Gun Control.

Part of the "Critiques of Libertarianism" site.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

Last updated 10/25/07.

Libertarians tend to be strongly anti-gun-control, more so even than the NRA leadership.

Libertarians seem to take two strategies. They make their own philosophical arguments for rights to bear arms, and they borrow the (often utilitarian) arguments of the NRA and some favored researchers such as Kleck.

The result is a hodge-podge of propaganda, laced with propaganda terms like "victim disarmament", recirculating long-discredited claims to justify positions as extreme as private possession of nuclear and biological arms.

Links

The Second Amendment Second Amendment Articles: Parts of the Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence site. These sections describe the history and court interpretations of the 2nd Amendment, contradicting NRA propaganda and a recent spate of "academic" law review publications. Essential reading.
John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime: An Alternate Q&A: Part of the Handgun Control site. Describes recent statistics that refute Lott's conclusions.
Anti-Standard Model brief to the US Court of Appeals, Fifth Ciruit, as amicus curiae with 52 amici co-signing, September 3, 1999, in US v. Emerson.: Brooklyn Law School professor David Yassky, mobilized a group of fifty-two scholars, including Bellesiles, Bogus, and Cornell, to sign his anti-Standard Model brief. Thoroughly debunks "standard model" pretensions.
Violence Prevention: The Physicians for Social Responsibility page containing overviews of their agenda, bibliography, links to organizations, educational resources, and a large number of fact sheets on firearms issues.
NEW 3/07: Review of "The Militia And The Right To Bear Arms": Daniel Smith lauds Uviller and Merkel's historical legal analysis of the 2nd Amendment, which thoroughly refutes Sanford Levinson and other individual rights claimants.
Gun Crazy: Constitutional False Consciousness And Dereliction Of Dialogic Responsibility: Andrew Hertz's much-cited Boston University Law Review article rebutting the NRA and the so-called "Standard Model" proponents. Important academic reading.
Militia - History And Law Faq: An excellent and comprehensive FAQ rebutting much of the misinformation about militias and the 2nd Amendment spread by the modern militia movement, libertarians, the NRA, and others. Part of the Militia Watchdog site.
How the NRA Rewrote the Constitution: Howard Friel, of Alethia Press, describes how successfully the propaganda of the NRA has out-publicized the real court decisions on the meaning of the Second Amendment.
Archive Of Tim Lambert's Postings On Gun Control: An excellent set of posts that tears apart many of the most popular claims of gun proponents. Kleck and many other heavily relied upon sources are thoroughly disassembled. Part of his Gun Control Page.
Do more guns cause less crime?: Tim Lambert's thorough critique of John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime. Shows clearly the errors of scholarship, measurement, statistics, and logic.
Regulation of Firearms: David Hemenway's New England Journal Of Medicine editorial presenting the public health rationale for regulation. "Much can be done to decrease the gun problem in the United States without changing the fundamental availability of firearms for most citizens."
NEJM Book Review of "More Guns, Less Crime".: David Hemenway's New England Journal Of Medicine review of John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime. See also the followup correspondence by Lott and Hemenway.
Myth: A gun in the home increases personal safety.: A brief review and defense of Arthur Kellermann et. al., "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home". Part of Steve Kangas' excellent Liberalism Resurgent: A Response to the Right.
Myth: The Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to own a gun.: Part of Steve Kangas' excellent Liberalism Resurgent: A Response to the Right.
Get Uncle Sam off my back! and other misguided impulses.: Gary Kamiya's review of A Necessary Evil" by Garry Wills. Praises the debunking of many Revolutionary Era myths of the Founders and Constitution exploited by anti-governmentalists.
The Rhetoric Of Gun Control: Andrew McClurg's American University Law Review Article that evenhandedly identifies informal fallacies on both sides of the gun control debate.
Shot Full of Holes: Deconstructing John Ashcroft's Second Amendment: A Violence Policy Center legal and historical analysis of the systematic errors in AG John Ashcroft's policy statement.
The Second Amendment In The Twentieth Century: Have You Seen Your Militia Lately?: Keith Ehrman and Dennis Henigan's University of Dayton Law Review detailing the origins, history, and judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment.
NEW 3/07: A New Paradigm for the Second Amendment: Saul Cornell criticizes much recent scholarship: "Second Amendment originalists have created something akin to an alternate history science-fiction fantasy[...]"

Print References

The links here are to Amazon.com, through their associates program, primarily because of the review information. Books without links are generally out of print, and can often be easily found at AddAll Used and Out Of Print Search. Good sites for bargain shopping for sometimes expensive new books are Online Bookstore Price Comparison and AddAll Book Search and Price Comparison. Both of those list applicable coupons. Another is BookFinder.com.

Dennis Henigan, Bruce Nicholson, David Hemenway "Guns and the Constitution": Aletheia Press 1995. A book-length FAQ of refutations of the gun-ownership propaganda and mythology promulgated by the NRA and gleefully parroted by libertarians. Essential reading. The "Guns And The Judiciary" section is now available online.
Gary Wills "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government": (Simon & Schuster 1999) A strong refutation of historical revisionist interpretations of the Founders and Constitution as supporting antigovernment positions.

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Copyright 2007 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ).
This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact.