Not paid promotions, just some boosting for people who have done a lot of great work on our issue. Here’s the summary:
Bob Cottrol has a new book out. It’s not released yet, but you can now preorder from Amazon.
Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere.
Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system’s legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination— a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.
Professor Cottrol is fluent in Portugese and Spanish, so is uniquely suited for a work like this.
David E. Young is the author of “The Founder’s View of the Right to Bear Arms” and “The Origin of the Second Amendment.” His work was cited by the 5th Circuit in the Emerson case, and by the Supreme Court in DC v. Heller. He also blogs at “On Second Opinion:”
Fact checking modern opinions and assertions regarding Second Amendment history and development by direct comparison with Founding Era facts
If you’re looking to develop a greater understanding of the Second Amendment, it’s a great resource.
I have serious concerns for My Fellow Americans’ attitude toward the US Constitution. Far too many just do not care.
It would be nice is we could educate people about what, as just one example, 2A means but just stopping at the reviews and comments on Amazon for the the books you point to is very discouraging.
All the reviews were positive.
I read an article today that said how twelve thousand people are killed by guns every year (and we need to ban them all, naturally).
If the estimates of 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms every year, 12,000 is only .5% (half a percent) of this number.
The UCR states that there were 8,583 firearm murders in 2011, so the 12,000 figure is a bit dated.
Obviously, a million sel defensive gun uses would give us much higher numbers, but still around 1% for illegal uses.
Thus, “Homicide accounts for only one half of one percent of non-recreational firearms usage in the united States.” This is the statistic we should be going forward with.
–Matt R.