Americans have an ambivalent relationship to guns. The debate over the role of guns and gun regulations in American society tends to be acrimonious and misinformed. DeGrazia and Hunt bring the advantages of philosophical analysis to this highly-charged issue in the service of illuminating the strongest possible cases for and against (relatively extensive) gun regulations.
A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.
The gun control debate is more complex than we often acknowledge. What is often phrased as a single question -- should we have gun control -- Is actually made up of three distinct policy questions. First, who should we permit people to have guns? Second, which guns should be allowed? Thirdly, how should we regulate the acquisition, storage, and carrying of the guns people may legitimately own? To answer these questions we must decide whether (and which) people have a right to bear arms, what kind of right they have, and how stringent that right is. We must also evaluate divergent empirical claims about (a) the role of guns in causing harm, and (b) the degree to which private ownership of guns can protect innocent civilians from attacks by criminals, either in their homes or in public. Hugh LaFollette sorts through the conceptual, moral, and empirical claims to fairly assess arguments for and against serious gun control, and ultimately argues that the US needs far more gun control than we currently have in most jurisdictions.
You arm yourself so you're hard to kill. Know the law so you're hard to convict. Let's face it, the world isn't always nice. That's why you take steps to protect yourself and your family. Whether it be that shotgun in the corner, the sidearm on your hip, or the pepper spray you gave your daughter, you meet that fundamental responsibility. But if you're like most people, your preparations still lack a critical element. You still need to know how to survive the critical fight that looms after any defensive encounter: the legal battle. The Law of Self Defense provides precisely that critical, missing knowledge. This book includes not just the laws of all fifty states, but how the courts apply those laws. It's a plain-talk analysis that makes the law easy to understand for anyone, not just lawyers. Bestselling author, Andrew F. Branca, is not only a lawyer and internationally recognized legal consultant, but also a life-long member of the gun community--more than 20 years as an NRA Life Member and Instructor, an IDPA Master-class competitor, and a 2nd Amendment absolutist. Learn how to make fast, effective decisions and confidently handle life-and-death situations both tactically and legally. Read This Book And Learn the Powerful Legal Truth That Can Safe Your Life, Wealth And Personal Freedom
No topic is more polarizing than guns and gun control. From a gun culture that took root early in American history to the mass shootings that repeatedly bring the public discussion of gun control to a fever pitch, the topic has preoccupied citizens, public officials, and special interest groups for decades. The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know? delves into the issues that Americans debate when they talk about guns. With a balanced and broad-ranging approach, noted economist Philip J. Cook and political scientist Kristin A. Goss thoroughly cover the latest research, data, and developments on gun ownership, gun violence, the firearms industry, and the regulation of firearms. The authors also tackle sensitive issues such as the effectiveness of gun control, the connection between mental illness and violent crime, the question of whether more guns make us safer, and ways that video games and the media might contribute to gun violence. No discussion of guns in the U.S. would be complete without consideration of the history, culture, and politics that drive the passion behind the debate. Cook and Goss deftly explore the origins of the American gun culture and the makeup of both the gun rights and gun control movements. Written in question-and-answer format, the book will help readers make sense of the ideologically driven statistics and slogans that characterize our national conversation on firearms. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in getting a clear view of the issues surrounding guns and gun policy in America. What Everyone Needs to Know? is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies. Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.
Massad Ayoob draws from an additional three decades of experience to educate responsible firearms owners about the legal, ethical, and practical use of firearms in self defense-the armed citizens' rules of engagement. Deadly Force discusses: Understand the legal and ethical issues surrounding use of lethal force by private citizens Learn about the social and psychological issues surrounding use of lethal force in defense of self or others Preparation and mitigation--steps the responsible armed citizen can/should take "After forty years as a practicing criminal defense attorney, I know that what Mas says, teaches, and writes is the best, state-of-the-art knowledge you can get." ~Jeff Weiner, Former President, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
How ordinary Americans, frustrated by the legal and political wrangling over the Second Amendment, can fight for reforms that will both respect gun owners’ rights and reduce gun violence. Efforts to reduce gun violence in the United States face formidable political and constitutional barriers. Legislation that would ban or broadly restrict firearms runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Second Amendment. And gun rights advocates have joined a politically savvy firearm industry in a powerful coalition that stymies reform. Ian Ayres and Fredrick Vars suggest a new way forward. We can decrease the number of gun deaths, they argue, by empowering individual citizens to choose common-sense gun reforms for themselves. Rather than ask politicians to impose one-size-fits-all rules, we can harness a libertarian approach—one that respects and expands individual freedom and personal choice—to combat the scourge of gun violence. Ayres and Vars identify ten policies that can be immediately adopted at the state level to reduce the number of gun-related deaths without affecting the rights of gun owners. For example, Donna’s Law, a voluntary program whereby individuals can choose to restrict their ability to purchase or possess firearms, can significantly decrease suicide rates. Amending Red Flag statutes, which allow judges to restrict access to guns when an individual has shown evidence of dangerousness, can give police flexible and effective tools to keep people safe. Encouraging the use of unlawful possession petitions can help communities remove guns from more than a million Americans who are legally disqualified from owning them. By embracing these and other new forms of decentralized gun control, the United States can move past partisan gridlock and save lives now.
Who is sovereign in the United States? Is it the people themselves, or is it an elite determined to rule citizens who are seen as incapable of making choices about their own lives? This is the central question in the American gun-control debate. In this Broadside, David Kopel explains why the right to keep and bear arms has always been central to the American identity – and why Americans have always resisted gun control. The American Revolution was sparked by British attempts to confiscate guns. After the Civil War, the U.S. changed the Constitution to defeat the nation’s first gun-control organization, the Ku Klux Klan. When Hitler and Stalin demonstrated how gun registration paves the way for gun confiscation, which paves the way for genocide, Americans resolved to make sure it never happens here. Gun control is not an issue of left vs. right or urban vs. rural. The right to bear arms is crucial to prevent large-scale tyranny by criminal governments and small-scale tyranny by ordinary criminals – and to protect our Constitution.
