Dave Kopel’s Second Amendment Newsletter. May 30, 2002.
Dave Kopel’s Second Amendment Project is based at the
Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in
Golden, Colorado.
http://www.independenceinstitute.org
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Please visit Dave Kopel’s website, containing articles on
the Second Amendment and other freedom topics.
http://wwww.davekopel.org
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Table of Contents for this issue

1. New book!!! Gun Control & Gun Rights: A Reader and Guide.
2. New Kopel articles: John Walker Lindh’s specious
2d Am. claims. The misleading gun show ads from AGS.
3. Kopel contributions to “The Corner” weblog.
4. This month’s links.

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1. New book: “Gun Control and Gun Rights.” The first college
and graduate textbook on gun law and policy.
Published by New York University Press.
Also suitable for non-student readers.
Co-authored with Andrew McClurg and Brannon Denning.
Details and ordering links available at:
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/GCGR.htm

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2. New Kopel articles.

Lindh’s Rights. Second Amendment does not apply.
National Review Online. May 27, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel052702.asp

Gun Games. Truth is a casualty of the anti-gun cause.
The Americans for Gun Safety radio ads against gun shows.
National Review Online. May 21, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel052102.asp

For more on gun shows, see:
Should Gun Shows Be Outlawed?
McCain Bill Does Much More than Impose Background Checks.
Independence Institute, Issue Paper no. 1-2002.
With Alan Korwin.
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/IP/gunshows2.htm

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3. Kopel contributions to The Corner weblog on
National Review Online.

ZERO SENSE [Dave Kopel]
The Washington Times reports
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020513-9519286.htm
on a new zero tolerance atrocity: fourth grade boys punished
“for pointing their fingers like guns during a game of army-
and-aliens on the playground.” When the boys were brought into
the principal’s office, he interrogated them about whether
their families own firearms at own. The Cherry Creek school
district and the head of Colorado’s major anti-gun group
endorsed this interrogation. My own view, as quoted in the
article, was that the interrogation was “like asking what
political party your parents belong to, or how they voted,
or whether they’ve ever had an abortion. It’s none of the
schools’ business how parents exercise their constitutional
rights.”

Follow-up: After adverse publicity, the Cherry Creek Schools
announced that in the future, gun ownership questions will be
directed to parents, not children. I applaud this decision,
while criticizing the continuing policy against “finger guns.”
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020527-28337062.htm

LIMITED DIVERSITY
Gun Week reports
http://www.gunweek.com/0510issue/newjersey0510.html
that the Montclair, New Jersey, school board appears to be
clinging to the legally ridiculous position that its schools
can distribute political rally flyers from anti-rights groups
such as the “Million” Mom March while refusing to allow the
distribution of flyers from pro-rights groups such as
Moms for Gun Safety.
http://www.gunowners.org/op0209.htm
The New Jersey ACLU
http://www.anjrpc.org/montclair.htm
says, “This is a typical situation where a school has created
a forum for speech, and then discriminated based on the content
of the speech.” The very first word on the website of the
Montclair Board of Education
http://www.montclair.k12.nj.us/
is “diversity,” but apparently the celebration of diversity
does not go so far as to allow intellectual diversity.

SECOND MISREAD
Media coverage of the Department of Justice’s position on
the Second Amendment has been grossly misleading about
Second Amendment precedent. First of all, the theory that
the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right
only became a formal DOJ position under the Nixon administration.
Many
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel052901.shtml
other Attorneys General (including President Reagan’s) have
recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right. Second,
despite what Lyle Deniston and other mis-reporters claim,
the 1939 Miller case does not
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel053001.shtml
hold that Second Amendment rights belong exclusively to
militia members. Unmentioned in the Old Media articles
is the fact that in the last 20 years, all
six Supreme Court opinions
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev/35FinalPartOne.htm
(including concurrences and dissents) which mention the
Second Amendment treat the Amendment as guaranteeing an
individual right. (Spencer v. Kemna; Muscarello v. U.S.;
Printz v. U.S.; Albright v. Oliver; Planned Parenthood
v. Casey; U. S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez.)

