ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ, rdunbaro@pacbell.net, @rdunbaro
Dunbar-Ortiz is author of the book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. 
A chapter in her book is titled “Slave Patrols.” An excerpt was published by Truthout: “United States Policing and “Gun Rights” Began With Slave Patrols.”

She told IPA: “The U.S. is unique in the industrialized world for the number of guns legally in civilian hands, although only a third of the population owns even one firearm. The average gun owner owns nine firearms. The NRA is not just a lobby, it is a mass organization with chapters in every state that are autonomous and have the power to negate election candidates who support gun control. Junior ROTC exists in nearly all middle and high schools, and the NRA furnishes free targets, firearms, and training. Nikolas Cruz, the shooter who killed 17 high school students in Parkland Florida in 2018 was an expelled student from the school and had been an avid member of the JROTC chapter in the school that practiced in the school gym. He was wearing his JROTC shirt when he carried out the shooting.”
Uvalde High School has a JROTC program.

IPA executive director Norman Solomon just wrote the piece “‘Gun control’ is a great idea — and what about for the U.S. military too?” for Salon.
In These Times reports: “The Pentagon Is Protecting and Funding the Same Gun Makers Democrats Want to Regulate.”

The Intercept reports: “Uvalde Police Didn’t Move to Save Lives Because That’s Not What Police Do.” In 2005, the New York Times reported: “The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.”

See Dunbar-Ortiz pieces “Inside the minds of American mass shooters” for the British Guardian and “Settler Colonialism and the Second Amendment” for Monthly Review.

 Her other books include An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States and, most recently, Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants’: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.