward to the Black Panthers who legally bared arms who were vilified in the bay area and whose local gun laws were written simply to get "militant" black Americans from having firearms. Modernly we have example after example of the NRA and state-sanctioned support of white Americans to legally carry and use their arms for violence while black Americans can never appear unarmed before the police, even when their weapon is simply a remote control of a bag of skittles. Self defended rulings are 10x more likely to be determined for white killers.
Once again, the American hypocrisy is palpable. The bald face truth is staring us in the face: white people are terrified of black people, whether they are armed are not.
July 3, 2021
This book provides an examination of the racist roots and the racially motivated current popularity of the Second Amendment. It's a history filled with multiple examples of constitutional and subsequent laws which "offer a particularly maddening set of double standards where race is concerned."(p.4) Legal standards from the nineteenth century to the present seem to have had the common understanding among those in power that access to guns is an important right if you're white, but in the hands of a person with dark skin guns are something to fear.
This book presents the history of the Second's origins, its use in the antebellum years, its revised applications in the post Civil War Jim Crow era, and then moves on to the Second's continued influence in the maintenance of law and order today.
The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights as a negotiating tool in securing the acceptance of the newly proposed U.S.Constitution. It was a way to assure states that their "well ordered militia" would continue to be available to them. A major responsibility of those militias was control slave populations, and the southern slave states knew they couldn't depend on a central Federal government to come to their aid in case of slave revolts.
Did you know that the first draft of the 2nd Amendment as written by James Madison made provisions for conscientious objectors? Additional information in this
This book highlights numerous slave revolts and the widespread fear among whites during the first half of the nineteenth century. The book's description of the Christiana, PA 1851 riot made me aware of an instance of resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act that I was previously unfamiliar. A slave owner named Edward Gorsuch was killed while trying to retrieve runaway slaves he claimed to be his property. All the fugitive slaves in the end were successfully conveyed to Canada, but forty-one people were subsequently indicted for helping the fugitive slaves.
Another incident described in the book from the antebellum period is the 1841 racial conflict in Cincinnati, Ohio. I have since become aware that Cincinnati has a long history of racial conflict.
The ending of slavery after the Civil War with the Thirteen Amendment should have theoretically ended any racial disparity in the rights provided by the Second Amendment. Of course the very opposite is what happened. The second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century were filled will numerous instances where conflicts between Blacks and Whites were settled by sending in the militia to maintain the peace which usually meant disarming the Blacks and allowing Whites to remain armed. A listing of racial riots during this era are listed in this
The book also reviews some of the instances that have been in the news recently of unarmed Blacks being mistakenly shot because they had something in their hands that looked like a gun. Contrasting similar cases where white individuals were not shot are then noted. Disparity in the application of the so called stand-your-ground laws is noted.
This book is credited with 258 pages. However, I was surprised to find that the text ended on page 165; the balance of the book consisted of Notes for the footnotes in the book's text.
This book presents the history of the Second's origins, its use in the antebellum years, its revised applications in the post Civil War Jim Crow era, and then moves on to the Second's continued influence in the maintenance of law and order today.
The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights as a negotiating tool in securing the acceptance of the newly proposed U.S.Constitution. It was a way to assure states that their "well ordered militia" would continue to be available to them. A major responsibility of those militias was control slave populations, and the southern slave states knew they couldn't depend on a central Federal government to come to their aid in case of slave revolts.
Did you know that the first draft of the 2nd Amendment as written by James Madison made provisions for conscientious objectors? Additional information in this
This book highlights numerous slave revolts and the widespread fear among whites during the first half of the nineteenth century. The book's description of the Christiana, PA 1851 riot made me aware of an instance of resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act that I was previously unfamiliar. A slave owner named Edward Gorsuch was killed while trying to retrieve runaway slaves he claimed to be his property. All the fugitive slaves in the end were successfully conveyed to Canada, but forty-one people were subsequently indicted for helping the fugitive slaves.
"In fact, after that clear repudiation of the Fugitive Slave Act, no one was ever convicted for Edward Gorsuch's death or the wounding of his sons and nephew." (p. 78)This and other similar incidents illustrate of how difficult it was to get a conviction from a northern jury for violations of the Fugitive Slave Act.
Another incident described in the book from the antebellum period is the 1841 racial conflict in Cincinnati, Ohio. I have since become aware that Cincinnati has a long history of racial conflict.
The ending of slavery after the Civil War with the Thirteen Amendment should have theoretically ended any racial disparity in the rights provided by the Second Amendment. Of course the very opposite is what happened. The second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century were filled will numerous instances where conflicts between Blacks and Whites were settled by sending in the militia to maintain the peace which usually meant disarming the Blacks and allowing Whites to remain armed. A listing of racial riots during this era are listed in this
The book also reviews some of the instances that have been in the news recently of unarmed Blacks being mistakenly shot because they had something in their hands that looked like a gun. Contrasting similar cases where white individuals were not shot are then noted. Disparity in the application of the so called stand-your-ground laws is noted.
As the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported in its study of the racial implication of the law, the criminal justice system is “ten times more likely” to rule a homicide justifiable “if the shooter is white and the victim black” than if an African American kills someone white and claims self-defense. In fact the report notes, stand-your-ground laws actually worsen and increase the racial disparity outcomes of self-defense claims.(p.8)This book makes clear that the gun problem has been with us for a long time. The book is an interpretation and commentary on history, and thus does not attempt to advocate for remedies to the problem. The implicit message is that it's been with us for a long time and it's not going away any time soon.
This book is credited with 258 pages. However, I was surprised to find that the text ended on page 165; the balance of the book consisted of Notes for the footnotes in the book's text.
June 26, 2021
This is a great rundown of the hypocrisy of those who defend the Second Amendment—in particular the NRA. Carol Anderson shined a lot of light on places I never thought to look before, such as Ronald Reagan's defense of the Second and simultaneous willingness to bar open carry rights when the Black Panthers became active.
However, as someone else pointed out, this book is very short. 165 pages excluding notes is too short, I think, to fulfill the promises of its title. I thought I would leave this book understanding the full meaning of what the Second Amendment was intended for and how it has legally evolved throughout America's history, but both of those topics were scarcely explored. I think this was deliberate, because Anderson states repeatedly that any debate about how to read the Second ignores that the Second is inherently racist. However, exploring the Second more in-depth would have led to a deeper discourse and more informed readers; it feels like a lost opportunity not to discuss the Second more directly in a book called The Second. There were additionally times when Anderson seemed to zoom through things unnecessarily, including about a dozen Supreme Court decisions that she wrote are very important, but then never explained what any of them were concerned with.
I also had small issues with the writing—quotes were often dropped into the text with no attributions or footnotes. Sometimes it was clear Anderson was pulling the quotes from somewhere, but I had no idea where, and other times I couldn't tell whether she was quoting someone or using quotation marks to denote sarcasm. The casual tone, sentence fragments, and overused stylistic repetition also bothered me, although they will probably appeal to readers who prefer less academic nonfiction.
This was a good introduction to the concept of the Second's history of racist applications, but it wasn't as thorough as I had hoped. It is much better as a general introductory history to anti-black racism in America. For those interested in learning more about that after reading this book, I recommend Henry Louis Gates's Stony the Road.
However, as someone else pointed out, this book is very short. 165 pages excluding notes is too short, I think, to fulfill the promises of its title. I thought I would leave this book understanding the full meaning of what the Second Amendment was intended for and how it has legally evolved throughout America's history, but both of those topics were scarcely explored. I think this was deliberate, because Anderson states repeatedly that any debate about how to read the Second ignores that the Second is inherently racist. However, exploring the Second more in-depth would have led to a deeper discourse and more informed readers; it feels like a lost opportunity not to discuss the Second more directly in a book called The Second. There were additionally times when Anderson seemed to zoom through things unnecessarily, including about a dozen Supreme Court decisions that she wrote are very important, but then never explained what any of them were concerned with.
I also had small issues with the writing—quotes were often dropped into the text with no attributions or footnotes. Sometimes it was clear Anderson was pulling the quotes from somewhere, but I had no idea where, and other times I couldn't tell whether she was quoting someone or using quotation marks to denote sarcasm. The casual tone, sentence fragments, and overused stylistic repetition also bothered me, although they will probably appeal to readers who prefer less academic nonfiction.
This was a good introduction to the concept of the Second's history of racist applications, but it wasn't as thorough as I had hoped. It is much better as a general introductory history to anti-black racism in America. For those interested in learning more about that after reading this book, I recommend Henry Louis Gates's Stony the Road.
August 10, 2022
A bit academic. like most of Anderson's work is, but extremely important and well-researched. I don't think I've ever read anything that so clearly laid out the ways in which the second amendment is not only not applied equally across races, but also the fact that its very foundation was built on white supremacist values. I personally did find myself wishing it was more than just a history book, however, and that there might be some thoughts/guidance on what we can do to try to address this as it did all feel a little hopeless.
May 12, 2023
The Second Amendment was borne from white supremacy and it has only ever been interested in furthering that cause, as Carol Anderson thoroughly lays out. The through lines are all right there! I learned a ton. Disheartening and infuriating and yet not all that surprising given the US’s history. The whole damn system is guilty as hell. This might be the most important book I read this year.
“The Second is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hands of some authority to put it to use.”
Content notes: intimate partner violence, rape, victim blaming, racial violence, lynchings, racial slurs, racism, white supremacy, officer-involved shootings, police brutality, gun violence, mass shootings, mass slaughter, murder, torture, mutilation, dismemberment, enslavement, war, corruption
“The Second is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hands of some authority to put it to use.”
Content notes: intimate partner violence, rape, victim blaming, racial violence, lynchings, racial slurs, racism, white supremacy, officer-involved shootings, police brutality, gun violence, mass shootings, mass slaughter, murder, torture, mutilation, dismemberment, enslavement, war, corruption
July 6, 2022
Very interesting and compelling read. This book deals with the history of blacks and guns from the colonial era to the present. It shows quite effectively that the US was founded on organized and rationalised violence, which is something I knew but it really showed the extent of it. It also deals with the fact that Blacks have been denied access to guns for a very long time and that whites have been granted access to guns specifically to subjugate Blacks. African Americans have been denied the right to defend themselves and "stand their ground" while the same rights are used to justify killing them. She also shows that when gun control laws are approved by the NRA it is to restrict access to guns to Black people but basically no one else. It explains why a few prominent African American figures are opposed to gun control. The book is rather short (165p) and covers a very large period (from colonial era to now) so it glosses over a few decades (it analyzes the ante-bellum era at length but skips the Civil War itself for example). It does not really offer solutions, it is an assessment of the root of several problems: police killings of African Americans (it shows that some African American organizations have been fighting police violence since the 1960s), violence in general and the double standard inherent in the gun debate. Highly recommend as an introduction, it's very easy to follow and not dry.
July 23, 2021
I have read some of the other reviews and have to say i was surprised by some of the remarks...maybe because I don't delve into books on the constitution often ...but I saw so many comments on how they were disappointed on how short the book was...how they felt she could have dove in deeper on certain items....
when I read the description ...I went in looking for certain things...and to me...the author delivered exactly what was promised...The book really dove in deep as to the initial thoughts and development of the second amendment...how it was such that states said they would not be a part of the United States unless they got it the way they wanted...
Overall I can understand how many would feel that she should have given more examples of the present time ...but honestly...I know of these....she touched on them enough to show what you should be looking at and if you hear the news at all...you can easily fill in hundreds of examples as to the unequal treatment of minorities...specifically African Americans and how showing a gun will no doubt have you shot...while white Americans can show up in open carry states and wield assault rifles and be treated like this is normal...
I know this...I see it too often...many times a year....I WAS SO surprised to hear that the NRA sided AGAINST African Americans in instances of Blacks being shot ...arrested ...beaten...just for having a weapon...and the police being "afraid" for their lives...I see this...I know America is NOT equal...but to have the NRA not immediately jump to their defense was astounding to me...the NRA claims they are for gun rights for all...but it is evident they have not been....will that change? will the NRA even survive...honestly I hope not...
I personally am NOT a gun person...I don't have one and never will...I don't and will not live in fear of someone breaking into my house when I am there...I know this happens but look at the percentages of home invasions that are ended with "the good guy with a gun against the bad guy with a gun" and look at the suicides...the family murders...the assaults by the known person...and to me these are just not good odds and is a piss poor excuse....BUT...that being said i am NOT for removal of guns...I am FOR respectful and safe gun rules and standards for all....ok...I do think many weapons should be outlawed...there just isnt a need for them...but that info will be in my next review....I am getting sideways...sorry...
The book is excellent...I love history...and this book is very detailed...with extensive resources to prove it's points...I guess i felt these ideas were true but now have no doubt they are true....
when will racism end? when will we all be looked at equally...I feel it is coming...but so slow...but the newer and younger generations show me hope...I am sad at the racism I see on a daily basis...under the guise of fear and protection...when all most of it is selfish ideologies and horrible misconceptions twisted into what certain people want...which allows them to be racist in public
this book is important....and anyone who backs the second amendment should be required to read it...to understand what many of the reasons were for the second amendment...not just to have a militia ...which states did and was a pathetic example of defense for their states....but more of a way to quell slavery rebellions...allowing them to kill without fear of recourse....we talk about so many genocides...there are no detail on numbers and doubt they could ever be traced ...but when the slaves were freed...there were thousands of killings...if you look at the population of the United States that were African American ...I would be sick to look at the percentage of killings of the their total...all under the pretense of a militia....
But I know better...people who want something ...will rarely ever research the other side...it could open their mind and allow them to see another viewpoint....and this is something they will never do....I pray for America....we are in a very scary time....but to understand the past is to help guide our future....
The younger generations give me hope....
when I read the description ...I went in looking for certain things...and to me...the author delivered exactly what was promised...The book really dove in deep as to the initial thoughts and development of the second amendment...how it was such that states said they would not be a part of the United States unless they got it the way they wanted...
