The content of this newsletter is produced by the Second Amendment Project at the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden, Colorado. The newsletter is electronically distributed by the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Washington. Thus, the Second Amendment Foundation will be given your e-mail address.
Archive of past issues.
Dave Kopel's Second Amendment Project is based at the
Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in
Golden, Colorado.
http://www.independenceinstitute.org
1. New Kopel columns: The gun-totin' Surgeon General.
What if the government had to obey gun laws?
2. New Kopel law review articles: The text and
interpretation of state constitutional RBKA provisions
demonstrates that the 2d Amendment is an individual
right. The best approach to youth violence is high-
quality pre-schools for at risk-children; gun control
and gang control are ineffective and dangerous.
3. Previews of coming articles. Genocide against
disarmed people of Zimbabwe. Joyce Malcolm's critics.
4. Correction of meaning of Winston Churchill quote.
5. Links: Two fine new books. The definitive law
review article on Bellesiles. British parents believe
that shooting sports are better for young people than
video games. And more.
This One's a General. Richard Carmona, hero.
National Review Online, Aug. 14. With Timothy Wheeler.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel081402.asp
Day-Dream Believers.
What if the government had to obey gun control laws?
National Review Online, July 30. With Robert Racansky.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel073002.asp
"What State Constitutions Teach about the Second Amendment
29 Northern Kentucky Law Review 845 (2002).
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev/
WhatStateConstitutionsTeach.htm
"Guns, Gangs, and Preschools:
Moving Beyond Conventional Solutions to Confront Juvenile Violence,"
1 Barry Law Review 63 (2000).
(Printed edition has been out for a while, but the web edition is
brand-new.)
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev/Guns-Gangs-Preschools.htm
***Coming on September 1, in the Rocky Mountain News:
Media ignore developing genocide in Zimbabwe.
Should be available on a link from RMN's Kopel archive:
www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/
columnist/0,1299,DRMN_86_1302,00.html
Read the new Zimbabwe article in conjunction with the
Kopel/Gallant/Eisen article from Feb. 2001, explaining
how Zimbabwe tyrant Robert Mugabe has used gun control
to set the stage for genocide:
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel021301.shtml
Coming in September on National Review Online:
Has Joyce Malcolm been "debunked"?
Colonel Samuel Colt: A model corporate executive
Daniel Webster: The Secretary of State who stood up for freedom,
and didn't mind telling Europeans that they were wrong.
Book review: "From Parchment to Power" by Robert Goldwin
A number of items I have written over the years discuss
England's civilian gun shortage after Dunkirk.
The most recent of these is:
"All the Way Down the Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England,
and Some Lessons for America."
22 Hamline Law Review 399 (1999).
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev/SlipperySlope.htm
The items contain a quote from Winston Churchill's war diary,
reprinted
in "Their Finest Hour." The quote reflects his great concern about
the
English people having few guns, and his happiness when American
firearms arrived for the Home Guard. I had described these American
guns as coming from an American civilian gun donation program.
Although there was such a program, the guns that Churchill was
discussing in his diary entry were military rifles, supplied by the
U.S. government. Churchill's diary had referred to "rifles"
and "field-guns."
Following "The Firearms Dictionary," I mistakenly believed these
"field-guns" to be hunting shotguns. In fact, as subsequent material
in "Their Finest Hour" makes clear, the "field-guns" were artillery,
which presumably was delivered to the British Army, while the
rifles were delivered to the Home Guard. The error has been
corrected in the html version of "Slippery Slope," as well as
in the on-line version of "Lost Battles, Lost Rights,"
a shorter piece I wrote on British gun history.
BTW, my excellent summer intern Mike has done a fine job of adding
links and bookmarks to the Slippery Slope article, so please check
out
the new and improved on-line version.
Canadian government
An Introduction to Canada's Firearms Law for the
Aboriginal Peoples of Canada
Questions and Answers about the Firearms Act,
Regulations and Support Material
http://www.cfc.gc.ca/en/owners_users/aboriginal/q&a/default.asp
WHAT POLICE HAVE SAID ABOUT THE GUN REGISTRY
By Garry Breitkreuz, MP
August 1, 2002
http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/policequotes.htm
Canadian Shooting Sports Association
http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/
===========================
Book review of Joyce Malcolm's "Guns and Violence:
The English Experience"
Boston Globe
8/18/2002
(Note: While the review is well-done in general, the
reviewer mistakenly writes that Malcolm says that
all guns are banned in England. Handguns are banned,
and self-defense with any firearm is illegal, but rifles
and shotguns are legal under very restrictive licensing.)
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/230/west/
New_book_gives_a_shot_in_the_arm_to_gun_lobby+.shtml
How the British maximize crime
More on Malcolm
by Paul Craig Roberts
Townall.com.
8/1
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/pcr20020801.shtml
Rich Americans With Guns! Oh My!
