Showing papers in "Journal on firearms and public policy in 1995"

Abstract: Many of the issues surrounding the Second Amendment debate are raised in particularly sharp relief from the perspective of African-American history. With the exception of Native Americans, no people in American history have been more influenced by violence than blacks. Private and public violence maintained slavery. The nation's most destructive conflict ended the "peculiar institution." That all too brief experiment in racial egalitarianism, Reconstruction, was ended by private violence and abetted by Supreme Court sanction Jim Crow was sustained by private violence, often with public assistance. If today the memories of past interracial violence are beginning to fade, they are being quickly replaced by the frightening phenomenon of black-on-black violence, making life all too precarious for poor blacks in inner city neighborhoods. Questions raised by the Second Amendment, particularly those concerning self-defense, crime, participation in the security of the community, and the wisdom or utility of relying exclusively on the state for protection, thus take on a peculiar urgency in light of the modern Afro-American experience.

Abstract: Since the late 1980s, proponents of severe gun laws have made the argument that gun control is a "public health" issue, and that medical research demonstrates the need for stringent gun controls. The chief proponent of the view that gun control is a public health necessity has been the federal Centers for Disease Control. In this article, the author examines the various "factoids" that have been produced by CDC research. (This article was originally presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Chicago, Illinois, in March 1994.)

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to trace the adoption of, and to investigate the interrelationship between, the Fourteenth Amendment and the Freedmen's Bureau Act, focusing particularly on the right to keep and bear arms. This will entail analyzing the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and other relevant proceedings in the Thirty-Ninth Congress. This study concludes with an overview of the concepts of both personal liberty and security as recognized in the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Abstract: This article analyzes news coverage of mass murders in and Newsweek for the period 1984-91 for evidence of disproportionate, perhaps politically motivated coverage of certain categories of mass murder. After discussing ethical problems related to news and entertainment attention to mass murder, the article suggests methods of enhancing the public’s understanding of the nature of murder.

Abstract: Perhaps no provision in the Constitution causes one to stumble quite so much on a first reading, or second, or third reading, as the short provision in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. No doubt this stumbling occurs because, despite the brevity of this amendment, as one reads, there is an apparent non sequitur or disconnection of a sort in mid-sentence. The amendment opens with a recitation about a need for "a well regulated Militia." But having stipulated to the need for "a well regulated Militia," the amendment then declares that the right secured by the amendment -- the described right that is to be free of "infringement" -- is not (or not just) the right of a state, or of the United States, to provide a well regulated militia. Rather, it is "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms." The postulation of a "right of the people to keep and bear Arms" would make sense standing alone, however, even if it necessarily left some questions still to be settled. It would make sense in just the same unforced way we understand even upon a first reading of the neighboring clause in the Bill of Rights, which uses the exact same phrase in describing something as "the right of the people" that "shall not be violated" (or "infringed"). Just as the Second Amendment declares that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed," so, too, the Fourth Amendment declares: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.Here, in the familiar setting of the Fourth Amendment, we are not at all confused in our take on the meaning of the amendment; it secures to each of us personally (as well as to all of us collectively) a certain right -- even if we are also uncertain of its scope.