Overall I can understand how many would feel that she should have given more examples of the present time ...but honestly...I know of these....she touched on them enough to show what you should be looking at and if you hear the news at all...you can easily fill in hundreds of examples as to the unequal treatment of minorities...specifically African Americans and how showing a gun will no doubt have you shot...while white Americans can show up in open carry states and wield assault rifles and be treated like this is normal...
I know this...I see it too often...many times a year....I WAS SO surprised to hear that the NRA sided AGAINST African Americans in instances of Blacks being shot ...arrested ...beaten...just for having a weapon...and the police being "afraid" for their lives...I see this...I know America is NOT equal...but to have the NRA not immediately jump to their defense was astounding to me...the NRA claims they are for gun rights for all...but it is evident they have not been....will that change? will the NRA even survive...honestly I hope not...
I personally am NOT a gun person...I don't have one and never will...I don't and will not live in fear of someone breaking into my house when I am there...I know this happens but look at the percentages of home invasions that are ended with "the good guy with a gun against the bad guy with a gun" and look at the suicides...the family murders...the assaults by the known person...and to me these are just not good odds and is a piss poor excuse....BUT...that being said i am NOT for removal of guns...I am FOR respectful and safe gun rules and standards for all....ok...I do think many weapons should be outlawed...there just isnt a need for them...but that info will be in my next review....I am getting sideways...sorry...
The book is excellent...I love history...and this book is very detailed...with extensive resources to prove it's points...I guess i felt these ideas were true but now have no doubt they are true....
when will racism end? when will we all be looked at equally...I feel it is coming...but so slow...but the newer and younger generations show me hope...I am sad at the racism I see on a daily basis...under the guise of fear and protection...when all most of it is selfish ideologies and horrible misconceptions twisted into what certain people want...which allows them to be racist in public
this book is important....and anyone who backs the second amendment should be required to read it...to understand what many of the reasons were for the second amendment...not just to have a militia ...which states did and was a pathetic example of defense for their states....but more of a way to quell slavery rebellions...allowing them to kill without fear of recourse....we talk about so many genocides...there are no detail on numbers and doubt they could ever be traced ...but when the slaves were freed...there were thousands of killings...if you look at the population of the United States that were African American ...I would be sick to look at the percentage of killings of the their total...all under the pretense of a militia....
But I know better...people who want something ...will rarely ever research the other side...it could open their mind and allow them to see another viewpoint....and this is something they will never do....I pray for America....we are in a very scary time....but to understand the past is to help guide our future....
The younger generations give me hope....
August 8, 2021
Weak tea. There is a compelling nugget here, claiming that the 2nd Amendment was primarily about backing state militias for the main purpose of squashing slave rebellions. Beyond that statement, however, there is not much in the way of a convincing, well substantiated argument to back it.
September 5, 2023
.
Very Disappointing.
The author, Carol Anderson, is promoting racism and rewriting history.
She's a gun hating liberal and has invented a new way to attack our right to keep and bear arms, calling the Second Amendment, "racist!"
There is just so much nonsense in the author's rewrite of Second Amendment history. National Review has an article titled: The 1619 Project Comes for the Second Amendment, which does a good job of picking apart Anderson's revisionist history.
• •
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/0...
The 1619 Project Comes for the Second Amendment | National Review
"If the right to bear arms was intended to preserve slavery, why did civil-rights leaders insist that black Americans should be armed to protect themselves?
Left-wing academic Carol Anderson’s new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, is all over the news. “The Second Amendment is not about guns — it’s about anti-Blackness, a new book argues,” reads a CNN headline. NPR claims that the author has uncovered the racist “roots” of the Second Amendment.
This is wishful thinking. The Second is an attempt — much like the 1619 Project — to reimagine history in purely racial terms. The result is tendentious polemic [biased & divisive] that suffers not only from a paucity of historical evidence, but from a dishonest rendering of the facts we do know.
After comprehensively detailing the constitutional debate over slavery and the nefariousness of that institution, Anderson takes the liberty of asserting that the Second Amendment was “not some hallowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with Black bodies.” This is a contention that isn’t backed by a single contemporaneous quote or piece of hard evidence in the book.
Indeed, Anderson ignores the tradition of militias in English common law — codifying the “ancient and indubitable” right in the 1689 English Bill of Rights — which had nothing to do with chattel slavery. Anderson ignores the fact that nearly every intellectual, political, and military leader of the Founding generation — many of whom had no connection to slavery — stressed the importance of self-defense in entirely different contexts.
It was slavery skeptic John Adams, in his 1770 defense of Captain Thomas Preston, one of the soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre, who argued that even British soldiers had an inherent right to defend themselves from mobs. “Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves,” he noted. When Pennsylvania became the first colony to explicitly guarantee the right to bear arms, it was Benjamin Franklin, by then an abolitionist, who presided over the conference. It was the anti-slavery Samuel Adams who proposed that the Constitution never be used to “authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” In the writings and speeches of nearly all American Founders, the threat of disarmament was a casus belli [a cause for war or "them's fightin' words"].
In making her case that the Second Amendment was predominantly an invention of the South, Anderson stresses that most American jurisdictions did not even have their own Second Amendment before the constitutional convention. She’s right. Many anti-Federalists believed that enshrining these rights on paper would lead to future abuses. Of course, Southerners didn’t need permission to suppress black slave revolts, anyway. They had done so on numerous occasions before the nation’s founding.
Yet, by 1791, of the four jurisdictions that had written their own Second Amendments, three of them — Vermont, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania — had already abolished slavery. When Vermont authored its first constitution in 1777, in fact, it protected the right to keep and bear arms in the same document that it banned slavery.
But to make the claim that the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution to placate slave owners, Anderson is impelled to take numerous shortcuts. Take, for example, this pivotal sentence in the book:
“In short, James Madison, the Virginian, knew ‘that the militia’s prime function in his state, and throughout the south, was slave control.’”
The author frames the quote as if Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, had said it himself — or, if we’re being generous, that it’s a fair representation of his views. When you follow the book’s endnote, however, it leads to a 1998 paper titled “The Hidden History of the Second Amendment,” written by anti-gun activist Carl T. Bogus, who shares Anderson’s thesis. It is his quote. Nowhere does Bogus offer any sample of Madison declaring, or even implying, that slave control was the impetus for the Second Amendment.
In another instance, again relying on Bogus’s paper, Anderson declares that among his “great rights,” Madison discusses only “trial by jury, freedom of the press, and ‘liberty of conscience,’” and that the right to bear arms does not even “make the list.” This, too, is extraordinarily misleading, as the quote comes from a Madison speech proposing the Bill of Rights in June 1789. Early in his argument, Madison mentions, in passing, some of the “great rights,” before literally listing — “fourthly,” in fact, right after freedom of religion and assembly — the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
As I read The Second, I kept thinking how easily it could be reedited to make a compelling book about the immorality of stripping Americans of their rights. After all, gun control was inextricably tied to racism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1834, the State of Tennessee revised its constitution from “That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence” to “That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence.” A number of Southern states followed suit.
Which is one of the reasons that Michigan senator Jacob Howard, when introducing the 14th Amendment ensuring that the constitutional rights of blacks in the South were protected, specifically pointed to “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments to the Constitution,” as in the freedom of speech and of the press and “the right to bear arms” (italics mine).
