Thom Hartmann

Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann examines the brutal role guns have played in American history – from the genocide of the Native Americans to the enforcement of slavery (slave patrols are in fact the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militias”) and the racist post-Civil War social order. He shows how the NRA and conservative Supreme Court justices used specious logic to invent a virtually unlimited individual right to own guns, which has enabled the ever-growing number of mass shootings in the United States. Hartmann also identifies a handful of powerful, commonsense solutions that would break the power of the gun lobby and restore the understanding of the Second Amendment that the Framers of the Constitution intended. Hartmann’s The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment (Berrett-Koehler) is the kind of brief, brilliant analysis for which Hartmann is justly renowned.