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2nd Amendment

NRA Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre

The NRA Is a Symptom of the Racism That Drives Violence in the United States

By Commentaries/Opinions

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — In the immediate aftermath of the massacres in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Donald Trump actually began to contemplate doing a tiny sliver of the right thing. In doing so, he ran straight into the teeth of the Second Amendment, without doubt, the most lethally misunderstood corner of the U.S. Constitution. On the Sunday after the attacks, Trump reached out to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen.…

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Rakem Balogun on being secretly watched by the FBI: ‘It’s tyranny at its finest.’

Black activist jailed for his Facebook posts speaks out about secret FBI surveillance

By News & Current Affairs

Exclusive: Rakem Balogun spoke out against police brutality. Now he is believed to be the first prosecuted under a secretive US effort to track so-called ‘black identity extremists’ By Sam Levin, The Guardian — Rakem Balogun thought he was dreaming when armed agents in tactical gear stormed his apartment. Startled awake by a large crash and officers screaming commands, he soon realized his nightmare was real, and he and his…

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Kimberlé Crenshaw, American civil rights activist.

Is it time for black women in America to take up arms?

By Editors' Choice

An interview with scholar-activist Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term ‘insersectionality,’ on gender, race and armed militancy. By Nimmi Gowrinathan — For most American audiences, the female fighter exists in a land far, far away. To consider female militancy in this country, in our movements, requires a reckoning: the need to see police brutality against black women as state violence, checkpoints in school cafeterias as militarization, and the death rates…

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Protesters against gun violence at the March for Our Lives in Los Angeles

Why Focusing on People of Color Will Help the Movement for Gun Control Succeed

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Sonali Kolhatkar — Any discussions of gun violence and the regulations needed to curb it are incomplete unless they include an analysis of how racism plays a role. Government data show that “black Americans are, on average, eight times more likely to be killed by firearms than those who are white.” Gun violence by police against ordinary Americans also disproportionately affects people of color—a fact that the Black Lives Matter movement has…

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Alex King and D'Angelo McDade at the March for Our Lives, Washington, DC, March 24, 2018

What Happens When You Put Young People of Color at the Center of #NeverAgain

By Commentaries/Opinions

Gun control becomes only one part of the larger solution to violence in our communities. By Lori Bezahler — The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have catalyzed a social movement demanding an end to gun violence. While their leadership and moral authority have undoubtedly taken the movement to another level, youth-led activism against gun violence is not, in fact, new. In Florida in 2013, for example…

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Shooting survivors Tyra Hemans and Emma Gonzalez from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at the March for Our Lives, Washington, DC, March 24, 2018.

The Adults Have Failed, So Students Are Leading the Way

By Commentaries/Opinions

It was young people who made possible the largest gun-control rally in a generation. By George Zornick — Sydney Neal was already planning to attend the March for Our Lives in Washington when tragedy struck her community on Tuesday. A student opened fire at the nearby Great Mills High School, killing 16-year-old Jaelynn Willey and wounding another student. On Saturday morning, Neal, the president of the association of student councils…

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Black and Latino students called attention to how gun violence affects communities of color during the National School Walkout on March 14, 2018

The gun reform debate has largely ignored race. Black students made sure the school walkouts didn’t.

By News & Current Affairs

Students of color highlighted police violence, poverty, and more during the National School Walkout. By P.R. Lockhart — In Atlanta, high school students took a knee in protest. In Baltimore and Chicago, teenagers called for programs to address poverty and mental health services. And in Brooklyn, students demanded that the police system be reformed. Across the country, many students of color who participated in the National School Walkout on Wednesday…

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Two members of the Black Panther Party are met on the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento, May 2, 1967, by Police Lt. Ernest Holloway, who informs them they will be allowed to keep their weapons as long as they cause no trouble and do not disturb the peace. Earlier several members had entered the Assembly chambers and had their guns taken away.

The Racist Origin of the Second Amendment and the Rise of Black Gun Ownership

By Editors' Choice

By Zenobia Jeffries — Siwatu-Salama Ra, 26, will likely spend the next two years in a Michigan prison. In early February, a Wayne County jury found the six-months pregnant Black mother of a toddler guilty of felonious assault and felony firearm possession. She was sentenced last week. Outside her mother’s Detroit home last summer, she pulled a gun on a neighbor, who Ra says used her vehicle to hit her…

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