gun control

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/14/2023
  

  SCOTUS Decision Means Today's Gun Cases Require Experts on 1790s Weaponry

  Legal historians Saul Cornell, Jennifer Tucker and others are in high demand as a legal consultant after the Bruen decision elevated the historical meaning of gun laws to importance in the judicial process. 

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• SOURCE: Slate
  2/15/2023
  

  We Don't Need to Pretend Clarence Thomas Can Read the Founders' Minds

  by Heidi Li Feldman and Dahlia Lithwick

  The approach to "original intent" laid out in recent gun control rulings imagines the founders as capable only of the most cramped and limited understanding of the function of law in a society, argue a legal scholar and veteran court reporter. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/14/2022
  

  After Bruen: One Nation, Under Guns

  by Ryan Busse

  "As bad as America’s gun-violence problem is, it could be about to get much worse," says former gun industry insider turned whistleblower. The selective reading of the historical record advanced by Justice Thomas's opinion would force judges to play historian to decide cases, destabilizing gun law in many ways. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/11/2022
  

  Can the Techniques of Antismoking Ads Work for Gun Violence?

  Antismoking PSAs shifted attention from individual smokers to the tobacco companies profiting from selling dangerous products. Can the same work to reduce the appeal of guns? 

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• SOURCE: Above the Law
  10/3/2022
  

  Judge Laurence Silberman Dies—Do His Latter Years Make the Case for Judicial Reform?

  A legal observer suggests the influential judge's reputation might have benefitted from judicial term limits, as his penchant for judicial restraint took a hard turn toward activism in decisions on gun control and public pronouncements about confederate monuments. 

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• SOURCE: The Trace
  8/5/2022
  

  The NRA's Amicus Brief Machine

  Lax disclosure rules about who funds the groups filing amicus briefs means that the NRA has been able to use its wealth to flood the courts with briefs that exaggerate the strength of its radical pro-gun positions, says historian Patrick J. Charles. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/20/2022
  

  Originalism is Just Selective History

  by David H. Gans

  "This is a Court that insists it is following history and tradition where they lead, while cherry-picking the history it cares about to reach conservative results."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/18/2022
  

  The Christian Right's History is Bad Scholarship, But Great SCOTUS Lobbying

  by Lauren R. Kerby

  Two consequential court rulings hinged on historical interpretation of abortion and gun rights. The court's majority borrowed this history from the religious right's campaign to craft a historical narrative to justify white Protestant nationalism.

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• 7/3/2022
  

  Dark Skies Over SCOTUS

  by James D. Zirin

  If the Supreme Court justices don't want to be perceived as partisan hacks, the latest rulings aren't helping their cause. 

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• SOURCE: Politico
  6/26/2022
  

  On the Historical Dilettantes Practicing Originalism

  by Joshua Zeitz

  "The functional problem with originalism is that it requires a very, very firm grasp of history — a grasp that none of the nine justices, and certainly few of their 20-something law clerks, freshly minted from J.D. programs, possess."

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  6/23/2022
  

  Adam Winkler on Thomas's Historical Cherry-Picking on Gun Rights

  Isaac Chotiner interviews law professor and legal historian Adam Winkler on the selective use of history in the New York state gun rights decision. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  6/5/2022
  

  History Suggests Gun Control Will be an Uphill Fight

  by Joanna Paxton Federico

  The National Rifle Association has succeeded in blocking popular gun control legislation since it overcame strong public support in the 1930s for national handgun registration in FDR's "New Deal for Crime." 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/26/2022
  

  Other Countries Figured Out How to Reduce Gun Massacres

  Australia, Britain and Canada took decisive and successful steps to reduce mass shootings since the 1990s. 

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• 5/12/2022
  

  Why Andrew Jackson Believed in Gun Control

  by Anders Walker

  Andrew Jackson loved guns, but his correspondence with John C. Calhoun from 1818 shows that he believed that the Second Amendment didn't guarantee an individual right to own them and that regulation was key to public safety. 

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• 6/5/2022
  

  There Oughtta Be a Law

  by Jim Zirin

  A veteran prosecutor weighs in on how American law must erase the distinction between "fully automatic" and "semiautomatic" weapons and ban the weapons that are used in massacre after massacre.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/5/2021
  

  Forget "Ghost Guns" and other Media Panics. Gun Capitalism is the Underlying Problem of a Violent Society

  by Andrew C. McKevitt

  A long series of moral panics over the dangers of specific guns (and their imagined users) has hidden the real danger to Americans: the profitability (and legality) of selling deadly weapons.

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• 11/14/2021
  

  Will SCOTUS Force Us All to Find Out How Polite an Armed Society Will Be?

  by Jim Zirin

  The Supreme Court's oral arguments in a challenge to New York State's gun laws suggest the court is willing to defy precedent and history and assume a power that the Constitution reserves to the people and states, forcing all communities to accept the concealed carrying of firearms.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  11/4/2021
  

  Why are Medieval Weapons at the Center of a Supreme Court Case?

  by Jennifer Tucker

  The history and traditions of English law inform American judicial interpetation today, including efforts to discern the functional meaning of the Second Amendment. A group of historians has briefed the Court that restricting dangerous weapons in public is long-established. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/3/2021
  

  If the Justices Really Value "Originalism," They Can Only Vote One Way in Guns Case

  by Saul Cornell

  "If the justices professing to believe in originalism are sincere about their method, this case offers the rare opportunity to prove that originalism is not always a prescription for results-oriented judging that follows a conservative political agenda."

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  8/28/2021
  

  How Racism Permeates the Politics of Guns

  Historians Carol Anderson and Yohuru Williams are featured in a new documentary examining the ways that American gun rights discourse has been filtered through racism.