Locked and Loaded

America is awash in guns. And that’s bad for a democratic republic.

On July 4, 2020, Black and White activists mingled, armed, at a pro-gun rally in Richmond, VA. While they shared an interest in protecting their right to carry deadly weapons, they differed on just about everything else, including threats they said were motivating their beliefs. For far-right rallygoers, this protest was all about antigovernment ideology. For the African Americans who showed up in force, the danger they echoed over and over again was: “the police.” That’s no surprise to our guest this week - who shares with us her disquieting research on the history of the second amendment, which she says is tearing apart the soul of America.

Clare terni

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S4 E4. Locked and Loaded

There are more firearms — nearly 400 million — in the United States than people. Hundreds of them were on full display at a pro-gun rally in Virginia, in 2020, where a group of strange bedfellows met in praise of the Second Amendment. Most were white nationalists and far-right extremists. But more than few who were there, toting loaded semiautomatic rifles and other military gear, were African-American activists.

Joined by producer Robert Armengol, Will and Siva revisit that unsettling demonstration, held just blocks away from the Black Lives Matter protests that had engulfed Richmond. And together they unpack the contradictions on display in a scene infused with racial tension, yet racially diverse. Then we turn to a conversation with historian Carol Anderson, about her latest book. She breaks down the long and sordid story of the right to bear arms in America. If you thought it was about the “individual right” to carry weapons, or even about militias defending a free state against foreign invasion, think again.

Demonstrators saw eye to eye on one thing at the rally: Their unequivocal right to bear arms. Still, with massive protests for racial justice going on nearby, the display made for some uneasy moments

Clare Terni

Anderson’s research shows that the Second Amendment, both when it was written and across time, has been about keeping Black folk in place, by force when necessary. And the “militia” referenced in the text, apparently meant to defend freedom? She says its chief role in the early republic, and as late as the Atlanta race massacre of 1906, was destroying the efforts of enslaved people and free Blacks alike to seek liberty and defend themselves. Anderson draws a clear line from this past to a present where even the “good guy with a gun” — like Emantic Bradford Jr., in 2018 — gets shot down by a cop because he’s Black.

Heard on the show

Bored and Alone

Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands

Here’s a rundown of the extra tunes we used to score this episode, in the order they appeared:

  • The title track off Bored & Alone (2011), by Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands.

  • Two songs from the Blue Dot Sessions: “Chrome and Wax,” off their 2015 album Ray Gun; and “Lovers Hollow,” off Bitters (2019).

  • Bring a Gun,” by Schemawound, from the 2014 collection My Time As a Rat.

  • The jazz trumpeter Bobby Bryant’s 1969 cover of the Beatles’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”

  • Off the 2014 album Unamerican, “Jim Crow,” by the bluegrass band Cletus Got Shot, of Fayetteville, Ark.

  • And “The Knight of Jaffa,” a 2015 single released by the Beacon, N.Y., band Fearless Super Pictures.

    You also heard field tape recorded by our producers at the gun rally of July 4, 2020, in Richmond — supplemented with local news broadcasts from several sources.

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