The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment Quotes

“What is missed in a discussion limited to mental illness and lone wolves are the exploitatively political and social contexts that make individuals feel like lone wolves in America. Understanding those contexts is key to understanding why most (but not all) people who commit mass shootings in America are white males, and why white males have committed mass shootings more and more frequently over the last half century.”
― Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment: How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics

“there had never been a mass shooting of this scale on American soil,”
― Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment: How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics

“As a reward, Columbus frequently presented his men with local women to rape. As he exported enslaved Taino to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of his business. Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: “A hundred castellanoes [a Spanish coin] are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten [years old] are now in demand.”
― Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment: How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics

“Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore told an audience that “[America] was great at the time when families were united— even though we had slavery—they cared for one another.”
― Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment: How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics

“It’s hard to know exactly how many children are killed or maimed by guns because in 1996, Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., at the behest of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and weapons manufacturers, attached the Dickey Amendment to a must-pass omnibus spending bill, making it illegal for the CDC to keep track of or analyze the data. Congress simultaneously cut the CDC’s budget by the exact amount it had been spending to track gun violence.10 (Sixteen years later, Dickey essentially apologized in a Washington Post op-ed, calling for research into gun violence.11 As he later told ABC, “I wish I had not been so reactionary.”12)”
― Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment: How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics