A Precarious Balance

Antwain K. Hunter's 'A Precarious Balance' examines the legal, social, and practical dimensions of Black firearm possession in North Carolina from the colonial era through the Civil War. Hunter analyzes how guns functioned as tools of labor, subsistence, protection, and resistance for both enslaved and free people of color, and how white communities and the state sought to regulate and exploit armed Black labor.

Drawing on petitions, court records, images, and legislative debates, the book highlights tensions between everyday uses of firearms and fears of armed Black insurrection.

Hunter situates these dynamics within broader questions about rights and who guarantees them, bridging antebellum practices with Civil War-era crises and legacies.

The work challenges conventional narratives by centering routine, communal, and labor-related gun use alongside episodes of resistance.