Suggested Readings and Textbooks

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Joseph Blocher & Darrell A. H. Miller, The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (2018)

Saul Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (2008)

Dominic Erdozain, One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy (2024)

Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment: A Biography (2015)

David C. Williams, The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment (2003)

Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2013)

HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR THE RIGHT TO KEEP & BEAR ARMS

Carl T. Bogus, Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment (2023)

Patrick J. Charles, Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry (2019)

Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (2012)

David Kopel, The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition (2017)

Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (1996)

Noah Shusterman, Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment (2020)

H. Richard Uviller & William G. Merkel, The Militia and the Right to Arms, or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent (2003)

GUN POLICY & POLITICS

Patrick J. Charles, Vote Gun: How Gun Rights Became Politicized in the United States (2023)

Philip J. Cook & Kristin A. Goss, The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know (2d ed. 2020)

James B. Jacobs, Can Gun Control Work? (2004)

John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws (1998)

Jonathan M. Metzl, What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms (2024)

GUNS, RACE & POLICING

Carol Anderson, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (2021)

Anthony A. Braga & Philip J. Cook, Policing Gun Violence: Strategic Reforms for Controlling Our Most Pressing Crime Problem (2023)

Jennifer Carlson, Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement, and the Politics of Race (2020)

Alexandra Filindra, Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture (2023)

James Forman, Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (2017)

Caroline Light, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (2017)

THE GUN INDUSTRY, TECHNOLOGY & CONSUMER FORCES

Jennifer Carlson, Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy (2023)

Stephen P. Halbrook, America’s Rifle: The Case for the AR-15 (2022)

Timothy Lytton, ed., Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts (2009)

Andrew C. McKevitt, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America (2023)

Cameron McWhirter & Zusha Elinson, American Gun: the True Story of the AR-15 (2023)

Priya Satia, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (2018)

 CASEBOOKS, TEXTBOOKS & ANTHOLOGIES

TO COME

Joseph Blocher, Jacob D. Charles, Jody L. Madeira, and Darrell A.H. Miller, eds., The Second Amendment: Gun Rights and Regulation (forthcoming 2025)

Nicholas J. Johnson, David B. Kopel, George A. Mocsary, E. Gregory Wallace, and Donald E. Kilmer, eds., Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy, 3d ed. (2022)

Andrew Jay McClurg & Brannon P. Denning, eds., Guns and the Law: Cases, Problems, and Explanation (2016)

Joseph Blocher, Jacob D. Charles, and Darrell A. H. Miller, eds., New Histories of Gun Rights and Regulation: Essays on the Place of Guns in American Law and Society (2023)

Jennifer Carlson, Kristin A. Goss, Harel Shapira, eds., Gun Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics, Policy, and Practice (2018)

Jennifer Tucker, Barton C. Hacker, and Margaret Vining, eds., A Right to Bear Arms?: The Contested Role of History in Contemporary Debates on the Second Amendment (2019)