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
Dave Kopel debates Michael
Beard (Coalition to Stop
Gun Violence) on the National Public
Radio program "Justice
Talking." You can listen to the one-hour
debate in Real Audio.
http://www.justicetalking.org/getshow.asp?showid=221
NRA Live, July 24.
Kopel discusses his new textbook,
"Gun Control & Gun Rights."
http://www.nralive.org/
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/GCGR.htm
Coming soon on National Review
Online:
"The Goose and Gander Amendment."
What if the government weren't allowed
to exempt itself
from gun control
laws?
http://www.nationalreview.com
========================
2. State Attorneys General defend 2d
Amendment.
Eighteen state Attorneys General have
written a letter
to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
commending his
recognition of the Second Amendment as
an individual right.
http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/pryorlet.pdf
The Attorneys General letter
acknowledges that the right to
bear arms protects public safety, and
cites a Kopel/Gallant/Eisen
NRO article on the failure of gun
control in Great Britain.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment071800c.html
July 22, 2002
BAD IDEA [Dave Kopel]
Using the military for domestic law
enforcement, as Tom Ridge and
Joseph Biden are now proposing, is a
terrible idea. Biden was part
of the Congresses which have used the
drug was as a pretext to
repeatedly gut the Posse Comitatus Act (which forbids use of the
military in domestic law enforcement).
As I detail in a chapter of a Cato Institute book, the loopholesin the Posse Comitatus Act have led directly to the deaths of manyinnocents who had nothing to do with drugs. This is becausesoldiers are warriors, not peace officers. Soldiers are trainedto destroy an enemy quickly and ruthlessly; this training isprecisely the opposite of training for peace officers, who aresupposed to minimize the use of force and to scrupulously respectconstitutional safeguards.
Biden is now claiming that the Posse Comitatus Act currently bars soldiers from shooting at terrorists who are about to use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. This claim is extremely dubious, because the Act simply forbids the military from being used for law enforcement; the Act does not forbid the military from being used for military purposes -- such as killing enemy invaders.
When Japanese planes started bombing Pearl Harbor, nobody asserted that the Posse Comitatus Act prevented the Army and Navy from shooting at the Japanese planes; nor could anyone credibly claim that the Posse Comitatus Act would have barred the Army and Navy from shooting down Japanese planes while they were flying over Oahu on the way to Pearl Harbor.
Notably, no one today is claiming that the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of an F-16 to shoot down a hijacked commercial airliner. Quite plainly, nothing in the Posse Comitatus Act today forbids the American military to kill enemy guerillas and irregulars who have entered American territory.
The best anti-terrorism changes in the Posse Comitatus Act would
be to repeal all of the drug-war loopholes which were created
in the 1980s. By relieving the military from the non-military
job of marijuana interdiction, Congress
would instantly makemore resources available for a genuinely military job:
terrorist destruction. Book chapter:
http://www.davekopel.com/CJ/chap/AfterProhibition.htm
July 18, 2002
MAGAW RESIGNS [Dave Kopel]
Transportation Security Administration
head John Magaw has just
resigned, due in part to MSNBC's exposure
of failures and cover-ups
at the TSA. The resignation offers
President Bush an opportunity
to demand of the TSA the same kind of
accountability he is
demanding of private corporations, and
to appoint a leader
who will improve security rather than
build a bureaucracy.
In holding confirmation hearings on
Magaw's replacement,
Congress should insist that Magaw's
replacement specifically
repudiate Magaw's failed policies --
including misdirected
screening of airport passengers and an
anti-gun policy so
ridiculous that even Barbara Boxer
opposes it.
The Effects of Arming Pilots.
By Adam Liptak.
New York Times
July 14, 2002:
Other legal issues relating to the bill are more straightforward, such as how it would apply as pilots moved among states with conflicting gun laws. The federal government may override state laws on guns, said David Kopel, the author of a book on gun law and policy.
"In terms of Congressional power over domestic travel, that's an easy thing to do," Mr. Kopel said. "Their power to say a pilot can carry a gun to and from the airport, regardless of state law, is clear.
"The international question," he
continued, "is a trickier one."
A pilot defending the cockpit in a foreign airport would be
subject to that nation's laws, he said,
and immunity from
lawsuits and prosecution there can only
be achieved through
treaties. The bill would require that
the State Department
"take such action as may be necessary to
ensure that a federal
flight deck officer may carry a firearm
in a foreign country
when necessary to participate in the
program."
James Forman
CHILDREN AND GUNS: ADVOCACY GROUPS SPEAK
OUT,
12 The Future of Children 165 (Issue no.
2, Summer/Fall 2002)
published by the David & Lucille Packard Foundation.
http://www.futureofchildren.org/usr_doc/tfoc_12-2_full.pdf
Some recent journal articles with Kopel citations:
James Lindgren, Book Review FALL FROM GRACE: ARMING AMERICA AND THE BELLESILES SCANDAL, 111 Yale Law Journal 2195 (June 2002).
Barbara Stark, AFTER/WORD(S): 'VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN DIGNITY' AND POSTMODERN INTERNATIONAL LAW, 27 Yale Journal of International Law 315 (Summer 2002).