Civil-rights leaders of the 19th and early 20th centuries also lamented that the right to self-defense was denied them. Fredrick Douglass reacted to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by editorializing that the best remedy would be “a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap.” The late-19th-century civil-rights leader Ida B. Wells argued that one of the lessons of the post–Civil War era, “which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” T. Thomas Fortune, another black civil-rights activist of the era, argued that it was with a Winchester that the black man could “defend his home and children and wife.”
Now, it should be noted that even if the Second Amendment had been specifically written, as Anderson maintains, under pressure from states in the South that wished to preserve the subjugation of humans, the nation’s sin would have been denying the inalienable right of self-defense to all people. We don’t attack the idea of free speech simply because people are denied its protections. That fact only accentuates its importance. For most of our history, self-defense was also seen as an immutable right that existed with or without the sanction of the state. “Remember that the musket — the United States musket with its bayonet of steel — is better than all mere parchment guarantees of liberty,” is how Douglass made the case for natural rights. He did it better than many of the Founders. Certainly, he did it better than Anderson." (by David Harsanyi)
• •
Incidentally, gun control / gun banning is one of the Left's, the Democrat's favorite hobby horses. As mentioned above, gun control and "Slave Codes" are rooted in racism. The author could do well to call for her political party to give up their racist, anti-gun fixation--that at least would be a worthy endeavor and a book worth reading.
..
Very Disappointing.
The author, Carol Anderson, is promoting racism and rewriting history.
She's a gun hating liberal and has invented a new way to attack our right to keep and bear arms, calling the Second Amendment, "racist!"
There is just so much nonsense in the author's rewrite of Second Amendment history. National Review has an article titled: The 1619 Project Comes for the Second Amendment, which does a good job of picking apart Anderson's revisionist history.
• •
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/0...
The 1619 Project Comes for the Second Amendment | National Review
"If the right to bear arms was intended to preserve slavery, why did civil-rights leaders insist that black Americans should be armed to protect themselves?
Left-wing academic Carol Anderson’s new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, is all over the news. “The Second Amendment is not about guns — it’s about anti-Blackness, a new book argues,” reads a CNN headline. NPR claims that the author has uncovered the racist “roots” of the Second Amendment.
This is wishful thinking. The Second is an attempt — much like the 1619 Project — to reimagine history in purely racial terms. The result is tendentious polemic [biased & divisive] that suffers not only from a paucity of historical evidence, but from a dishonest rendering of the facts we do know.
After comprehensively detailing the constitutional debate over slavery and the nefariousness of that institution, Anderson takes the liberty of asserting that the Second Amendment was “not some hallowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with Black bodies.” This is a contention that isn’t backed by a single contemporaneous quote or piece of hard evidence in the book.
Indeed, Anderson ignores the tradition of militias in English common law — codifying the “ancient and indubitable” right in the 1689 English Bill of Rights — which had nothing to do with chattel slavery. Anderson ignores the fact that nearly every intellectual, political, and military leader of the Founding generation — many of whom had no connection to slavery — stressed the importance of self-defense in entirely different contexts.
It was slavery skeptic John Adams, in his 1770 defense of Captain Thomas Preston, one of the soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre, who argued that even British soldiers had an inherent right to defend themselves from mobs. “Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves,” he noted. When Pennsylvania became the first colony to explicitly guarantee the right to bear arms, it was Benjamin Franklin, by then an abolitionist, who presided over the conference. It was the anti-slavery Samuel Adams who proposed that the Constitution never be used to “authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” In the writings and speeches of nearly all American Founders, the threat of disarmament was a casus belli [a cause for war or "them's fightin' words"].
In making her case that the Second Amendment was predominantly an invention of the South, Anderson stresses that most American jurisdictions did not even have their own Second Amendment before the constitutional convention. She’s right. Many anti-Federalists believed that enshrining these rights on paper would lead to future abuses. Of course, Southerners didn’t need permission to suppress black slave revolts, anyway. They had done so on numerous occasions before the nation’s founding.
Yet, by 1791, of the four jurisdictions that had written their own Second Amendments, three of them — Vermont, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania — had already abolished slavery. When Vermont authored its first constitution in 1777, in fact, it protected the right to keep and bear arms in the same document that it banned slavery.
But to make the claim that the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution to placate slave owners, Anderson is impelled to take numerous shortcuts. Take, for example, this pivotal sentence in the book:
“In short, James Madison, the Virginian, knew ‘that the militia’s prime function in his state, and throughout the south, was slave control.’”
The author frames the quote as if Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, had said it himself — or, if we’re being generous, that it’s a fair representation of his views. When you follow the book’s endnote, however, it leads to a 1998 paper titled “The Hidden History of the Second Amendment,” written by anti-gun activist Carl T. Bogus, who shares Anderson’s thesis. It is his quote. Nowhere does Bogus offer any sample of Madison declaring, or even implying, that slave control was the impetus for the Second Amendment.
In another instance, again relying on Bogus’s paper, Anderson declares that among his “great rights,” Madison discusses only “trial by jury, freedom of the press, and ‘liberty of conscience,’” and that the right to bear arms does not even “make the list.” This, too, is extraordinarily misleading, as the quote comes from a Madison speech proposing the Bill of Rights in June 1789. Early in his argument, Madison mentions, in passing, some of the “great rights,” before literally listing — “fourthly,” in fact, right after freedom of religion and assembly — the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
As I read The Second, I kept thinking how easily it could be reedited to make a compelling book about the immorality of stripping Americans of their rights. After all, gun control was inextricably tied to racism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1834, the State of Tennessee revised its constitution from “That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence” to “That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence.” A number of Southern states followed suit.
Which is one of the reasons that Michigan senator Jacob Howard, when introducing the 14th Amendment ensuring that the constitutional rights of blacks in the South were protected, specifically pointed to “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments to the Constitution,” as in the freedom of speech and of the press and “the right to bear arms” (italics mine).
Civil-rights leaders of the 19th and early 20th centuries also lamented that the right to self-defense was denied them. Fredrick Douglass reacted to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by editorializing that the best remedy would be “a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap.” The late-19th-century civil-rights leader Ida B. Wells argued that one of the lessons of the post–Civil War era, “which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” T. Thomas Fortune, another black civil-rights activist of the era, argued that it was with a Winchester that the black man could “defend his home and children and wife.”
Now, it should be noted that even if the Second Amendment had been specifically written, as Anderson maintains, under pressure from states in the South that wished to preserve the subjugation of humans, the nation’s sin would have been denying the inalienable right of self-defense to all people. We don’t attack the idea of free speech simply because people are denied its protections. That fact only accentuates its importance. For most of our history, self-defense was also seen as an immutable right that existed with or without the sanction of the state. “Remember that the musket — the United States musket with its bayonet of steel — is better than all mere parchment guarantees of liberty,” is how Douglass made the case for natural rights. He did it better than many of the Founders. Certainly, he did it better than Anderson." (by David Harsanyi)
• •
Incidentally, gun control / gun banning is one of the Left's, the Democrat's favorite hobby horses. As mentioned above, gun control and "Slave Codes" are rooted in racism. The author could do well to call for her political party to give up their racist, anti-gun fixation--that at least would be a worthy endeavor and a book worth reading.
