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 […]
The Sixth Circuit recently cleared the way for a district court case that will address the complicated interplay of gun displays, online speech, and qualified immunity. On January 20, 2021, the Grand Traverse County (Michigan) Board of Commissioners held a public meeting over Zoom where the Commissioners, including Ron Clous, were visible on video. During […]
Over the past several decades, two trends in gun regulation at the state and local level have come into conflict with one another. First, beginning in the 1980s, states increasingly adopted broad preemption laws that limit the authority of local and municipal governments to regulate firearms. As Rachel Simon describes, “[f]orty-five states have adopted express […]
Missouri enacted what it called a “Second Amendment Protection Act” (SAPA) in 2021. As I’ve written previously about the law, it not only bars state officials’ assistance with the enforcement of federal gun laws, but also purports to nullify some of those laws in the state. The law has faced a number of lawsuits, including […]
Sheila Simon, Assistant Professor of Law at Southern Illinois University School of Law, recently published a fascinating paper about gun sanctuary ordinances – On Target? Assessing Gun Sanctuary Ordinances that Conflict with State Law, 122 W. Va. L. Rev. 817 (2020) – which she was generous enough to discuss with me in our most recent […]
The term “sanctuary” has come to represent a broad sympathy for undocumented immigrants and a correlative antipathy for federal immigration enforcement. But the term now appears in reference to another hotly contested political topic: gun rights. So-called “Second Amendment Sanctuaries,” local jurisdictions passing resolutions “in opposition to gun safety legislation they deem to be an […]
In the past year, localities have been causing quite a stir by declaring themselves “sanctuaries.” But unlike the sanctuaries that grabbed headlines in the 1980’s, and then again in the post-9/11 crackdown on foreigners, or the ones that continue to draw the ire of President Trump, this recent trend isn’t about immigration enforcement. Instead, cities […]
The city is an increasingly common site of contestation for the right to keep and bear arms. Historically, much of gun regulation has been local, such as laws preventing the carrying of firearms into courthouses and schools or requiring that individuals obtain a license or provide a particular reason to carry a weapon. As a […]
A new sanctuary movement is sweeping the country. No, I am not talking about immigration sanctuaries, which have more and less been proliferating since the 1980s. Rather, I am talking about the emergence of Second Amendment sanctuaries, focused on protecting the right to keep and bear arms, and which have been adopted by more than […]
“Sanctuary city”, Wikipedia tells us, “refers to municipal jurisdictions, typically in North America, that limit their cooperation with the national government’s effort to enforce immigration law.” This is not an unreasonable definition. The term sanctuary city first came into modern political and legal parlance in the United States in the 1980s when a handful of […]
On the day I began writing this post, the Governor of Virginia signed into law a number of state-wide gun control measures passed by a newly Democratic General Assembly. For decades, that body had been dominated by Republicans, who had resisted strengthening gun regulations despite recent mass shootings and the shocking images of white supremacists […]
