Dunbar-Ortiz provides a brilliant decolonization of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. She describes how the ‘savage wars’ against Indigenous Peoples, slave patrols (which policing in the U.S. originates from), today’s mass shootings, and the rise in white nationalism are connected to the Second Amendment. This is a critically important work for all social science disciplines.”
—Michael Yellow Bird, professor and director of Tribal and Indigenous Peoples Studies at North Dakota State University
“There is no more interesting historian of the United States than Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. And with Loaded she has done it again, taking a topic about which so much has already been written, distilling it down, turning it inside out, and allowing us to see American history anew.”
—Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Mississippi Valley’s Cotton Kingdom
“In her trenchant analysis of the Second Amendment, Dunbar-Ortiz avoids a legalistic approach and eschews the traditional view that links the amendment to citizens’ need to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. . . . [Her] argument will be disturbing and unfamiliar to most readers, but her evidence is significant and should not be ignored.”
—Publishers Weekly
LOADED
A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
City Lights Books | San Francisco
Copyright © 2018 by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
All Rights Reserved.
The Open Media Series is edited by Greg Ruggiero.
Cover design by Herb Thornby
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, 1939- author.
Title: Loaded : a disarming history of the Second Amendment / Roxanne Dunbar
Ortiz.
Description: San Francisco : City Lights Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017037851 (print) | LCCN 2017045903 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867239 (paperback) | ISBN 9780872867246 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Firearms ownership—United States—History. | United States.
Constitution. 2nd Amendment—History. | Firearms—Law and legislation—United States—History. | Firearms and crime—United States—History. | United States—Militia—History.
Classification: LCC HV7436 (ebook) | LCC HV7436 .D86 2017 (print) | DDC
323.4/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037851
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government.
—Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967 speech at Riverside Church, New York City
CONTENTS