SECOND AMENDMENT VICTORIES
Indiana and Ohio congressional primary elections yielded
a bipartisan pair of pro-rights victories. In the third
district, incumbent Republican Mark Souder, who has been
a pro-Second Amendment leader in Congress, easily turned
back a challenge from former Fort Wayne mayor Paul Helmke.
Souder won by approximately a margin of 5-3. In the 1998
Senate race, Helmke lost 64-35 to generally pro-gun
Democrat Evan Bayh. As governor, Bayh had signed legisation
restricting abusive antigun lawsuits. In Ohio, felony-challenged
Democratic incumbent Jim Trafficant was put in district with
incumbent Democrat Tom Sawyer. Trafficant elected to run
as an independent. Antigun incumbent Sawyer won only 28%
in the primary, losing to pro-rights state Senator Tim
Ryan, who won 41%. In both races, the NRA contacted its
members and other gun rights supporters, such as licensed
hunters and concealed handgun permit holders in Indiana.

TAKE COMFORT
According to a report from NewsMax.com, Dick Morris predicts
that “Hillary Will Be America’s Next President,” winning the
2008 election. Don’t worry though. In 1998, Morris predicted
that Hillary would never really run for Senate from New York,
and was just feigning interest in order to run for Senate from
Illinois later. During the 1998 campaign, Morris repeatedly
predicted that Mrs. Clinton would lose the New York race.
Morris also claimed that John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, John
Edwards, and Al Gore would “run, and they’ll lose.” Morris
added, “And it’s very hard once you lose a presidential race
to run again and be successful.” Really? George Bush 41,
Ronald Reagan (twice), Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Grover
Cleveland, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson all ran for
President, lost, and later won.

SWISS MILITIA IN WWII
Secret Passages, currently showing on the History Channel,
includes an important portion on Switzerland during World War II.
The overall theme of the series is underground tunnels and hiding
places, which in the case of Switzerland emphasizes the military
bunkers in the Alps. This one-hour segment of the series includes
fascinating portions on several European countries, with about
ten minutes on Switzerland. Interspersed with commentary by Stephen
Halbrook
http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/
and a Swiss military historian, the documentary shows numerous
still photographs of Swiss troops in training and being reviewed
by General Guisan as well as excellent original film footage of
Swiss Alpine soldiers on maneuvers. Some of the pictures in the
documentary come from Halbrook’s book Target Switzerland,
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/TargetSwitzerland.htm
which details how the Swiss system of militia and defensive
preparedness deterred a Nazi invasion during World War II.
Nothing like this has ever before been televised in the United
States. It also includes footage of Hitler meeting with his general
staff
and emphasizes the dissuasive effect of Swiss military strategy.
This theme includes the rifle in every home and a sniper
behind every rock. Check historychannel.com for scheduled showings.
A copy of the videotape is available from historychannel.com.
Specify “Secret Passages: Episode 5.”

DAMN EUROPEANS
Mark Steyn, writing for The Spectator,
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old?ion=current&issue=
2002-05-04&id=1824
argues that Europe is much more violent and mean-spirited than America.
Among his many excellent observations:
“It’s gradually beginning to dawn on US Europhiles that the
Continent has done everything the American Left has wanted
for years and it doesn’t seem to be working out. Thanks to
Erfurt and Nanterre, you’re currently outpacing the Yanks
at high-scoring gun massacres. At the last attempted US massacre,
at the Appalachian School of Law in West Virginia, there was a
gun-totin’ student [two, in fact] on hand to pin down the
would-be mass murderer until the cops arrived. But in
Europe-’a gun-control utopia,’ as the Los Angeles Times
sees it–there’s no one to stop the corpses piling up.”

GUN-SHOW TERRORISM?
Americans for Gun Safety is running television ads in Oregon
warning about “terrorists buying weapons at gun shows.”
As usual, AGS’s claims are somewhat overwrought, as detailed
in my recent Independence Institute monograph
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/IP/gunshows2.htm#II.%20Terrorism
on gun shows.

