This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Opponents of firearm regulation, energized by the landmark Bruen decision, have been paying closer attention to early America. They like what they don’t see. The ruling makes historical evidence—or, more to the point, the absence of historical evidence—dispositive in […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. In my last post, summarizing the findings of Still a Hollow Hope, I detailed how, due to constraints including the limited nature of constitutional rights, a lack of judicial independence, and the judiciary’s lack of power to implement its […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. As the author of Still a Hollow Hope: State Political Power and the Second Amendment, I have been given the privilege of blogging on this site. For my first couple of posts, I will give a bit of my […]
The scholarship highlighted in this post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. In a new paper posted to SSRN and forthcoming in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Nicholas Goldrosen examines the connection between marijuana legalization and gun restrictions premised on drug use. Goldrosen performs an empirical […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Compared to England, Britain’s thirteen American colonies imposed relatively few legal restrictions on the possession and use of firearms. However, technological limitations and production methods still placed serious constraints on the use and availability of firearms and created conditions […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Many legal scholars and most courts implementing Bruen’s framework have approached early American law as if the statutory record constitutes the sum total of the founding era’s legal traditions. Given that presumption, silences in the statutes become evidence of […]
[This is a guest post based on a paper that was presented at the 2023 Firearms Law Works-In-Progress Workshop. The Workshop is held each year on a home-and-away basis with the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center. This post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.] In 2021, Professor Adrian […]
[This is a guest post that is part of a mini-series on the history of firearms and gun regulation in early America.] The modern debate over the Second Amendment is premised on a perfect storm of historical error. It would be tempting to conclude that historical reality is irrelevant to modern Second Amendment jurisprudence given the trio […]
[This is a guest post that is part of a mini-series on the history of firearms and gun regulation in early America.] Over the past ten years, opponents of regulating assault rifles have argued that repeating firearms — some capable of firing 10 shots or more — were well-known and possibly common in eighteenth-century America. Using […]
[This is a guest post that is part of a mini-series on the history of firearms and gun regulation in early America.] When reconstructing the legal order of the early republic, the inclination is to start where we are now and then move backward along a straight line. Because statutes and appellate decisions at the […]
The Supreme Court is turning to history more than ever in deciding cases, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the Second Amendment. In 2022, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, a six-justice majority of the Supreme Court ushered in a new era of history-and-tradition-focused jurisprudence when it comes […]
On June 28, District Judge Carlton Reeves issued a decision in United States v. Bullock granting a motion to dismiss by a criminal defendant charged with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Judge Reeves found that the government had failed to offer sufficient historical support for the federal ban on felon gun possession (as […]
First, I wish to thank Noah Shusterman for reading Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment and writing a thoughtful critique. I am most appreciative. I also think it’s worth stating at the outset that, as I know from reading his own book about the Second Amendment, Professor Noah Shusterman and I agree […]
Carl Bogus’s 1998 “The Hidden History of the Second Amendment” was one of the first articles to bring slavery into the heart of Second Amendment scholarship. Bogus argued there that a need “to assure the Southern states that Congress would not undermine the slave system by using its newly acquired constitutional authority over the militia […]
This post is the second in our mini-series highlighting recent law student notes on firearms law topics (see the initial post here). William Reach of William & Mary Law School has written a note for the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal evaluating the continued relevance of Miller, Presser, and a militia-related right to […]
On May 10, Judge Robert Payne of the Eastern District of Virginia issued a decision in Fraser v. ATF invalidating the statutory framework that prohibits federally licensed firearm dealers (or FFLs) from selling handguns to individuals under the age of 21. Federal law makes it unlawful for an FFL to sell or deliver a handgun, […]
In a new article that is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Brandon Beck seeks “to create a holistic framework for thinking about the modern federal approach to firearms by situating it, historically and conceptually, as a fundamentally distinct era within the larger story of federal firearms criminalization.” Beck separates the […]
This is Part Two in a two-part series on the history of North Carolina’s 1879 concealed carry law. Part One summarized the historical context and legislative record surrounding the law. Part Two will address how the law was enforced in one North Carolina county in the decades after it was enacted. Enforcement of the 1879 […]
Contemporary debates over gun policy often occur in the shadow of history. As we previously described, the recent debate in the North Carolina legislature over whether to repeal the state’s 1919 law requiring a state-issued permit to purchase a handgun was framed by competing claims about why that law was originally enacted. Those who supported […]
Imagine that, tomorrow, a historian unearths a trove of documents including written notes from congressional debates in 1788 and 1789 regarding the proposed Bill of Rights—debates that no one knew had occurred. The documents include detailed statements by James Madison describing the intent and meaning of the provisions in the Bill of Rights, including the […]
On March 9, the Eleventh Circuit issued a published decision in NRA v. Bondi holding that Florida’s law prohibiting those under the age of 21 from purchasing (but not possessing) firearms is consistent with the Second Amendment post-Bruen. The case deals with a Florida statute enacted in 2018, after the February 14, 2018 mass shooting […]
An effort is currently underway in North Carolina to repeal the state’s requirement that anyone seeking to purchase a handgun first receive a permit from the local sheriff. The bill passed the house in late February and is on its way to the state senate, but the real question is whether it will garner a […]
First principles of federalism suggest that state-to-state variety is a feature, not a bug, of the American system. Each state can generally determine for itself how to exercise its police power and provide for public safety. However, recent litigation following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision suggests that differentiation among state weapons regulations may raise constitutional […]
In a November 16 panel opinion, the Third Circuit upheld the application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal ban on felon possession of firearms, to an individual convicted of making false statements when applying for federal welfare benefits. We covered that opinion in Range v. Attorney General here, and this earlier post by Dru […]
On February 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit heard oral argument in United States v. Quiroz to consider whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(n)—receipt of a firearm while under felony indictment—can withstand a Second Amendment facial challenge. Below, Judge Counts in the Western District of Texas had dismissed the government’s indictment, under Bruen, holding that “unlike the […]
