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Throughline

We the People: Gun Rights

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.715K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Second Amendment. In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The robber, Jack Miller, put forward a novel defense: that a law banning him from carrying that gun violated his Second Amendment rights. For most of U.S. history, the Second Amendment was one of the sleepier ones. It rarely showed up in court, and was almost never used to challenge laws. Jack Miller's case changed that. And it set off a chain of events that would fundamentally change how U.S. law deals with guns. Today on Throughline's We the People: How the second amendment came out of the shadows. (Originally ran as The Right to Bear Arms)

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Christian nationalists want to turn America into a theocracy, a government under biblical rule.

0:07.0

If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

0:12.0

I'm Heath Drusen and on the new season of Extremely American

0:16.0

I'll take you inside the movement. Listen to Extremely American from Boise State Public

0:21.2

Radio, part of the NPR Network.

0:24.0

It's Dawn in Okima, Oklahoma.

0:31.0

Two cars, a Plymouth and a Ford, wind down the sleepy dusty streets.

0:39.2

In each car sit men with stockings and handkerchiefs over their faces, pistols and machine guns in their hands.

0:48.6

For most people, 1934, five years into the Great Depression, was a hard year.

0:55.0

But the men in these cars, the O'Malley Gang, they are not most people.

1:01.0

They stop in front of two banks across the street from each other.

1:06.6

The Depression is the golden era of bank robbery in the

1:13.0

O'Malley's

1:15.0

few successful double heists in American history.

1:19.0

As the first rays of light bounce off the bank windows, the O'Malley gang strikes, taking two separate

1:26.1

banks at once.

1:28.0

Inside they tie and gag employees, force a bank officer to open the safe.

1:33.0

Word of the robberies splashes across local newspapers.

1:37.0

Two institutions held up and it's leaving 15 tied.

1:41.0

Okima's two national banks were robbed simultaneously of $19,000 Saturday.

1:46.2

The robberies were staged with clock-like precision and the gang fled.

1:50.3

Eventually the bandits get caught.

...

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