Richard C. Ausness, TORT LIABILITY
FOR THE SALE OF
NON-DEFECTIVE PRODUCTS: AN ANALYSIS AND
CRITIQUE OF THE
CONCEPT OF NEGLIGENT MARKETING,
55 South Carolina Law Review 907 (Summer
2002).
Jennifer C. Evans, Comment, HIJACKING CIVIL LIBERTIES: THE USA
PATRIOT ACT OF 2001,
33 Loyola University of Chicago Law
Journal 933 (Summer 2002).
International
INDIA: THOUSANDS OF WOMEN AGED 12 TO
35 RECEIVE SHOOTING INSTRUCTION
Navakal.Com
June 30
http://www.navakal.com/news/national/200206301024.asp
Where Gun Control Goes.
David Carr and Dale Amon
British farmer Tony Martin sued for
protecting life and
property during burglary.
http://www.coldfury.com/Entries/00000169.html
Additional information on the Tony
Martin case:
http://www.guncontrolnetwork.org/uk7.htm
http://www.tonymartinsupportgroup.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/
england/newsid_2074000/2074077.stm
GUN-FREE UK: A COUNTRY IN THE
CROSSHAIRS
BBC News Online
January 4, 2002
While Britain has some of the toughest
firearms laws in the world,
the recent spate of gun murders in
London has highlighted a
disturbing growth in armed crime.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1741000/1741336.stm
GUN-FREE UK: BRITAIN IS NOW THECRIME CAPITAL OF THE WEST
Sophie Goodchild Independent (UK) July 14, 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=314832
DID BRITISH GUN CONTROL WORK?
Iain Murray
Stats.org
June 21, 2001
http://www.stats.org/statswork/britgun.htm
WISCONSIN SETS NEW SELF-DEFENSE
KILLING STANDARD
DENNIS CHAPTMAN
Ledger-Enquirer.Com
July 24, 2002
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/3645891.htm
Allegheny County Sportsmen's League
lawsuit against former
Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge and
the Commissioner
of the Pennsylvania State Police for
maintaining a registry
of firearm ownership in violation of
Pennsylvania state law
section 6111.4
http://www.acslpa.org/
Pennsylvania law
http://www.hhi.com/foaceducfund/
foacedufundfiles/PA-UFA/Sect6111-4.html
Flex Your Rights
How to properly assert your
constitutional rights during
police searches.
http://www.flexyourrights.org
Second-grader in Nixa, Missouri, is
suspended for bringing
a toy gun to class.
Many parents object, and demand that the
child be expelled.
http://www.kspr33.com/Global/story.asp?S=827196
http://www.nixa.k12.mo.us/ctwebpgs/ctmainpg.html
City of Cleveland outlaws airgun
possession by minors
and prohibits airguns guns in public
places.
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/
summaries/reader/0,2061,550965,00.html
Coming Out of the Closet
Deroy Murdock
National Review Online
July 1, 2002
Report on Pink Pistols, the gay gun
rights group.
http://nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock070102.asp
MICHIGAN CANDIDATES TAKE COVER ON GUN
QUESTIONS
Dawson Bell
Detroit Free Press
July 5, 2002
http://www.freep.com/news/politics/guns5_20020705.htm
TWO WRONGS DON'T TAKE MY RIGHTS, PART
II
The Model State Emergency Health Powers
Act (MSEHPA)
would empower public health officials to
impose police
state conditions that would make
ordinary martial law
look like the Second Continental
Congress in comparison.
http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/other/USAPatriot.htm#MSEHPA
Homeland Security: Still Not Serious
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Fox News Online
July 11, 2002
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,57390,00.html
Arming Airline Pilots A Must
American Conservative Union
http://cf.townhall.com/rd.cfm?id=28392
Bush Flying Blind on Armed Pilot
Issue
Dr. Michael S. Brown
NewsMax.Com
July 17, 2002
http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2002/7/16/202155
Guns in the Cockpit Mean Safe Passage
through Unfriendly Skies
Kathleen Parker
Orlando Sentinel
July 14, 2002
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/orl-edpparker14071402jul14.column
Syracuse University TRAC center.
FBI wasting too many resources on
non-terrorist issues.
http://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/index.html
http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/index.html
http://trac.syr.edu:85/tracatwork/articles/congress/senatejudcom020614.pdf
A PRIMER ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
NELSON LUND, J.D., PH.D.
Virginia Institute for Public Policy
http://www.virginiainstitute.org/publications/primer_on_const.php#c4
JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS
SYMPOSIUM ISSUE
Guns, Crime and Safety.
Vol. 44, No. S2, October 2001
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/journal/contents/v44nS2.html
Articles in the symposium include:
Violence, Guns, and Drugs: A
Cross-Country Analysis
By JEFFREY A. MIRON
The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths
By DAVID B. MUSTARD
Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental
Deaths, Suicides, and Crime
By JOHN R. LOTT, JR., AND JOHN E.
WHITLEY
The Impact of Banning Juvenile Gun
Possession
By THOMAS B. MARVELL
Gun Myths and the Warrior Spirit
Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D.
Newsmax.Com
July 10, 2002
Richard Poe's book, "The Seven Myths of
Gun Control."