Humberto Fontova
Analysis of article in "The Guardian" (hard-left British daily
newspaper) about Americans hunting in Africa.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/fontova/fontova39.html
Shooting is 'better for children than video games'
The Telegraph
Charles Clover
July 27, 2002
Results of a new poll
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;
$sessionid$JVDS0LIAACDVLQFIQMFCFFOAVCBQYIV0?xml=
Wisconsin intermediate court of appeals upholds state law
against concealed carry.
http://www.courts.state.wi.us/html/ca/01/01-1702.htm
U.S. Attorney General brief in U.S. v. Thomas Lamar Bean, No.
01-704.
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/briefs/01-704/01-704.mer.usa.pdf
Brannon Denning & Glenn Reynolds
Telling Miller's Tale
Law & Contemporary Problems
Response to new theory of the Second Amendment created by David
Yassky
http://instapundit.com/lawrev/reynolds.pdf
Reflections on the Second Amendment
By Massad Ayoob
Backwoods Home Magazine, Issue #77
September/October, 2002
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob77.html
"Disarming Women"
by Richard W. Stevens, Hugo Teufel III, and
Matthew Y. Biscan
THE WOMEN'S QUARTERLY, Summer 2002
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink4-30-3.html
The article is a shorter version of a chapter from the book
LIBERTY FOR WOMEN: Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-first Century.
edited by Wendy McElroy.
Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/
tg/detail/-/1566634342/qid=1030647258/davekopel-20/
General Accounting Office
Gun Control: Potential Effects of Next-Day Destruction of NCIS
Background Check Records.
GAO-02-653, July 10.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-653
====================
NRA
Shooting Straight: Telling the Truth About Guns in America
by Wayne Lapierre and James Jay Baker
New book.
Available from Amazon at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0895261235/davekopel-20/
Charlton Heston's most difficult role
by Suzanne Fields
8/15
"No young man," wrote the poet William Hazlitt, "believes he shall
ever die." How the older man confronts his mortality inspires the
rest of us.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/suzannefields/sf20020815.shtml
JAMES LINDGREN
Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal.
Yale Law Journal
Perhaps the most widely-read law review article of all time –
about 70,000 downloads from the Instapundit link alone.
http://hnn.us/articles/930.html
Appendix to Lindgren article, documenting some particular frauds
http://hnn.us/articles/932.html
JOHN FOUGHT
Was Bellesiles Really Threatened?
History News Network
Aug. 12, 2002
http://hnn.us/articles/888.html
Bellesiles's shifting claims about NRA membership.
Interviewed for the Emory Report, Bellesiles asserted:
"So I'm familiar with guns--I used to be in the NRA, as a matter of
fact."
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/
1999/September/erseptember.27/9_27_99gunmen.html
The next year, though, Bellesiles said he had never been a member:
"Although I've never been a member, I have associated with
members of the NRA for a long, long time."
Interview with Michael Bellesiles,
6 Geo. Public Pol'y Rev. 25 (Fall 2000).
BTW, another factually-challenged interview from
that issue of the Georgetown Public Policy Review was
Michael Barnes, of the group then known as Handgun Control, Inc.
Eugene Volokh's weblog documents the numerous false statements
made by Barnes.
http://volokh.blogspot.com/
2002_08_11_volokh_archive.html#85342824
The West Virginia miners' "insurrection" of 1920-21
http://www.wvculture.org/history/minewars.html
The Battle of Matewan
"The time has come to see Matewan in perspective, the way we do
Lexington and Gettysburg---not just as an isolated incident of the
tragic spilling of blood, but as a symbolic moment in a larger,
broader and continuing historical struggle---in the words of Mingo
county miner J.B. Wiggins, the "struggle for freedom and liberty."
http://www.matewan.com/History/battle.htm
A Swiss citizen's report of a visit to Williamsburg, Virginia
in 1702:
"The following day the assembled militia, some 2,000 men, took the
oath to the new queen and in the afternoon competed for rifles,
boots, saddles, and similar prizes in a shooting match. Much to
Michel's surprise, the competition was won by two of the Indians,
who
had come to Williamsburg to attend the proclamation of Queen Anne."
http://patc.net/history/native/michel2.html
U.S. House testimony of
Air Line Pilots Association
on armed pilots.
http://www.alpa.org/internet/tm/tm050202.html
G.I. Joe a security risk?
by Gary Aldrich
8/8
Tiny doll's gun confiscated by airport security.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/garyaldrich/ga20020808.shtml
Doll disarmament
by Jacob Sullum
8/16
More on the TSA's valiant efforts to prevent dolls from carrying
guns onto planes.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jacobsullum/js20020816.shtml
Never forget what happened ten years ago today at Ruby Ridge.
TIMOTHY LYNCH
8/21
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-lynch082102.asp
The FBI agent in charge of the anthrax investigation was
Found to have participated in the Ruby Ridge cover-up.
The Bush DOJ over-ruled a recommendation from the Office
of Professional Responsibility that the agent be
disciplined.
Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Aug. 27, 2002
http://www.cleveland.com/world/plaindealer/
index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/
"The Most Dangerous Institution"
American Heritage
by Jack Kelly
For nearly a hundred years, the FBI has been fighting for
America—with its professionalism often at odds with its shadowy,
extralegal tactics.
http://www.americanheritage.com/AMHER/2002/04/fbi.shtml