by Building a body of legal scholarship that recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right was a goal that began over 50 years ago. This is what was known as the Standard Model. Early law review works include Of Arms and the Law by Dave Hardy and John Stompoly (1974 – Chicago-Kent Law Review), Handgun prohibition and the original meaning of the Second Amendment by Don Kates (1983 – Michigan Law Review), and The Embarrassing Second Amendment by Sanford Levinson (1989 – Yale Law Journal). Of course there were many more before the landmark DC v. Heller. The key was that they provided a body of scholarship that could be used to combat the idea that the Second Amendment only was a collective right.
As with all good things, copycats will take them, pervert them, and use them for their own nefarious purposes.
Thus Everytown Law is trying to make up a body of legal scholarship that is supportive of gun control by giving monetary awards to law students. Winners have included papers that support bans on carry on public transport, attempts to find ways to pierce the PLCAA, finding supposed historical precedent for control of gunmaking, and support for red flag laws. The winners have come from prestigious law schools including Stanford, Yale, and Duke among others.
The gun control industry has already captured much of “Big Law” and now is trying to do the same with law schools and law students. I have written about such a program at the University of Minnesota Law School that is working with that state’s anti-gun Attorney General Keith Ellison on gun control laws. You have the Duke Center for Firearms Law at Duke Law School which is trying to provide the gun control industry with scholarly research to make a case for more regulation.
As an antidote for this is the Firearms Research Center at the University of Wyoming College of Law. The Center is directed by 2A scholar George Mocsary. Firearms historian Ashley Hlebinsky is the executive director and legal scholar David Kopel is a Senior Fellow.
As with everything coming out of the gun control industry it bears keeping an eye on.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan