first posted 990620
last major update 990620
minor change 2009/0215
Numerous books have been written on US gun policy, not to mention floods of articles and web sites. I have no intention of replicating them; the main purpose of this page is to offer some links. A secondary purpose is to tie in some of my own gun-policy writings.
Gun -- An individual firearm, eg handgun, shotgun, rifle, etc. (Not heavier weapons, eg cannons, often referred to as "guns" by the military.)
Pro-gun -- Tends to support a right of law-abiding individuals to possess and use guns for defense of themselves, their families, their homes, and the community.
Anti-gun -- Tends to oppose a right of law-abiding individuals to possess and use guns; a prohibitionist
Gun Owners of America (GOA)
http://www.gunowners.org/
(They snipe at NRA from the right.) They have an extensive list of other pro-gun links.
How Israel stopped school massacres:
http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/school.htm
An interview with Dr. David Th. Schiller, editor-in-chief of VISIER magazine.
Political scientist James Q. Wilson compared a generation of US and British public safety policy in "The Public Interest," #126 Winter 1997, pp. 3-14. He noted that in the late 1970s and early 1980s both the British and American electorates chose governments pledged to tackle crime. American governments, both national and local, started building the prisons needed to hold criminals, and we are finally being rewarded in the 1990s with a major decline in crime. In Britain, however, the Tory Wets ignored their campaign promises, and crime has continued to go up. Wilson gives the credit to America's more democratic political structure: voters know who to blame, and are able to vote out those who fail to perform.
A US Dept. of Justice report documents the explosion of crime in gun-prohibitionist Britain:
Great Britain
Britain used to be a prohibitionist "poster-child": strict gun-prohibition, and much lower homicide rates than the USA. Pro-gun scholars responded that Britain had always had a much lower homicide rate than the USA, even when Britain's gun laws were as permissive as America's (before World War I). In any case, the view of Britain as a peaceable society is now out of date.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cjusew96.htm
Why Britain's crime rate is worse than the US homicide rate
Book-length study (2002).
Joyce Lee Malcolm, Guns and Violence: The English Experience, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London England, 2002; cloth, 340 pp.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution:
"A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
A copy of the US Constitution, maintained at Cornell Law School
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html
The Second Amendment Law Library
"Legal scholarship on the Second Amendment"
has links to many excellent articles.
For example, it includes the "Emerson" decision by Federal Judge Sam R. Cummings, putting the Second Amendment in its correct historical context.
This "State's rights" interpretation would not be unique to the Second Amendment. If you read the First Amendment closely, you will see that it applies only to the Federal government ("Congress shall make no law ..."). In the early 1800s, some States (I believe Connecticut was one) subsidized ("established") local churches quite legally. Only after the ratification of the 14th Amendment (1868) were many Bill of Rights restrictions applied to State governments as well.
A State's-rights approach is probably the best, allowing the public to compare different gun policies, eg.:
Don B. Kates Jr. and Gary Kleck, The Great American Gun Debate, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1997.
John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Among other topics, this book summarizes Prof. Lott's widely-cited study, which documented a substantial drop in violent crime in states which allowed honest citizens, after passing a background check, to carry concealed handguns.
Gary Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Walter de Gruyter Inc., New York, 1991.
Extensive research on a wide variety of subjects. For example, Mr. Kleck shows that a ban on gun ownership (even if it could be enforced) is not likely to lower the suicide rate. In other societies where a specific suicide method is blocked (eg household fuel gas, guns), the suicide rate quickly resumes its former level, as determined suicides find new methods.
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