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4. Links

4a. Law and Politics

Dems abandon gun issue in 2002 races
The Hill, May 22
“Mindful that Vice President Al Gore lost the states of
West Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee in 2000 partly
because of his support for gun control, Democrats are backing
away from the politically sensitive issue as they head
into this year’s midterm elections.”
http://www.thehill.com/052202/gun.shtm

Documentary on bogus “child abuse” cases brought by
Janet Reno in the 1980s
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fuster/

Scott Gast, “Gun Control’s “Third Way”: State and Local
Gun Purchase Preference Plans and the Dormant Commerce
Clause” Virginia Law Review, March 2002 (not available on the
public Internet. Available in most law school law libraries.)
Article discusses local government plans to give procurement
preference to gun manufacturers which surrender to abide by
the terms demanded by the plaintiffs in abusive anti-gun
municipal lawsuits. The article concludes: “This ‘third way,’
however, places significant burdens on
interstate commerce. By subjecting the firearms industry
to potentially inconsistent and economically costly regulations,
and by extending their regulatory efforts well beyond the
borders of their respective jurisdictions, the Coalition
members place a significant burden on interstate commerce
that can not be justified by an invocation of the members’
interest in public safety.
. . .preference efforts are nonetheless impermissible u
nder the dormant Commerce Clause.”

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4b. Self-Defense

Airline Pilots’ Security Alliance.
Opposes federal policy making airplane
cockpits a safe zone for hijackers.
http://www.secure-skies.org

Women Can’t Be Gun-Shy About Defense
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
By Wendy McElroy
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,51452,00.html

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4c. History and Bellesiles

Bellesiles claims he had no assistance from graduate students,
and that he didn’t use computers. In response, a historian produces
testimony from a graduate student at Emory who spent most of
year going through probate records for
Bellesiles, and entering the results on a spreadsheet.
(See May 17 entry for this weblog.)
http://crankyprofessor.blogspot.com/?/2002_05_12_crankyprofessor_archive
.html

InstaPundit posts a follow-up by James Lindgren providing
further analysis of Bellesiles’s falsehoods about computers
and research assistants.
http://64.247.33.250/archives/week_2002_05_19.php#001089

“Pulped” Fiction:
Michael Bellesiles and His Yellow Note Pads
By Jerome Sternstein
Debunks Bellesiles’ assertion that a flood ruined
his probate records
http://historynewsnetwork.org/articles/article.html?id=742

Could Bellesiles’s Problems Undermine Gun Control?
By Don Williams
History News Network
http://historynewsnetwork.org/articles/article.html?id=741
Bellesiles’ work was used in a coordinated effort to
undermine the Standard Model of the Second
Amendment. The capstone of this campaign was a one-sided
symposium of the Chicago-Kent Law Review, recently
published as a book, The Second Amendment in Law and
History (New Press). This symposium/book prominent
featured Bellesiles, and almost every article/chapter
cited him.

Author loses grant name, keeps funds
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
by Jen Sansbury
May 23, 2002
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/thursday/metro_c3ce68dc
c6be702e0074.html
“The National Endowment for the Humanities has yanked its
name from a fellowship given to Emory University professor
Michael Bellesiles to write a second book about guns.”

NEH and Newberry disagree on Bellesiles grant
By David Mehegan
Boston Globe Staff
May 24, 2002
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/144/living/NEH_and_Newberry_disagree_o
n_Bellesiles_grant+.shtml

The Newberry Library complains
http://historynewsnetwork.org/articles/article.html?id=752
that when the Library named Bellesiles a
Newberry Fellow in April 2001, to
write the book “American Gun Laws: The Regulation of Firearm
Use and Ownership, 1607-2000″ historians had not raised enough
questions about Bellesiles for the Library to have
doubts about his credibility.
To the contrary, Clayton Cramer’s book-length expose
http://www.claytoncramer.com/ArmingAmericaLong.pdf
had been available on the Internet for many months.
Apparently, because Cramer doesn’t teach at a university
failed to examine Cramer’s manuscript,
which leaves no serious doubt that Bellesiles is a fraud.
Newberry’s snobbish refusal to read the critique of a historian
who is the published author of four American history books
suggests the Newberry Library is a victim of self-inflicted
blindness.

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Al Qaeda delenda est!