The Second Amendment Primer

The Second Amendment Primer

So much of the debate about the Second Amendment is in scholarly journals and academic papers written by scholars and judges, or directed towards other scholars, law professors, attorneys, and judges. Trying to wade through the extensive footnotes and references to legal cases and historical precedents known only to the academic elite is more than enough to make anyone feel hopeless. With The Second Amendment Primer, Les Adams finally provides an accessible discussion of the Second Amendment. It is a “primer” because it is elementary. Chronologically arranged, it traces the development of the right to keep and bear arms from its birth in ancient Greece to its addition in the U.S. Constitution. Supplemental essays discuss the Second Amendment’s interpretation in today’s world from the viewpoints of both firearms enthusiasts as well as those who would limit the amendment’s purview. Although The Second Amendment Primer is aimed at the average reader, Adams’s facts are detailed and well-documented. Reference margin notes, an extensive bibliography, and a comprehensive subject index showcase the author’s research and show more curious readers how to continue on their path to understanding exactly what the Second Amendment is saying. Using this “citizen’s guide” as a stepping stone, anyone can become a successful scholar of the right to bear arms.

The Second

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.

The Second Amendment Primer