As far as guns are concerned, the word “freedom” represents the “right” of white gun-owners to preserve white nationalism. The Second Amendment is a product of white settler colonialism, says author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in this exclusive interview.
Mark Karlin: What is your response to the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) perennial contention that freedom is ensured by gun ownership?
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Because the federal government, especially the judiciary in the beginning, was the conduit for civil rights reform victories, white nationalists, non-governmental organizations, as well as elected officials in the former Confederate states and in Indian Country west of the Mississippi adopted anti-federal government politics. The NRA was a part of that trajectory that sought to shrink federal government powers, again focusing on the Supreme Court, but increasingly dominating US Congress and the presidency. “Freedom” was and is the watchword for this white nationalist agenda: freedom from the federal government, which has led to the related neoliberal politics of privatization of public goods.
The culture of violence is inherent to colonialism of any type.
What do you think the United States would be like if the Second Amendment had never been included in the Bill of Rights?
Guessing at alternative outcomes to historical events is tricky. But I doubt that absence of the Second Amendment would have changed the course of US history, which is a history of inherently violent settler-colonialism and chattel…