Second Amendment Commons^™

Regulating Armed Private Militia Gatherings: A Constitutional State-Level Proposal To Promote Public Safety In A Post-Heller World, Sean Tenaglia

William & Mary Law Review

“Yesterday, in my view, was one of the darkest days in the history of our nation.” President Joseph R. Biden spoke these words following the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol Building that left five people, including a police officer, dead. The mob that stormed the Capitol sought to prevent Congress from certifying then-President-elect Biden’s Electoral College victory. In the weeks following the riot, investigators began arresting rioters associated with extremist right-wing militia groups, such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. While January 6, 2021, can accurately be labeled a dark day in American history, the events …

The Second Amendment Has Become A Threat To The First, Diana Palmer, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

When Provocation Is No Excuse: Making Gun Owners Bear The Risks Of Carrying In Public, Eric A. Johnson

Buffalo Law Review

Markeis McGlockton, an unarmed 28-year-old African-American father of three, was shot to death in front of his five-year-old son by “wannabe police officer” Michael Drejka during an argument over parking. Because McGlockton had shoved Drejka before Drejka shot him, Drejka was convicted only of heat-of-passion manslaughter, not murder. This Article argues that the heat-of-passion defense shouldn’t be available in cases like Drejka’s—cases where the defendant was carrying a loaded gun in public at the time of the provocation and used the gun to kill his provoker. The heat-of-passion defense is a concession to the difficulty of complying with the law’s …

Red Flag Laws And Procedural Due Process: Analyzing Proposed Utah Legislation, John R. Richardson

Utah Law Review

In this Note, I analyze the validity of criticism against red flag laws based on procedural due process. I proceed as follows: In Part I, I discuss the background of red flag laws, the different versions passed among states, and the few constitutional challenges brought thus far. In Part II, I analyze the statutes’ validity under federal due process standards. I then specifically examine proposed Utah bills that failed to pass in previous legislative sessions. While providing recommendations, I argue that the legislation would likely pass constitutional muster. In Part III, I conclude that red flag laws are generally constitutional …

How The Gun Control Act Disarms Black Firearm Owners, Maya Itah

Washington Law Review

Through 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the Gun Control Act (GCA) outlaws the possession of a firearm “in furtherance of” a drug trafficking crime. The statute’s language is broad, and federal courts have interpreted it expansively. By giving prosecutors wide discretion in charging individuals with § 924(c) violations, the language enables the disproportionate incarceration of Black firearm owners.

This Comment addresses this issue in three parts. Part I discusses the ways early gun control laws overtly disarmed Black firearm owners. Additionally, Part I provides context for the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which coincided with the backlash to …

The Nonracist And Antiracist History Of Firearms Public Carry Regulation, Mark A. Frassetto

SMU Law Review Forum

This term, the Supreme Court will consider New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, a Second Amendment challenge to New York State’s concealed carry weapon licensing system. Bruen is the first major Second Amendment case that the Court will decide on the merits in more than a decade. Briefing by the plaintiffs and gun rights scholars has in large part focused on arguments that laws regulating the carrying of guns in public, as well as gun regulation more generally, were historically intended to discriminate against minority groups. This argument is consistent with a broader effort in the conservative …

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. V. Bruen: Brief Of Amici Curiae Former National Security Officials In Support Of Respondents, Barbara L. Mcquade

Appellate Briefs

Amici are former federal national security and law enforcement officials who have significant experience protecting our communities from acts of terror and domestic extremist violence. Amici represent a broad cross section of the national security community, including former career and politically appointed officials from the National Security Council staff, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, National Counterterrorism Center, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of State.<\p>

As experienced counterterrorism officials, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers, Amici understand that unfettered access to firearms poses a grave national …

Second Amendment Animus, Jacob D. Charles

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Guns Threaten The Public Sphere: A New Account Of Public Safety Under Heller, Joseph Blocher, Reva B. Siegel

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Resilience Of Substantive Rights And The False Hope Of Procedural Rights: The Case Of The Second Amendment And The Seventh Amendment, Renée Lettow Lerner