..
July 7, 2021
The English Bill of Rights from 1689 included the right to bear arms
---
Wikipedia on the Second Amendment
To maintain slavery
a. Preserving slave patrols
In the slave states, the militia was available for military operations, but its biggest function was to police the slaves.
According to Dr Carl T. Bogus, Professor of Law of the Roger Williams University Law School in Rhode Island, the Second Amendment was written to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia to disarm the state militia and thereby destroy the South's principal instrument of slave control.
In his close analysis of James Madison's writings, Bogus describes the South's obsession with militias during the ratification process:
"The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population. Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats."
This preoccupation is clearly expressed in 1788 by the slaveholder Patrick Henry:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress... Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution; addition not mentioned in source], can call forth the militia."
Therefore, Bogus argues, in a compromise with the slave states, and to reassure Patrick Henry, George Mason and other slaveholders that they would be able to keep their slave control militias independent of the federal government, James Madison (also slave owner) redrafted the Second Amendment into its current form "for the specific purpose of assuring the Southern states, and particularly his constituents in Virginia, that the federal government would not undermine their security against slave insurrection by disarming the militia."
---
Legal historian Paul Finkelman argues that this scenario is implausible.
Henry and Mason were political enemies of Madison's, and neither man was in Congress at the time Madison drafted Bill of Rights; moreover, Patrick Henry argued against the ratification of both the Constitution and the Second Amendment, and it was Henry's opposition that led Patrick's home state of Virginia to be the last to ratify.
Most Southern white men between the ages of 18 and 45 were required to serve on "slave patrols" which were organized groups of white men who enforced discipline upon enslaved blacks.
Bogus writes with respect to Georgia laws passed in 1755 and 1757 in this context:
"The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
Finkelman recognises that James Madison "drafted an amendment to protect the right of the states to maintain their militias," but insists that
"The amendment had nothing to do with state police powers, which were the basis of slave patrols."
---
b. To avoid arming free blacks
According to Pennsylvania attorney Anthony Picadio, the Southern slave states would never have ratified the Second Amendment if it had been understood as creating an individual right to own firearms because of their fear of arming free blacks, hence the emphasis on the phrase "well regulated Militia", introducing the Second Amendment.
Firstly, slave owners feared that enslaved blacks might be emancipated through military service.
A few years earlier, there had been a precedent when Lord Dunmore offered freedom to slaves who escaped and joined his forces with "Liberty to Slaves" stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. Freed slaves also served in General Washington's army.
Secondly, they also greatly feared "a ruinous slave rebellion in which their families would be slaughtered and their property destroyed."
When Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, the Haitian Revolution, a successful slave rebellion, was under way.
The right to bear arms was therefore deliberately tied to membership in a militia by the slaveholder and chief drafter of the Amendment, James Madison, because only whites could join militias in the South.
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson had submitted a draft constitution for Virginia that said "no freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms within his own lands or tenements".
According to Picadio, this version was rejected because "it would have given to free blacks the constitutional right to have firearms".
---
Experience in America prior to the U.S. Constitution
Settlers in Colonial America viewed the right to arms and/or the right to bear arms and/or state militias as important for one or more of these purposes (in no particular order):
a. enabling the people to organize a militia system
b. participating in law enforcement
c. safeguarding against tyrannical governments
d. repelling invasion
e. facilitating a natural right of self-defense
f. suppressing insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts, though some scholars say the claim of a specific intent to protect the ability to put down slave revolts is not supported by the historical record
Which of these considerations were thought of as most important and ultimately found expression in the Second Amendment is disputed.
Some of these purposes were explicitly mentioned in early state constitutions; for example, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 asserted that, "the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state."
During the 1760s pre-revolutionary period, the established colonial militia was composed of colonists, including many who were loyal to British rule.
As defiance and opposition to British rule developed, a distrust of these Loyalists in the militia became widespread among the colonists known as Patriots, who favored independence from British rule.
As a result, some Patriots created their own militias that excluded the Loyalists and then sought to stock independent armories for their militias.
In response to this arms build-up, the British parliament established an embargo of firearms, parts and ammunition against the American colonies.
King George III also began disarming individuals who were in the most rebellious areas in the 1760s and 1770s.
British and Loyalist efforts to disarm the colonial Patriot militia armories in the early phases of the American Revolution resulted in the Patriot colonists protesting by citing the Declaration of Rights, Blackstone's summary of the Declaration of Rights, their own militia laws and common law rights to self-defense.
While British policy in the early phases of the Revolution clearly aimed to prevent coordinated action by the Patriot militia, some have argued that there is no evidence that the British sought to restrict the traditional common law right of self-defense.
Patrick J. Charles disputes these claims citing similar disarming by the patriots and challenging those scholars' interpretation of Blackstone.
---
Wikipedia on the Second Amendment
To maintain slavery
a. Preserving slave patrols
In the slave states, the militia was available for military operations, but its biggest function was to police the slaves.
According to Dr Carl T. Bogus, Professor of Law of the Roger Williams University Law School in Rhode Island, the Second Amendment was written to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia to disarm the state militia and thereby destroy the South's principal instrument of slave control.
In his close analysis of James Madison's writings, Bogus describes the South's obsession with militias during the ratification process:
"The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population. Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats."
This preoccupation is clearly expressed in 1788 by the slaveholder Patrick Henry:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress... Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution; addition not mentioned in source], can call forth the militia."
Therefore, Bogus argues, in a compromise with the slave states, and to reassure Patrick Henry, George Mason and other slaveholders that they would be able to keep their slave control militias independent of the federal government, James Madison (also slave owner) redrafted the Second Amendment into its current form "for the specific purpose of assuring the Southern states, and particularly his constituents in Virginia, that the federal government would not undermine their security against slave insurrection by disarming the militia."
---
Legal historian Paul Finkelman argues that this scenario is implausible.
Henry and Mason were political enemies of Madison's, and neither man was in Congress at the time Madison drafted Bill of Rights; moreover, Patrick Henry argued against the ratification of both the Constitution and the Second Amendment, and it was Henry's opposition that led Patrick's home state of Virginia to be the last to ratify.
Most Southern white men between the ages of 18 and 45 were required to serve on "slave patrols" which were organized groups of white men who enforced discipline upon enslaved blacks.
Bogus writes with respect to Georgia laws passed in 1755 and 1757 in this context:
"The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
Finkelman recognises that James Madison "drafted an amendment to protect the right of the states to maintain their militias," but insists that
"The amendment had nothing to do with state police powers, which were the basis of slave patrols."
---
b. To avoid arming free blacks
According to Pennsylvania attorney Anthony Picadio, the Southern slave states would never have ratified the Second Amendment if it had been understood as creating an individual right to own firearms because of their fear of arming free blacks, hence the emphasis on the phrase "well regulated Militia", introducing the Second Amendment.
