Gun control

About: Gun control is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1211 publications have been published within this topic receiving 16516 citations. The topic is also known as: firearms control & gun law.

Scrutinizing the Second Amendment

Abstract: One overlooked issue in the voluminous literature on the Second Amendment is what standard of review should apply to gun control if the Amendment is read to protect an individual right to bear arms. This lack of attention may be due to the assumption that strict scrutiny would necessarily apply because the right would be "fundamental" or because the right is located in the Bill of Rights. In this Article, Professor Winkler challenges that assumption and considers the arguments for a contrary conclusion: that the Second Amendment's individual right to bear arms is appropriately governed by a deferential, reasonableness review under which nearly all gun control laws would survive judicial review. Professor Winkler's discussion is informed by the example of state constitutional law, where the individual right to bear arms is already well established. Forty-two states have constitutional provisions guaranteeing an individual right to bear arms and, tellingly, every state to consider the question applies a deferential reasonable regulation standard in arms rights cases. No state applies strict scrutiny or any other type of heightened review to gun laws. Since World War II, the state courts have authored hundreds of opinions using the reasonable regulation test to determine the constitutionality of all sorts of gun control laws. All but a fraction of these decisions uphold gun control laws as reasonable measures to protect public safety. If the federal courts follow this universal practice of the state courts and apply the reasonable regulation standard, nearly all gun control laws will survive judicial review. Moreover, as Professor Winkler argues, even if the federal courts decide to apply strict scrutiny, most weapons laws might still be upheld due to the overwhelming governmental interest in public safety. If so, then any eventual triumph of the individual-rights reading of the Second Amendment is likely to be more symbolic than substantive.

Police Beliefs and Attitudes about Gun Control

Abstract: (2005). Police Beliefs and Attitudes about Gun Control. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 269-283.

The Early American Origins of the Modern Gun Control Debate: The Right to Bear Arms, Firearms Regulation, and the Lessons of History

Abstract: The debate over gun control is hardly a new development in American history. Although modern opponents of gun regulation have asserted that gun control is a recent phenomenon, inspired by a racist and anti-immigrant agenda, that claim, like so many claims in Second Amendment scholarship, is false. The earliest efforts at gun control were enacted during the Jacksonian era, when Americans grappled with the nation's first gun violence crisis. A number of states passed the first laws intended to reduce gun violence. Then, as now, the enactment of gun control prompted a backlash, which led to an intensified commitment to gun rights. The embarrassing truth about the Second Amendment debate that neither side wishes to admit is that gun rights ideology is the illegitimate and spurned child of gun control.