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Second Amendment Equilibria, Darrell A.H. Miller

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The State's Monopoly Of Force And The Right To Bear Arms, Robert Leider

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of The Second Amendment In A Time Of Lawless Violence, Nelson Lund

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Two Rights Make A Wrong: Armed Assembly Under The First And Second Amendments, Michael C. Dorf

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Second Amendment In A Carceral State, Alice Ristroph

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Quantitative Literacy And Guns, William Briggs

Numeracy

Briggs, William. 2017. How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis; (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press). 352 pp. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-8263-5813-4. E-book ISBN 978-0-8263-5814-1.

Quantitative literacy and statistics are just two of many disciplines required to understand the problem of gun violence in America. However, it’s also useful to appreciate their limitations in an issue that is so complex.

(Re)Framing Race In Civil Rights Lawyering, Anthony V. Alfieri, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Articles

This Review examines the significance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s new book, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, for the study of racism in our nation's legal system and for the regulation of race in the legal profession, especially in the everyday labor of civil-rights and poverty lawyers, prosecutors, and public defenders. Surprisingly, few have explored the relevance of the racial narratives distilled by Gates in Stony the Roa - the images, stereotypes, and tropes that Whites constructed of Blacks to deepen and ensure the life and legacy of white supremacy-to the practice …

The Gun Rights Movement And 'Arms' Under The Second Amendment, Eric M. Ruben

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

After Donald Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6 wielding weapons including tasers, chemical sprays, knives, police batons, and baseball bats, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) remarked that the insurrection “didn’t seem . . . armed.” Johnson, who is A-rated by the National Rifle Association (NRA), observed, “When you hear the word ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?” For many, the answer is likely yes.

This essay describes how the gun rights movement has contributed to the conflation of arms and firearms. In doing so, it shows how that conflation is flatly inconsistent with the most important legal context …

Judging History: How Judicial Discretion In Applying Originalist Methodology Affects The Outcome Of Post-Heller Second Amendment Cases, Mark Anthony Frassetto

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article aims to assess how the federal appellate courts have applied the originalist methodology in Second Amendment cases in the decade since Heller. It reviews how courts’ varying approaches to historical analysis—specifically, how courts have addressed what historical period to look to, how prevalent a historical tradition must be, and whether to address history at a high or low level of generality—can drastically affect the outcome of cases. As Justice Scalia acknowledged in McDonald, “Historical analysis can be difficult; it sometimes requires resolving threshold questions, and making nuanced judgments about which evidence to consult and how to …

Second-Class Rights And Second-Class Americans: Applying Carolene Products Footnote Four And The Court’S Enforcement Of Nationally Accepted Norms Against Local Outlier Jurisdictions In Second Amendment Enforcement Litigations, Mark W. Smith

Catholic University Law Review

In the years since deciding District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Supreme Court has largely abandoned the role of protecting American gun owners despite the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court has failed to use the jurisprudential tools at its disposal to ensure that the fundamental right to arms is protected as robustly as other enumerated constitutional rights. This failure is an acute one. And it is unjustifiable across a wide variety of jurisprudential methodologies, from originalism to the non-originalist approaches …

Guns And Their Place In The Us, Jacob Garibaldi

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Creating this paper was a wicked problem due to how deep of an issue the gun debate is in the United States. In the discussion of guns, there is a side that wants to abolish them, a side that believes in the right of the second amendment, and a middle ground where we can have guns in society with added in legal measures. Surely enough, those that are in opposition to firearms are persuaded due to the acts of violence and crime committed with them. Then there are those that use them in a way of self-defense. Through this paper, …

The Odious Intellectual Company Of Authority Restricting Second Amendment Rights To The “Virtuous”, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

To the woes of the victims of American over-criminalization, we can add deprivation of the suitable tools for self-defense during national emergency and civil unrest. Federal law disarms “unlawful users” of controlled substances (including medical marijuana), and imposes a permanent firearms ban on substantially all those with prior felony convictions. A notable exception is made for white-collar criminals with felony violations of antitrust and certain business practice statutes.

