Australia has something under 20 million people living on a continent as large as the continental United States. It is known as a place where an overseas visitor might, in some regions at least, find a frontier atmosphere. There has been good historical reason for that. Australia has an Outback, unique wildlife, and a legendary spirit...
Author: David B. Kopel (David B. Kopel)
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Targeting Liberties
Imagine Time had not named FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley a “person of the year” but gave the award to the FBI bureaucrats who obstructed Crowley’s investigation of Arab terrorists. That would be no more ridiculous than Washingtonian’s naming of Charles Moose as one of its “Washingtonians of the year.” Moose is the Montgomery County police...
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Speak No Evil
On January 11, 2001, 40-year-old Terence Hunter was arrested by the New York Police Department for writing a letter to Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari, criticizing him for closing a community center in a black neighborhood. According to the New York Times, Hunter, a Staten Island resident, was charged with “aggravated harassment” because he...
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Gianni, Get Your Gun
One of the most important reasons for the sweeping victory of Silvio Berlusconi and his House of Liberty in the recent Italian election was concern for public safety, which ranks as the number-one issue on the minds of voters, according to some polls. Berlusconi promised to do whatever was necessary to make people feel safer,...
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Our Presidents in Song
Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr., share something: They are the only presidents since George Washington who were elected without having a campaign song written for them. Perhaps as a reflection of the vacuousness of their platforms, the two candidates used popular songs for their campaigns. George Bush surely made Woody Guthrie spin in his...
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Gore’s Double Standard on Firearms
Speaking in Atlanta this May, Al Gore joined the National Rifle Association and numerous police unions in supporting federal legislation to override state laws regulating the concealed carrying of handguns. Many states do not allow out-of-state, off-duty police officers to carry handguns. The Vice President wants to force communities to allow non-resident, off-duty visitors, who...
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Refusing to Do Something New
The Supreme Court attracts the most attention when it does something new, or does something so old that it seems new. For example, the Court’s decision last May declaring that Congress had no authority to enact the Violence Against Women Act under the guise of regulating interstate commerce received plenty of media attention. And since...
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A Collaborative Effort
“There was a time when the United States had heroes and reveled in them. There was a time when Andrew Jackson was one of those heroes, along with the men who stood with him at New Orleans and drove an invading British army back to the sea.” So begins Robert Remini’s The Battle of New...
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The Founders’ Reading of Ancient History
Why is the Second Amendment under such constant attack? One important reason is the depressing historical ignorance of most Americans, particularly of classical history. But suppose that modern students were required to read Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, and other classical historians. The Founders of the American Republic all knew the sad story of the Roman Republic....
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Terms of Revilement
Making a Killing, which may be the most influential anti-gun book ever written, could not have been better timed to the current wave of lawsuits against gun companies, since many of the legal claims closely resemble the charges that Tom Diaz makes against the gun industry. Moreover, the book will likely help shape public opinion...
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Damn Lies—or Statistics
The most important book ever published about firearms policy is John Lott’s superb More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. No other firearms book has reshaped the political debate so profoundly or its author been subjected to such a determined campaign of lies and libels. The intensity of the campaign against Lott...
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Arms and Thomas Jefferson
The greatest enemy of government power in the early American republic was Thomas Jefferson. It is no wonder, then, that Jefferson has been so aggressively vilified by the partisans of political correctness. Jefferson was likewise disdained by many in the 19th and early 20th century who, quite rightly, saw his ideas as an obstacle to...
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Welcome to Dodge City
On the American frontier of previous centuries, the possession of a firearm was often a key to survival. In this regard, the frontier of 20th-century America, although different geographically, is very much like earlier frontiers. As different waves of Europeans arrived in North America, each took a distinct approach to trading guns with the Indians....
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Disarming the Victims
More guns, more murder? This central tenet of the anti-gun movement has found strong new support from the movement’s intellectual superstar. University of California law professor Franklin Zimring. In Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, Zimring and long-time collaborator Gordon Hawkins make the most persuasive case ever for guns as the fundamental...
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Remember Pearl Harbor
Under the auspices of the United Nations, no nation is working harder to disarm American citizens than is Japan. With help from Canada and Colombia, Japan is the main engine pushing the United Nations to promote “small arms” controls which would obliterate the Second Amendment. There are three problems with Japan’s effort. First, it is...
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Gun Sense and Sensibility
When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated 30 years ago with a cheap imported handgun, I was among the many Americans who believed that America’s “gun culture” was out of control. To me, it seemed obvious that all guns should be banned. At the least, a psychiatric test ought to be required for anybody who wanted...
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Burglary and the Armed Homestead
Guns in the right hands make all good people safer—including people who don’t own guns. The higher the number of responsible people who have guns ready to be used for selfdefense, the safer the public is. The tremendous degree to which widespread gun ownership makes American homes safer from home invaders is one of the...
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Does God Believe in Gun Control?
“You are doing God’s work,” Brady Bill sponsor Charles Schumer remarked to Sarah Brady at a congressional hearing. And perhaps one could argue that if it took God seven days to make the world, people should not be able to buy a handgun in any less time. But did God really support the Brady Bill?...
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Child Abuse at Waco
“For the sake of the children” has emerged as one of the most dangerous phrases in American politics. President Clinton has invoked children’s alleged dependence on the federal government not just for his putatively child-oriented programs (such as the misnamed Department of Education), but also for issues that have only a tenuous connection to children,...