The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

by Carol Anderson

The Second Amendment was, thus, not some hallowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with Black bodies. It was the result of Madison’s determination to salve Patrick Henry’s obsession about Virginia’s vulnerability to slave revolts, seduce enough anti-Federalists to get the Constitution ratified, and stifle the demonstrated willingness of the South to scuttle the United States if slavery were not protected.

That is why the 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.24 They both were designed to deny African Americans’ humanity and rights while carrying the aura of constitutional legitimacy. They both damaged American democracy and called into question the basic 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.