America’s gun obsession is rooted in slavery | Carol Anderson

A series of slave revolts terrified white residents and helped fuel the rationale for gun ownership

Bodies are piling up all over the second amendment as two of America's pandemics converge. The plague of gun violence" and the inability to mount an effective response, even in the wake of multiple mass shootings, is, unfortunately, rooted in the other pandemic gripping the United States: anti-Blackness and the sense that African Americans are a dangerous threat that can only be neutralized or stopped by a well-armed white citizenry.

For too long, the second amendment has been portrayed with a founding fathers aura swaddled in the stars and stripes.