Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Dunbar-Ortiz (An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States) is unequivocal in her interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; she argues that arming citizens to protect themselves from despotic government was not its historical premise. Relying on the work of historians and authors, she also emphatically contends that the "Right To Bear Arms" is rooted in the interests of early American colonists overtaking Native American lands and defending themselves against slave rebellions. This notion of the "Right To Bear Arms" has continued as an American tradition, she maintains, in the forms of racial injustice, the continued suppression of marginalized peoples, and the U.S. desire for empire. In her view, a number of American icons—including Daniel Boone, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington, among others—are part of the unjust tradition of the Second Amendment. For Dunbar-Ortiz, domestic mass shootings in the United States are also in the same tradition as American foreign military operations, as they relate to the slaughter of innocents.