News & Analysis of Economic, Racial, Gender Justice and More

FEATURING ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ – We live in a country where mass shootings are so common that they follow a script: horror and tears, vows for action, and then silence until the next shooting. There are more guns in the US today than people and indeed guns appear to be better protected than actual living human beings.

The Second Amendment is recited like prayer by gun proliferation activists who see it as justification for any and all gun violence. Now, in a new book called Loaded author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz explores the history of the Second Amendment and makes the case that guns have historically been part of the American genocide of Native American communities and a tool for enforcing slavery. In other words, gun culture is deeply intertwined with the nation’s racist history.

NOTE: This is the Extended version of this interview, available only to our subscribers, or to rent or buy.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian, author, memoirist, and speaker who researches Western Hemisphere history and international human rights. Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the First United Nations Conference on Indians in the Americas, which was held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva. Her other books include Outlaw Woman, and the acclaimed An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. Her newest book is called Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.

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