Dr. Carol Anderson recently wrote a piece for Oprah Daily on the historical and contemporary relationships between the Second Amendment, anti-Blackness, and formal slavery. The article, “The Second Amendment Enshrines Anti-Blackness, Argues Writer and Legal Scholar Carol Anderson,” draws heavily from Anderson’s most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in an Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor, Chair of African American Studies, and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Read an excerpt of the article below as well as the full piece here.

“We are, therefore, dealing with the consequences and horrific costs of embedding anti-Blackness into the Second Amendment of the Constitution. No one is safe. Not in our schools. Not in our neighborhood grocery stores. Not in our churches or synagogues or mosques. Not where we work. Not where we go to relax—at a nightclub, a concert, or a movie theater. Not even where we celebrate the founding of this nation.

“With 400 million guns in circulation, and no safety to be found, it is time to strip away the untouchable aura of the Second Amendment and recognize how sullied and dangerous it really is. America needs to give the Second Amendment a hard second look.“