Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Loaded is like a blast of fresh air. She is no fan of guns or of our absurdly permissive laws surrounding them. But she does not merely take the liberal side of the familiar debate.--Adam Hochschild, The New York Review of Books

If . . . anyone at all really wants to 'get to the root causes of gun violence in America, ' they will need to start by coming to terms with even a fraction of what Loaded proposes.--Los Angeles Review of Books

Her analysis, erudite and unrelenting, exposes blind spots not just among conservatives, but, crucially, among liberals as well. . . . As a portrait of the deepest structures of American violence, Loaded is an indispensable book.--The New Republic

Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, is a deeply researched--and deeply disturbing--history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator Dunbar-Ortiz explains, in order to understand the current obstacles to gun control, we must understand the history of U.S. guns, from their role in the settling of America and the early formation of the new nation, and continuing up to the present.

Praise for Loaded:

Dunbar-Ortiz's argument will be disturbing and unfamiliar to most readers, but her evidence is significant and should not be ignored.--Publishers Weekly

. . . gun love is as American as apple pie--and that those guns have often been in the hands of a powerful white majority to subjugate minority natives, slaves, or others who might stand in the way of the broadest definition of Manifest Destiny.--Kirkus Reviews

Trigger warning! This is a superb and subtle book, not an intellectual safe space for confirming your preconceptions--whatever those might be--but rather a deeply necessary provocation.--Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis