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Gun Politics, the political aspects of gun control and firearms rights, has long been among the most controversial and intractable issues in American politics. At the heart of this debate is the relationship between the rights of the citizen versus state's authority to regulate to maintain public order.

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Gun politics in the United States, viewed in its simplest form, addresses three questions. "First, does the Constitution permit federal, state, or local regulation of individual firearms ownership? Second, do such laws effectively and materially reduce violent crime? And third, what further regulations are needed?"

Key to this issue is the Second Amendment, which is interpreted by supporters of gun rights as enshrining an individual right, and by advocates of gun control as referring to a collective right."

Politics

History

The history of enactment of gun control legislation is characterized by repetitive cycles of popular outrage, action and reaction usually in response to the sensational shootings. The first modern gun regulation, the 1911 Sullivan Act in New York State emerged in reaction to an attempt to murder New York City Mayor William Jay Gaynor. The shooting deaths of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led to public outrage and the political action with enactment of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968. Supporters of individual gun rights have resisted nearly all these regulation efforts, often spearheaded by the National Rifle Association. This outrage-action-reaction cyclical pattern reflects an essential core value conflict at the center of the gun politics issue.

Lobbying in the United States
History
Topics
Major industrial and business lobbies
Major single-issue lobbies
Diaspora and ethnic lobbies
See also

The Gun Culture

In a seminal article, America as a Gun Culture, the noted historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the phrase Gun Culture to describe America's long affection for the gun, embracing and celebrating the association of guns and America's heritage. Regardless of one's political opinion about guns, the Gun Culture is an undeniable component of the gun debate.

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Political Lobbying

According to The Center for Public Integrity, 145 groups are registered as making Gun related filings to lobby Congress. The largest being the National Rifle Association, spending about $1.5 Million dollars per year, predominately through two lobbying firms, the WPP Group and The Federalist Group. Ranked by total filings, Pro-Gun lobbying exceeded Gun-Control lobbying by the ratio of approximately 3:1.

Measured in dollars, in 2006, Gun Rights political spending on Lobbying totaled $3,000,000 versus Gun Control spending of $90,000. A ratio of 33:1.

Political battle

Perhaps the first political battle over the right to firearms involved the rights of freed Negro slaves to carry firearms in the United States, ultimately resulting in court battles and the 1856 Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sanford: "...(Mr. Scott's petition) would give to persons of the negro race, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, …the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.". .

Politically, this case strengthened the opposition to slavery in the North, divided the Democratic Party on sectional lines, encouraged secessionist elements among Southern supporters of slavery to make even bolder demands, and strengthened the Republican Party, political forces with effect upon the Civil War.

Originally formed in 1871, after the American Civil War, to promote marksmanship skills among the general population, the NRA was mainly a shooting-sports association that rose to prominence from its nationwide promotion of firearms safety, training courses and certifications it offered local shooting clubs and their members. It became a powerful lobbying force after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which made gun control a national issue.

Other national gun rights groups generally take a much harder line than the NRA. These groups criticize the NRA's history of support for various gun control legislation such as the Gun Control Act of 1968, the ban on armor-piercing projectiles and the point-of-purchase background checks (NICS). The Second Amendment Sisters, Second Amendment Foundation, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, The Pink Pistols and Gun Owners of America are among the groups in this category.

While gun control is not strictly a partisan issue, there is more support for gun control in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. The Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party are the largest parties that completely support gun rights. Traditionally, regional differences are greater than partisan ones on this issue. Southern and Western states are predominantly pro-gun while coastal states like California, Massachusetts, and New York favor gun control. Other areas, including the Midwest, are mixed. Two states, Vermont and Alaska, require absolutely no licensing in order to carry a concealed weapon, forbid gun registrations or bans, and disallow local government pre-emption.

Notable individuals

The field of political research regarding firearms suffers from the same contention as the issue of the effect of firearm ownership on crime levels. Some influential individuals in the debate include (in alphabetical order):

Political arguments

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Disagreements range from the practical — does gun ownership cause or prevent crime? — to the constitutional — how should the Second Amendment be interpreted? — to the ethical — what should the balance be between an individual's right of self-defense through gun ownership and the People's interest in maintaining public safety?

Political arguments about gun rights fall into two basic categories, first, does the government have the right and authority to regulate guns, and second, if it does, is it effective public policy to regulate guns.

Right based arguments

A fundamental type of political argument about gun control is based on the premise that the government does or does not have the right and/or authority to regulate guns.

The meaning of the Second Amendment

The understanding of the Second Amendment is a touchstone of modern political debate about guns in American politics. The claim that the Second Amendment grants or protects a constitutionally based individual right to guns is a common theme of gun right proponents. For example, a study of the National Rifle Association publication American Hunter found thirty-four references to this claim in a single issue of the magazine.

The extensive emphasis on the meaning of the Second Amendment in modern political activity is reflected in the resultant public perception. A poll conducted by the National Rifle Association found that 89% of Americans believe they have a right to own a gun.

The claim that the Second Amendment does not grant or protects a constitutionally based individual right to guns is a common theme of gun right opponents. Robert Spitzer summarizes his opinion of United States Supreme Court precedence on this question:

"The Court in this case (U.S. v. Cruikshank, a pre-incorporation Supreme Court case) established two principles that it (and most other courts) have consistently upheld: that the Second Amendment does not simply afford any individual a right to bear arms free from governmental control; and that the Second Amendment is not "incorporated," meaning that it pertains only to federal power, not state power..."

According to Spitzer, the Second Amendment does not in any way restrict the States from passing legislation which regulates firearms. The vast majority of firearm laws in the United States are not federal, but local codes, and are not constrained by the Second Amendment

Right of Self Defense

While a range of views may be found among proponents of gun rights, most believe that the Second Amendment protects the right to own guns for individual self defense, hunting, target shooting. Gun rights supporters argue that the phrase "the people" applies to all individuals rather than an organized collective, and point out that the phrase "the people" means the same individuals in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th, and 10th Amendments. They also cite the fact that the Second Amendment resides in the Bill of Rights and argue that the Bill of Rights, by its very nature, defines individual rights of the citizenry. Many proponents of gun rights also read the Second Amendment to state that because of the need of a formal military, the people have a right to "keep and bear arms" as a protection from the government. The cultural basis for gun ownership traces to the American revolution, where colonists owned and used muskets equivalent to those of the British soldiers to gain independence.

Security against tyranny and invasion arguments

A position taken by some personal gun rights advocates is that an armed citizenry is the population's last line of defense against tyranny by their own government, as they believe was one of the main intents of the Second Amendment. This belief was also held by some of the authors of the Constitution, thought a right of rebellion was not explicitly included in the Constitution, and instead the Constitution was designed to ensure a government deriving its power from the consent of the governed.

The Declaration of Independence itself says when discussing the abusive British rule: "...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."

Thomas Jefferson wrote in defense of the Shays' Rebellion in a letter to William Stevens Smith (November 13, 1787), quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy,

"What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Yet, the legal scholar Roscoe Pound has said:

"(a) legal right of a citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted. ... In the urban industrial society of today a general right to bear efficient arms so as to be enabled to resist oppression by the government would mean that gangs could exercise an extra-legal rule which would defeat the whole Bill of Rights."

Opponents of this right of revolution theory argue that the intent of the Second Amendment was the need to avoid a standing army by ensuring the viability of people's militias, and that the concept of rebellious private citizens or rogue militias as a check on governmental tyranny was clearly not part of the Second Amendment. As historian Don Higginbotham notes, the well-regulated militia protected by the Second Amendment was more likely to put down rebellions than participate in them.

Critics of the 'security against tyranny' argument argue also that replacing elected officials by voting is sufficient to keep the government in check, although there are numerous examples in history of elected officials assuming absolute power, with little regard to laws. Personal gun right advocates put forward the Battle of Athens in August 2, 1946 as an example of citizens in desperate circumstances using firearms where all other democratic options have failed. Pro-gun groups argue that the only way to enforce democracy is through having the means of resistance.

The Civilian Marksmanship Program oversees some of these shooting competitions, it was created by the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act to promote rifle practice and firearms safety training for all qualified U.S. Citizens. Chartered by the Congress, its primary purpose is to encourage marksmanship skills among civilians with an emphasis on youth. It administers shooting competitions and the sale of surplus U.S. Army rifles, most frequently the M1 Garand.

Then Sen. John F. Kennedy recognized the intent of the founding fathers "fears of governmental tyranny" and "security of the nation" in his statement Know Your Lawmakers, Guns, April 1960, p. 4 (1960),

"By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia,' the 'security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms,' our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important."

Pro-gun rights groups rarely believe in the plausibility of an "instant" rebellion's success through traditional warfare. Those who believe that arms allow for successful rebellions against tyranny hold that Guerrilla Warfare is the method in which liberty could be once again (or even for the first time) be achieved.

Few people debate the applicability of the Second Amendment in conjunction with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which read, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" and "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Clearly, the founding fathers recognized that some rights were so clear and obvious that they needed no enumeration.

Public policy arguments

A second class of political arguments are founded on the premise, that if the government has the right and authority to regulate guns, that to do so is or is not sound public policy.

Importance of a Militia

Opponents of a restrictive interpretation of the Second Amendment point out that United States Code states precisely that the militia is all male citizens and resident aliens at least 17 up to 45 with or without military service experience, and including additionally those under 64 having former military service experience, as well as including female citizens who are members of the National Guard. (Note: previously, only female citizens who were officers of the National Guard were included in this definition; this was changed to include all female citizens in 1993.) However, this position ignores the fact that this reference to federal entities, specifically the National Guard, does not appear in U.S. Federal Code until 1903 and thus cannot be said to be concurrent with the original intent of Second Amendment. Some people argue about even the number of commas in the amendment. Also, there is considerable disagreement about the organized militia and the unorganized militia and their relationship to the Second Amendment, the general question being, "Does the right pertain to only organized, well-regulated militias or all citizens?"

There is a wide range of views regarding the Second Amendment. Some gun rights advocates argue that the right to arms for self-preservation pre-dates the U.S. Constitution, is one of the unenumerated rights codified by the Ninth Amendment, and is protected by the Second Amendment; such gun rights advocates argue that the Second Amendment does not grant the right to arms, but simply protects the right to arms. Some gun control advocates argue that the Second Amendment does not cover individual gun ownership; others argue that the right to own firearms rests on other grounds which render it subject to the full force of the state's police powers, while others argue for outright repeal of the Amendment.A wide range of views exists regarding the Second Amendment among gun control supporters.

Firearm deaths

Those concerned about high levels of gun violence in the United States in comparison to other developed countries look to restrictions on gun ownership as a way to stem the violence. Those supportive of long-standing rights to keep and bear arms point to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which some interpret as specifically preventing infringement of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms", independent of serving in a militia, as the means by which to stem the violence.

Within the gun politics debate, gun control advocates and gun rights advocates disagree on more practical questions as well. There is an ongoing debate over the role that guns play in crime. Gun-rights groups say that a well-armed citizenry prevents crime and that making civilian ownership of firearms illegal would increase the crime rate by making law-abiding citizens vulnerable to those who choose to disregard the law, while gun control organizations say that increased gun ownership leads to higher levels of crime, suicide, and other negative outcomes.

Relationships between crime rates and gun ownership

There is an open debate regarding the relationship between gun control, and violence and other crimes. The numbers of lives saved or lost by gun ownership is debated by criminologists. Research difficulties include the difficulty of accounting accurately for confrontations in which no shots are fired, and jurisdictional differences in the definition of "crime".

Some scholars, such as John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, say they have discovered a positive correlation between gun control legislation and crimes in which criminals victimize law-abiding citizens. Lott asserts that criminals ignore gun control laws and are effectively deterred only by armed intended victims just as higher penalties deter crime. Lott's work has been challenged by a number of scholars, and some of them hold that concealed carry laws do not reduce crime. His work involved comparison and analysis from data collected from all the counties in the United States.

Another researcher, Dr. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, estimated that approximately 2.5 million people used their gun in self-defense or to prevent crime each year, often by merely displaying a weapon. The incidents that Kleck studied generally did not involve the firing of the gun and he estimates that as many as 1.9 million of those instances involved a handgun. Kleck's research has been challenged by scholars such as David Hemenway who argue that these estimates of crimes prevented by gun ownership are too high.

Proponents of gun control frequently argue that carrying a concealed pistol would be of no practical use for personal self-defense, and gun rights advocates answer that if that were true, law enforcement would have no use for their guns.

The National Rifle Association regularly reprints locally-published stories of ordinary citizens whose lives were saved by their guns.

Homicide rates as a whole, especially homicides as a result of firearms use, are not always significantly lower in many other developed countries. This is apparent in the UK and Japan, which have very strict gun control, while Israel, Canada, and Switzerland at the same time have low homicide rates and high rates of gun distribution. Although Dr Kleck has stated, "...cross-national comparisons do not provide a sound basis for assessing the impact of gun ownership levels on crime rates." (Kleck, Point Blank, 191)

In a New England Journal of Medicine article Kellermann, et. al. found that people who keep a gun at home increase their risk of homicide

Florida State University professor Gary Kleck disagrees with the journal authors' interpretation of the evidence and he argues that there is no evidence that the guns involved in the home homicides studied by Kellermann, et. al. were kept in the victim's home. Similarly, Dave Kopel, writing in the National Review criticized Kellermann's study. Kellermann responded to similar criticisms of the data behind his study in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine Finally, another argument cited by academics researching gun violence points to the positive correlation between guns in the home and an already violent neighborhood. These points assert that Professor Kleck's causal story is in fact backwards and that violent neighborhoods cause homeowners to purchase guns and it is the neighborhood that determines the probability of homicide, not the presence of a gun.

In his book Private Guns, Public Health, David Hemenway makes the argument in favor of gun control and he provides evidence for the more guns, more gun violence and suicide hypothesis. Rather than compare America to countries with radically different cultures and historical experiences, he focuses on Canada, New Zealand and Australia and concludes that the case for gun control is a strong one based on the relationship he finds between lower crime rates and gun control. Other information from countries such as South Africa, Russia, and several other countries which forbid almost all individual firearms and have low rates of gun ownership, have much higher murder rates than the US, usually committed with simple knives, explosives, or improvised blunt-force weapons.

Firearms are also the most common method of suicide, accounting for 53.7% of all suicides committed in the United States in 2003 Japan's suicide rate is much higher, despite the strict gun control there.

For a more detailed discussion of the historical and current gun violence issues in the United States, see Gun violence in the United States.

Non crime related

Non-defensive uses of guns, such as hunting, vermin control, and recreational target shooting, often receive little attention despite arguably being the most common uses of privately owned firearms.

Security against foreign invasion

There is some historical evidence that an armed populace is a strong deterrent against a foreign invasion. Personal gun rights advocates frequently cite tyrants who feared invading countries where the citizenry was heavily armed or when these tyrants needed to disarm their own populace to be effective. For example, Adolf Hitler said (as quoted in his Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, April 11, 1942): "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so."

Historical evidence cited by these supporters of gun rights includes the fact that during the Pacific War, Japan rejected the idea of invading the West Coast of the United States due to the prevalence of armed civilians. As noted after the war by one Japanese Admiral, "We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand."

The Afghanistani Mujahideen countered well-equipped Soviet Armed Forces with ancient bolt action rifles. As noted by Major Keith J. Stalder, USMC, in 1985, "... the Lee Enfield-armed Afghans can often hit at 800 meters or longer range while the Kalashnikov-armed motorized riflemen are ineffective beyond 300 meters..". As Kenneth W. Royce has phrased it, 60,000 dead Soviets cannot all be wrong. Ultimately, the Soviets left in defeat, losing against mostly WW I and WW II bolt action rifles, while they themselves were armed with the latest weapons. Of course, the Mujahideen did have significant support from the West with Stinger missiles, but their bolt-action weapons were still essentially indigenous.

Prevention of genocide

Gun rights supporters also argue that an armed citizenry can prevent genocide. In the 2003 documentary Innocents Betrayed, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership advanced the claim that gun control laws have been a critical part of all genocides in the twentieth century. The documentary referred to laws restricting gun ownership to government officials passed in Nazi Germany by Hitler, the USSR by Stalin, and elsewhere. The documentary observes that in many cases, a leader with plans of dictatorship will often ban guns from the area he wishes to control, thus preventing any uprising that could ever threaten his reign. The evidence for this claim has been challenged by scholars who have pointed out that Nazi gun laws were less restrictive than those of the democratic Weimar government (albeit not for Jews, Gypsies, and those who the Nazis were to kill en masse later on).

This is not to say that there was no resistance against the Nazis. Several situations of armed resistance occurred, though they were in the minority of the time. A good example would be the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Firearm related political terms

  • Types of firearm: Should some types of firearms be regulated differently from others?
  • Criteria of eligibility: Are there criteria that disqualify a person from owning firearms? (Possible criteria include age, mental competence, firearm training, and criminal convictions)
  • Background checks: Should there be background checks made to verify eligibility to own a firearm? Who should make them, and should there be a waiting period before a firearm can be sold?
  • Licensing and registration: Should all firearm owners be licensed, and their firearms registered? If so, how may the licensing and registration information be used, and who should have access to it?
  • Concealed weapons: Should carrying concealed weapons be regulated? If so, should concealed carry be regulated separately from ownership, and if so, how?
  • Enforcement: Can gun-control laws be feasibly enforced? Should executive policy be to strictly enforce gun laws?
  • Storing: Should there be any regulations on how guns are kept? Should the state mandate the dismantling, unloading or locking of guns in storage?

The Courts and the Law

Supreme Court decisions

The Supreme Court has made decisions based directly on the Second Amendment a handful of times.

In three key cases dating from the pre-incorporation era, the Supreme Court consistently ruled that the Second Amendment (and the Bill of Rights) restricted only Congress and the Federal government from acting, but that those amendments did not restrict the states. Some legal scholars hold that since the Supreme Court has declined ample opportunity to review these decisions in the post-incorporation era, these decisions stand as "good law". . Other scholars hold that the Court's incorporation of other rights suggests that they may incorporate the Second, should a suitable case come before them.

There has been only one modern Supreme Court case that dealt directly with the Second Amendment, United_States_v._Miller. In that case the Supreme Court did not address the incorporation issue, but the case instead hinged on whether a sawed-off shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

Circuit Court decisions

A recent circuit court decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, overturned a federal gun control law on constitutional grounds. According to the majority:

"In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the holders of the right—“the people.” That term is found in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has never been doubted that these provisions were designed to protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion, interference, or usurpation. We also note that the Tenth Amendment—“The powers not delegated to the United Statesby the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”—indicates that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of distinguishing between “the people,” on the one hand, and “the states,” on the other. The natural reading of “the right of the people” in the Second Amendment would accord with usage elsewhere in the Bill of Rights."

Gun control laws

A patchwork of regulatory gun control laws exists at federal, state, and local levels, with the state of Illinois, Washington, DC, and the city of New York having among the more restrictive limits; New York's Sullivan Act was passed in 1911. Many states implemented criminal background checks or "waiting periods" for handgun (pistol and revolver) purchasers in response to the gun control lobby in the 1980s. See also: Gun laws in the United States (by state) and Gun law in the United States.

Fully automatic weapons have been restricted in the United States since the National Firearms Act of 1934. The only automatic firearms available to civilians are those manufactured before May 19, 1986. Private owners must obtain permission from both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATF) and the local county sheriff or local chief of police, pass an extensive background check to include submitting a photograph and finger prints, fully register the firearm, continually update the owner's address and location of the firearm, receive ATF written permission before moving the firearm across state lines, and pay a $200 transfer tax. This process takes approximately 6 months to complete. Additionally, the firearm can never be handled or transported by any other private individual unless the firearm's registered owner is present. Some states require state permission as well, and some states prohibit any sort of possession under any terms. Otherwise, automatic firearms are available to only police or military personnel.

The Clinton administration BATF study of illegal firearms in the black market estimated that as many as 4 million illegal fully automatic firearms had either been illegally smuggled into the USA or illegally constructed within the USA. No new legal full-autos have been manufactured for the civilian population since 1986, causing the economic rules of supply and demand to drive the prices of existing automatic weapons well above the cost of manufacturing and distributing them, making it impractical for most Americans to afford a legal automatic firearm even if they legally qualify for it.

In the U.S., the major federal gun control legislation is the 1968 Gun Control Act, passed shortly after the assassinations of Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King.

