"What Did "Bear Arms" Mean in the Second Amendment?" Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy,
6:2 [2008]. Co-authored with Joseph Edward Olson.
"Ethical Problems of Mass Murder Coverage in the Mass Media," Journal of Mass Media Ethics 9:1 [Winter, 1993-94] 26-42.
An examination of the way in which statistically disproportionate coverage of mass murders by Newsweek and Time encouraged at least one copycat crime, and may have caused others. First Place, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Ethics Prize, 1993.
"The Racist Roots of Gun Control", Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy 4:2 [Winter, 1995] 17-25.
A study of the racist origins of American gun control law, and its public policy implications for today.
"`Shall Issue': The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws", Tennessee Law Review 62:3 [Spring, 1995] 679-757.
An examination of how concealed handgun permit laws have been liberalized in a number of American states, and what has happened to murder rates after those laws were changed. Co-written with David Kopel. (This version doesn't include the graphs that appear in the print version, and may have a few other minor differences.)
"A Tale of Three Cities: The Right to Bear Arms in State Supreme Courts", Temple Law Review 68:3 [Fall, 1995] 1178-1241.
Examines the legal theories used by Oregon, Ohio, and Colorado courts when assault weapon regulations have been challenged under state constitutional arms provisions. Co-written with David Kopel and Scott Hattrup.
“Confiscating Guns From America’s Past”, Ideas on Liberty, 51:1 [January, 2001], 23-27. Examines the serious accuracy problems with Michael A. Bellesiles’s Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).
"Why Footnotes Matter: Checking Arming America's Claims, Plagiary 1(11):1-31 [2006]
Michael A. Bellesiles’s Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2000) enjoyed nearly universal critical acclaim and received a Bancroft Prize in History in 2001. Criticism of its accuracy (initially almost entirely from outside the academic historian community) eventually led to an unprecedented revocation of the Bancroft Prize, and Bellesiles’s resignation from a tenured position at Emory University, largely based on problems with Arming America’s use of probate inventories. Arming America’s problems were not confined to irreproducible probate inventory statistics, but appeared throughout the book. This paper gives examples of primary sources falsified to support Bellesiles’s thesis, and sources cited to prove a claim when all the cited sources either directly contradict the claim, or are irrelevant to the claim. The sheer volume of these errors—-and their consistent direction—-would seem to preclude honest error.
"What Did "Bear Arms" Mean in the Second Amendment?" Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy,
6:2 [2008]. Co-authored with Joseph Edward Olson.
Among the many heated controversies concerning the Second Amendment is the correct meaning of the phrase keep and bear arms. Those who argue that the original meaning of the Second Amendment was only to protect a collective right, either of the states to maintain militias, or perhaps of citizens to jointly form state-controlled militias, assert that bear arms refers exclusively or at least overwhelmingly, to the military carrying of weapons. Some have claimed that even keep arms was exclusively military in its meaning. While one might challenge the overly narrow focus on bear arms instead of the entire phrase keep and bear arms, those arguing for a collective right have thrown down the gauntlet by making this strong claim about just two words. This paper demonstrates that the Founding Generation did not understand bear arms as limited to military or collective militia duty but saw it as merely one way of expressing the concept of possession (as a modern speaker might say carry a gun).
"Pistols,
Crime, and Public Safety in Early America." Willamette Law Review, 44[2008].
Co-authored with Joseph Edward Olson.
There is currently a rather vigorous debate under way about the meaning of the Second Amendment. What arms does it protect? The District of Columbia, in its attempt to defend its 1976 gun control law, has argued that the widespread possession of handguns represent an especially serious public safety hazard, and that even if arguendo, the Second Amendment protects an individual right, it would not extend to handguns, which it characterizes as uniquely dangerous weapons that present unique dangers to innocent persons. This paper examines what the history of pistols in early America tells us about what was likely the Framers' original intent in protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms with no apparent limitations concerning handguns and concludes that, unlike radio or nuclear power, repeating firearms (of some sort) were not only foreseeable but eagerly expected.