Citation

Kates DB. Cardozo L. Rev. De Novo 2010; 2010: 86-98.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

In this brief article I seek to limn the criminological underpinnings of the Second Amendment right to arms. Everyone except perhaps the most extreme libertarians generally agrees with prohibiting possession of firearms by convicted felons, violent misdemeanants and the mentally unbalanced--as our laws currently do.1 But an insistent and articulate minority argues for going further: to banning possession of handguns, or all guns, by the ordinary adult population. This is unfortunate, for central to their argument is a preposterous lie. The lie on which gun prohibitionists centrally rely asserts that most murders are committed by ordinary citizens because they happened to have a firearm in a moment of anger. This lie is repeated time and again in countless supposedly scholarly books and articles. For instance, the medical school professor and gun prohibition lobbyist Katherine Kaufer Christoffel solemnly asserts: "most shootings are not committed by felons or mentally ill people, but are acts of passion that are committed using a handgun that is owned for home protection." To the same effect, other mendacious gun control advocates commonly claim that....

Language: en