The act required that guns carry serial numbers and implemented a tracking system to determine the purchaser of a gun whose make, model, and serial number are known. It also prohibited gun ownership by convicted felons and certain other individuals. The Act was updated in the 1990s, mainly to add a mechanism for the criminal history of gun purchasers to be checked at the point of sale, and in 1996 with the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban to prohibit ownership and use of guns by individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.

See also

Notes and references

  1. Gottesman, Richard: Violence in America: An Encyclopedia, pp. 68, Simon and Schuster, 1999
  2. Gottesman, Richard: Violence in America: An Encyclopedia, pp. 68, Simon and Schuster, 1999
  3. Spitzer, Robert J.: "The Politics of Gun Control", Chapter 1. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995.
  4. Hofstadter, Richard: America as a Gun Culture. American Heritage Magazine, October, 1970.
  5. The Center for Public Integrity, National Rifle Association lobbying history
  6. The Center for Public Integrity, Guns, Ammunition & Firearms lobbying history
  7. The Center for Responsive Politics, Annual Lobbying on Ideology/Single-Issue database.
  8. The United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, "The Case of Dred Scott in the United States Supreme Court"
  9. Spitzer, Robert J.: "The Politics of Gun Control", Page 16. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995.
  10. Spitzer, Robert J.: The Politics of Gun Control. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995
  11. Gottlieb, Alan M.: The Rights of Gun Ownership. Green Hill, 1981
  12. ^ Spitzer, Robert J.: The Politics of Gun Control, Chapter 2. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995
  13. Wright, James D.: Public Opinion and Gun Control: A Comparison of Results from Two Recent National Surveys. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 455. (May 1981)
  14. Robert J. Spitzer, Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1980., author and professor of political science at the State University of New York, College at Cortland.
  15. Spitzer, Robert J.: The Politics of Gun Control, page 1. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995
  16. Spitzer, Robert J.: The Politics of Gun Control, page 39. Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1995
  17. Ehrman, Keith and Henigan, Dennis A.: The Second Amendment in the Twentieth Century: Have You Seen Your Militia Lately?, page 54. University of Dayton Law Review. 1989
  18. "The Federalized Militia Debate" in Saul Cornell's "Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect", April 7, 2000
  19. "Sources on the Second Amendment and Rights to Keep and Bear Arms in State Constitutions", Prof. Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School
  20. U.S. Code on General Military Law, Part I, Chapter 13.
  21. "It's Time To Repeal The Second Amendment", Max Castro, Miami Herald, May 24, 2000
  22. "Firearm-related deaths in the United States and 35 other high- and upper-middle income countries", International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 7, pages 214-221
  23. "The Seventh United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1998 - 2000)", United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
  24. Interview with John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws"
  25. ^ "What Are the Risks and Benefits of Keeping a Gun in the Home?", Gary Kleck, PhD, August 5, 1998
  26. Case histories of defensive gun uses, October 08, 2000
  27. "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home", The New England Journal of Medicine, October 7, 1993
  28. "Is My Own Gun More Likely to be Used Against Me or My Family?", Guncite.com, September 4, 2004
  29. "An Army of Gun Lies", Dave Koppel, April 17, 2000
  30. Kellermann letter to The New England Journal of Medicine, September 24, 1998
  31. "Private Guns, Public Health", David Hemenway, University of Michigan Press
  32. "International comparisons of criminal justice statistics 2000", Gordon Barclay & Cynthia Tavares, July 12, 2002
  33. "U.S.A. Suicide: 2003 Official Final Data", Suicidology.org
  34. "An International Comparison and Analysis of Japan’s High Suicide Rate", Kanako Amano, May 9, 2006
  35. "The Rationale of the Automatic Rifle", Massad Ayoob
  36. "The Air War in Afghanistan", Major Keith J. Stalder, U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, March 25, 1985
  37. See U.S. v. Cruikshank 92 U.S. 542 (1876), Presser v. Illinois 116 U.S. 252 (1886), Miller v. Texas 153 U.S. 535 (1894)]]
  38. Spitzer, Ronald J.: Lost and Found: Researching the Second Amendment, 2000
  39. Levinson, Sanford: The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637-659 (1989)
  40. Levinson, Sanford: The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637-659 (1989)

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