Firstly, slave owners feared that enslaved blacks might be emancipated through military service.
A few years earlier, there had been a precedent when Lord Dunmore offered freedom to slaves who escaped and joined his forces with "Liberty to Slaves" stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. Freed slaves also served in General Washington's army.
Secondly, they also greatly feared "a ruinous slave rebellion in which their families would be slaughtered and their property destroyed."
When Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, the Haitian Revolution, a successful slave rebellion, was under way.
The right to bear arms was therefore deliberately tied to membership in a militia by the slaveholder and chief drafter of the Amendment, James Madison, because only whites could join militias in the South.
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson had submitted a draft constitution for Virginia that said "no freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms within his own lands or tenements".
According to Picadio, this version was rejected because "it would have given to free blacks the constitutional right to have firearms".
---
Experience in America prior to the U.S. Constitution
Settlers in Colonial America viewed the right to arms and/or the right to bear arms and/or state militias as important for one or more of these purposes (in no particular order):
a. enabling the people to organize a militia system
b. participating in law enforcement
c. safeguarding against tyrannical governments
d. repelling invasion
e. facilitating a natural right of self-defense
f. suppressing insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts, though some scholars say the claim of a specific intent to protect the ability to put down slave revolts is not supported by the historical record
Which of these considerations were thought of as most important and ultimately found expression in the Second Amendment is disputed.
Some of these purposes were explicitly mentioned in early state constitutions; for example, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 asserted that, "the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state."
During the 1760s pre-revolutionary period, the established colonial militia was composed of colonists, including many who were loyal to British rule.
As defiance and opposition to British rule developed, a distrust of these Loyalists in the militia became widespread among the colonists known as Patriots, who favored independence from British rule.
As a result, some Patriots created their own militias that excluded the Loyalists and then sought to stock independent armories for their militias.
In response to this arms build-up, the British parliament established an embargo of firearms, parts and ammunition against the American colonies.
King George III also began disarming individuals who were in the most rebellious areas in the 1760s and 1770s.
British and Loyalist efforts to disarm the colonial Patriot militia armories in the early phases of the American Revolution resulted in the Patriot colonists protesting by citing the Declaration of Rights, Blackstone's summary of the Declaration of Rights, their own militia laws and common law rights to self-defense.
While British policy in the early phases of the Revolution clearly aimed to prevent coordinated action by the Patriot militia, some have argued that there is no evidence that the British sought to restrict the traditional common law right of self-defense.
Patrick J. Charles disputes these claims citing similar disarming by the patriots and challenging those scholars' interpretation of Blackstone.
August 6, 2021
I have read Carol Anderson's previous work, White Rage, and was quite impressed so I was eager to get my hands on The Second. While I think it is not quite as tight as the other book, generally speaking The Second does not disappoint; it is an absorbing examination of the white supremacist roots of the Second Amendment and its ongoing, often fatal unequal applications with Black citizens. Anderson argues that the problem is not merely the racist application of the Second Amendment, but that it is racist at the roots. Citing the work of law professor Carl T. Bogus, Anderson asserts the Second Amendment was written to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia to disarm the state militia and thereby destroy one of the South's instruments of slave control. Some reviewers have taken issue with this, citing the anti-Federalists’ heightened fear of a strong central government and anxiety about a potentially abusive federal military as more decisive.
However, where Anderson is rock solid in demonstrating that Blacks' Second Amendment rights have been consistently denied throughout US history to this day, starting with slave codes forbidding gun ownership to slaves and continuing through Jim Crow. Guns in the hands of Blacks has always incited and enraged whites to the point where they even targeted Black American soldiers. In 1906, the mayor of Brownsville, Texas, accused Black soldiers of firing on townspeople, killing one and badly injuring another. Even though strong evidence undercut the allegation, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered his secretary of war, William Howard Taft (a future president and chief justice of the United States), to impose without due process dishonorable discharges on all 167 of the Black soldiers who made up the First Battalion, Twenty-Fifth Infantry (Colored). The Red Summer of 1919 was in large part about lynching "uppity" Black soldiers returning from WWI.
When the Black Panthers had taken up armed patrols in Oakland intended to prevent police violence, the California legislature passed legislation banning the public carrying of loaded firearms. The Black Panthers believed that the legislation was aimed at disarming them. In protest, members carrying weapons entered the Assembly chamber during a session. Two months later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act, banning open carry.
Today it is apparent that some basic legal tenants associated with the Second are denied Blacks in practice. Open carry did not protect Philando Castile from being gunned down in his car. Stand your ground was used against Trayvon Martin to the defence of George Zimmerman, when it was Zimmerman who went out of his way to initiate the confrontation; however, it provided no defense to Marissa Alexander when she fired a warning shot at her abusive husband and was charged with aggravated assault. The castle doctrine provided no justice for Breonna Taylor; in fact, it is violated every time the police serve a no-knock warrant.
There is so much more Anderson packs into this book. Much of this was history of Black struggle that I already knew, but brought together in a different context, Anderson shined new light on it. While deeply researched, the text itself is concise and to the point and a quick read. Highly recommended, 4 of 5 stars.
However, where Anderson is rock solid in demonstrating that Blacks' Second Amendment rights have been consistently denied throughout US history to this day, starting with slave codes forbidding gun ownership to slaves and continuing through Jim Crow. Guns in the hands of Blacks has always incited and enraged whites to the point where they even targeted Black American soldiers. In 1906, the mayor of Brownsville, Texas, accused Black soldiers of firing on townspeople, killing one and badly injuring another. Even though strong evidence undercut the allegation, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered his secretary of war, William Howard Taft (a future president and chief justice of the United States), to impose without due process dishonorable discharges on all 167 of the Black soldiers who made up the First Battalion, Twenty-Fifth Infantry (Colored). The Red Summer of 1919 was in large part about lynching "uppity" Black soldiers returning from WWI.
When the Black Panthers had taken up armed patrols in Oakland intended to prevent police violence, the California legislature passed legislation banning the public carrying of loaded firearms. The Black Panthers believed that the legislation was aimed at disarming them. In protest, members carrying weapons entered the Assembly chamber during a session. Two months later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act, banning open carry.
Today it is apparent that some basic legal tenants associated with the Second are denied Blacks in practice. Open carry did not protect Philando Castile from being gunned down in his car. Stand your ground was used against Trayvon Martin to the defence of George Zimmerman, when it was Zimmerman who went out of his way to initiate the confrontation; however, it provided no defense to Marissa Alexander when she fired a warning shot at her abusive husband and was charged with aggravated assault. The castle doctrine provided no justice for Breonna Taylor; in fact, it is violated every time the police serve a no-knock warrant.
There is so much more Anderson packs into this book. Much of this was history of Black struggle that I already knew, but brought together in a different context, Anderson shined new light on it. While deeply researched, the text itself is concise and to the point and a quick read. Highly recommended, 4 of 5 stars.
May 17, 2022
This is an excellent, heavy, and poignant survey of the history of the immense racial disparity in America when it comes to 2nd Amendment rights. Highly recommend
September 4, 2021
Although I am interested in the topic of this book, it fell short as a coherent read. It almost felt like the author was rushed to finish it and left many parts rough and incomplete. It was strange to me that almost one-third of the book is composed of the Notes and Index sections, which seems excessively large for an otherwise slim book.