The constitutionality of these restrictions typically is founded on the view that one is tainted as “non-virtuous” for any serious criminal conviction, which includes any felony conviction. Using extensive sampling, this article …

The Militia: A Definition And Litmus Test, Marcus Armstrong

St. Mary's Law Journal

The United States Supreme Court, in its decision in Perpich v. Department of Defense, ruled that members of the National Guard are “troops” as that word is used in the Constitution. In doing so, the Court negated a long-standing, but obsolete, definition of the militia. However, this move away from an obsolete definition of the militia posed considerable difficulties that the Court was unable to rectify in its Perpich decision. In this Article, the author hopes to help rectify these difficulties by proposing four necessary characteristics that define the militia: first, the militia is a military force; second, the …

Enlightenment Thinker Cesare Beccaria And His Influence On The Founders: Understanding The Meaning And Purpose Of The Second Amendment’S Right To Keep And Bear Arms, Mark W. Smith

Pepperdine Law Review

Often hailed as the father of modern criminology, the writings of the prominent eighteenth-century Italian thinker Cesare Beccaria were deeply influential on the American Founders’ views of criminal law and theory. Courts, lawyers, and legal observers recently have begun to appreciate Beccaria’s influence, including on such timely topics as the pardon power, the theory of criminal sentencing, and the moral implications of the death penalty. But another topic Beccaria wrote about with great influence has been largely neglected: the individual right to keep and bear arms. This article seeks to correct this gap in the current scholarship surrounding Beccaria’s thought …

Second Amendment Background Principles And Heller's Sensitive Places, Adam B. Sopko

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Judges and commentators have widely acknowledge that history enjoys a privileged status in Second Amendment cases, but its precise role is undertheorized and rarely controls case outcomes. In particular, courts have been unable to decide "sensitive places" cases-- challenges to location-based gun laws-- in a manner that adheres to Supreme Court precedent because existing Second Amendment doctrine lacks a test for sensitive places cases that uses history and tradition in a principled way. This Article proposes a solution to address that problem.

An untapped source of guidance is the Court's takings jurisprudence. Interpreting their respective constitutional provisions, Justice Scalia observed …

Locked, Loaded, And Registered: The Feasibility And Constitutionality Of A Federal Firearms Registration System, Dylan J. Mcdonough

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note is organized as follows. Part I outlines the evolving history of federal firearm legislation and its relevance to registration. Part I also presents promising state-level (or equivalent) systems of gun registration that may inform a like federal policy. Part II establishes the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence and its potential application to federal firearms registration. Part III then details a lower court’s application of Supreme Court precedent to existing firearm registration laws. Finally, this Note concludes by articulating how Congress can and why it must institute a federal firearms registration system.

"Gunba Control" The Constitutionality Of Semi-Automatic Robotic Weapons, Steve P. Szymanski

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This piece examines how the Second Amendment, and its recent jurisprudential standards would apply to foreseeable semi-autonomous weapons in the private sector. Following an analysis of the landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller and its progeny, the work forecasts how the rules would apply to a home defense drone designed to defend at the exterior of a domicile, an armed “digi-dog” designed for self-defense in public, and an armed robot (“Gunba”) designed to operate entirely within one’s domicile. Ultimately, it concludes that an semi-autonomous robot, designed for in-home use, could conceivably receive Second Amendment protection.

Law Of The Gun: Unrepresentative Cases And Distorted Doctrine, Eric Ruben

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

There is a familiar saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The so-called Law of the Hammer takes a distinctive form in adjudication. If all judges see is one repeating fact pattern for a given area of law, they might perceive it as archetypical and build the law around it. If that fact pattern does not accurately reflect the field, however, the result can be analytical distortion in terms of both the choice of doctrine and its implementation.

This Article uses Second Amendment jurisprudence to illustrate this phenomenon. It reveals how District of Columbia …

A Brief History Of Public Carry In Wyoming, George A. Mocsary, Debora A. Person

Wyoming Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Second Amendment In A Carceral State, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.