July 7, 2021
Ms. Anderson always brings the facts with the fire. She is sizzling with this short volume.
November 29, 2021
I was impressed with this book’s thoroughness given that there are only 165 pages of text (the rest of the pages are notes, index, etc.) Anderson competently shows the straight line of white supremacy from pre-Revolutionary days to modern times, specifically as it relates to gun rights for Black people. My only real complaint about the book is the way quotations are used: she will often have multiple unattributed quotations in a single sentence or paragraph, with the first one obviously coming from a known historical figure but the following ones apparently from later writers on the topic. (The only attribution is in the end notes.) It’s misleading at best to mix and match quotations like this.
(I have published a longer review on my website.)
June 10, 2021
Read it and weep. The U.S. mythological story has been unraveling for decades. The history is not taught in classrooms at most levels (save scholarly majors), discussed around the family dinner table.... Sins on omission and commission have long-lived the “...land of the free and home of the brave....”, upward mobility, one person, one vote, “trickledown” rewards of capitalism, etc. Our “founding fathers” hypocritically “kicked the can down the road” to...the 21st century. The Civil War or “War of Northern Aggression” never ended. The documentary foundations read poetic and lyrically, but were produced by talented, self-interested, hypocritical, fearful, avaricious men. Ever wonder why “Conservatives” are “strict Constitutional constructionist”? Read this book! Ever wonder about the militarism of local, state police and state “militias”? Read this book? Ever wonder why Travon Martin...MLK...George Floyd...and too many others died violent, untimely deaths ? Read this book
Ever wonder why African-Americans (and “Indians, immigrants, etc.) have been denied—and are continuing to be denied— their lives and full citizenship? Read this book. (They are “collateral damage” by design.)
Ever wonder why African-Americans (and “Indians, immigrants, etc.) have been denied—and are continuing to be denied— their lives and full citizenship? Read this book. (They are “collateral damage” by design.)
July 11, 2021
A concise, absorbing examination of the white supremacist roots of the Second Amendment and its ongoing, often fatal unequal applications with Black citizens. Another excellent book on this subject is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (City Lights, 2018).
May 10, 2023
Not pro- or anti-gun. Just proves how the 2nd Amendment and its use receives a double standard and how its language is designed to keep black people from also protecting themselves. Highly recommended.
April 29, 2024
Read with #SheSaid on a Litsy for April, it’s a well-researched & well-written look at why the Second Amendment was set up to fail Blacks from the get-go. The author expertly pulls facts & data together & it had me both horrified & angry.
The last sentence says it all “The Second is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hand of some authority to put it to use.”
The last sentence says it all “The Second is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hand of some authority to put it to use.”
October 26, 2022
I read The Second almost back to back with Ryan Busse's also excellent Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America. They come at the subject from very, very different perspectives -- Busse is a gun owner, hunter, and outdoorsman who was a top-level gun industry executive for well over two decades -- but reach compatible conclusions about guns in America. To make it a troika, I'd like to read something connecting guns with masculinity, especially white masculinity. Any recommendations?
Anderson opens with the shooting of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling within days of each other in July 2016. Both were killed by police for merely possessing a gun, not doing anything with it. And in both cases, the National Rifle Association was silent -- in marked contrast to its outrage at law enforcement for using force against law-breaking gun-wielding white people at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and, later, Cliven Bundy's ranch in Nevada. Clearly the Second Amendment rights taken for granted by white people are denied to Black people.
This, as Anderson persuasively shows, is a feature, not a bug, of "the Second." She traces the history back to the pre-national period, when the enslaved were denied firearms even for hunting. From the white point of view, this made perfect sense: African Americans, free as well as enslaved, were treated abominably and in many places they outnumbered the whites. The whites would have had to be very stupid or very naïve not to see the danger here.
Firearms gave the whites the edge that they lacked in numbers. African Americans, free as well as enslaved, were denied the right to defend themselves -- a denial that comes down to the present day. White people are entitled to "stand your ground." Black people are not. What also seems to have come down to the present day is many white people's fear that they are, or are on the verge of being, catastrophically outnumbered by Black people and people of color more generally.
I hadn't realized that the Second Amendment came about as part of the horse-trading that went on when the Constitution was being drafted. The slave-holding South didn't trust the North, where slavery was allowed but the economy didn't depend on it, so it exacted the 3/5ths clause, an extension of the slave trade, and the Second Amendment as part of its price for joining the union.
This discussion also clarifies the role of "the militia," which sparks debate whenever the Second comes up. The Revolutionary War had demonstrated that militia were rather unreliable as a military force, but the slaveholders had figured out that they were extremely effective in putting down slave revolts. After the Civil War, their descendants enforced Jim Crow throughout the South. The invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a mostly male, entirely white mob involved several self-styled militias. It's not a stretch to consider it a dress rehearsal for the defense of white supremacy.
The Second is one of those essential books that prompts the reader to look at U.S. history and current events from a somewhat different angle. From this angle, disparate events turn out to be connected and previously hidden events are made visible. The current Supreme Court's elevation of gun rights and tolerance of vote suppression no longer seem coincidental.
Anderson opens with the shooting of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling within days of each other in July 2016. Both were killed by police for merely possessing a gun, not doing anything with it. And in both cases, the National Rifle Association was silent -- in marked contrast to its outrage at law enforcement for using force against law-breaking gun-wielding white people at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and, later, Cliven Bundy's ranch in Nevada. Clearly the Second Amendment rights taken for granted by white people are denied to Black people.
This, as Anderson persuasively shows, is a feature, not a bug, of "the Second." She traces the history back to the pre-national period, when the enslaved were denied firearms even for hunting. From the white point of view, this made perfect sense: African Americans, free as well as enslaved, were treated abominably and in many places they outnumbered the whites. The whites would have had to be very stupid or very naïve not to see the danger here.
Firearms gave the whites the edge that they lacked in numbers. African Americans, free as well as enslaved, were denied the right to defend themselves -- a denial that comes down to the present day. White people are entitled to "stand your ground." Black people are not. What also seems to have come down to the present day is many white people's fear that they are, or are on the verge of being, catastrophically outnumbered by Black people and people of color more generally.
I hadn't realized that the Second Amendment came about as part of the horse-trading that went on when the Constitution was being drafted. The slave-holding South didn't trust the North, where slavery was allowed but the economy didn't depend on it, so it exacted the 3/5ths clause, an extension of the slave trade, and the Second Amendment as part of its price for joining the union.
This discussion also clarifies the role of "the militia," which sparks debate whenever the Second comes up. The Revolutionary War had demonstrated that militia were rather unreliable as a military force, but the slaveholders had figured out that they were extremely effective in putting down slave revolts. After the Civil War, their descendants enforced Jim Crow throughout the South. The invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a mostly male, entirely white mob involved several self-styled militias. It's not a stretch to consider it a dress rehearsal for the defense of white supremacy.
The Second is one of those essential books that prompts the reader to look at U.S. history and current events from a somewhat different angle. From this angle, disparate events turn out to be connected and previously hidden events are made visible. The current Supreme Court's elevation of gun rights and tolerance of vote suppression no longer seem coincidental.
July 12, 2021
The main thesis of this book is that the Second Amendment, an amendment that is held in such high regard, does not apply to black Americans the same as it does to white Americans. The way you respond to this is probably going to be determined by the beliefs that you already hold. It is important to note that this book focuses on the Black American experience with firearms in this country and I think this is a good decision as to expand it to other groups would cause the book to lose some of its sharp focus. But what the author does do well is walk through the history of black people and guns. The plain truth is that, like most other rights in the constitution, the second amendment has not applied completely to black people in this country. When it comes to possession of guns their availability to minorities has been curtailed especially at times of racial strife when the black community has been threatened and needed to defend itself. But it goes deeper than this. Some of the strictest gun laws in the country have been enacted in reaction to black gun ownership. This book is a popular history and not an academic one and I would have liked to see more documentation but it makes its main point pretty well and it is undeniable that the second amendment comes with qualifications when it comes to black gun ownership
July 24, 2021
Since Sandy Hook, I didn’t know I could dislike the Second Amendment more than I already did. Yet, this enlightening and frustrating focus on yet another racist component created by the Founding Fathers and still entrenched in culture did just that! Thanks guys! I have long noted the modern hypocrisy that African Americans cannot even begin to practice their second amendment rights, which the book explores with disgusting modern examples. Their names are familiar but have disappeared from conversations due to their sheer numbers. What I never knew about was the history behind the Second Amendment and the goal of putting down slave rebellions, despite being well informed about the Haitian Revolution. It is also a life changer as I will never react the same when I hear Patrick Henry’s quote “Give me Liberty or give me death” again without rolling my eyes and throwing up a little in my mouth. This book is rather short for a nonfiction read (there’s a lot of notes at the end), but is it meaningful and worthwhile. If can’t fit it into your life now, at least check out this NPR article below about it in the meantime. It’s really important to inform and acknowledge this dark history, so that we can begin to try to make amends….literally!
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/100210...
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/100210...
March 21, 2024
Historical account that demonstrates that the Second Amendment is not about gun rights but about anti-blackness. In the early days of the American legal process, the Second was about slaveholders controlling a slave insurrection with arms.
Fast forward to current day and it is still about anti-blackness. Laws protecting Second Amendment rights,such as stand your ground, open carry, and the castle defense (defend your home), crumple under the weight of anti-Blackness.
Look at the Black Panthers, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling. All Black men killed by cops for carrying a perfectly legal, licensed gun. Compare them to George Zimmerman, a white man, who was acquitted after killing an unarmed Black man, a case that is similar to hundreds of others. And we all know the incarceration rate is higher among Black men defending themselves against a white man and the rare conviction for a white man accused of killing a Black man.
Fast forward to current day and it is still about anti-blackness. Laws protecting Second Amendment rights,such as stand your ground, open carry, and the castle defense (defend your home), crumple under the weight of anti-Blackness.
Look at the Black Panthers, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling. All Black men killed by cops for carrying a perfectly legal, licensed gun. Compare them to George Zimmerman, a white man, who was acquitted after killing an unarmed Black man, a case that is similar to hundreds of others. And we all know the incarceration rate is higher among Black men defending themselves against a white man and the rare conviction for a white man accused of killing a Black man.
February 3, 2022
"The Second" brings a fresh perspective to the endemic racism in the U.S. by looking at the problem in the context of the 2nd Amendment. Historical insight into the amendment itself, as well as how it was applied over the history of this nation, shows that it is not at all what it seems on the surface. The right to bear arms, like most of the other "rights" we have as citizens, does not apply to everyone. Sadly, this amendment is only one of the many many aspects of the overt and blatant inequality that has been part of this nation from the beginning, and is still tragically affecting large numbers of Americans even as we enter the 21st century. It is a problem that needs to be solved, but also one that we have had from the very beginning. This book is well researched and footnoted, a valuable source, and especially appropriate during Black History Month.
May 15, 2023
"It's impossible to be unarmed when your Blackness is the weapon they fear."
- The Hate U Give (film)
I learned so much from The Second. It's short but dense (it reads a touch academic) but please do not let that put you off reading it. It is devastating, and at times I had to set it aside for minutes or days. Anderson reframes the history of the Second Amendment, and posits that this amendment was intended only to keep Black slaves and free Black people subjugated. She then proceeds over the next 160 pages to delve into that history, and oh goodness was this fascinating and horrifying. I absolutely recommend this to everyone.
- The Hate U Give (film)
I learned so much from The Second. It's short but dense (it reads a touch academic) but please do not let that put you off reading it. It is devastating, and at times I had to set it aside for minutes or days. Anderson reframes the history of the Second Amendment, and posits that this amendment was intended only to keep Black slaves and free Black people subjugated. She then proceeds over the next 160 pages to delve into that history, and oh goodness was this fascinating and horrifying. I absolutely recommend this to everyone.
March 11, 2024
". . . [T]he current-day veneration of the Second Amendment, driven by the lobbying and publicity campaign of the NRA, is, frankly, akin to holding the three-fifths clause sacrosanct. They both were deigned to deny African Americans' humanity and rights while carrying the aura of constitutional legitimacy. They both damaged American democracy and called into question the founding principles of equality. The Second is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hand of some authority to put it to use."
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August 12, 2023I'm fascinated by Carol Anderson's work. I heard her on a podcast and knew I had to read this one. Unfortunately I listened to this on audio and the narrator was so monotone and the chapters so long (THIS BOOK ONLY HAS FOUR CHAPTERS) that I had such a hard time focusing on it.
So I really looked at my time listening to this as a primer and I will come back to this book one day and read the physical copy. Hopefully that will help me process the content better.
So I really looked at my time listening to this as a primer and I will come back to this book one day and read the physical copy. Hopefully that will help me process the content better.
November 16, 2024
A wonderful and in depth read into the powerful narrative of the true nature of the second amendments coming of age and how 2A has become co-opted largely into the radical repressive echo-chambers they are in at the moment.
I’m taking one star away because there are times in the book where the litany of examples to support the authors positions are so well used and well timed that they could even do a little less of it and get the same point across maybe more succinctly.
I’m taking one star away because there are times in the book where the litany of examples to support the authors positions are so well used and well timed that they could even do a little less of it and get the same point across maybe more succinctly.
February 18, 2025
Anderson somehow manages to pack so much into so few pages (only 165 - the rest is notes). This book is so smart and sharp, extremely well researched, my biggest issue is it’s not long enough (rarely do I ever feel that way). As if we didn’t already know, books like this one highlight all the things we weren’t taught in school and I wonder where we would be *if* we had learned more of our history.
July 28, 2024
An in depth look at the history of firearm jurisprudence, legislation, and history from the colonial times until the modern day. The focus is on the relationship between the regulations and race. Anderson paints a very compelling picture of how these regulations have been either used against minorities or interpreted against them. Must read for all Americans.
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