The content of this newsletter is produced by the Second Amendment Project at the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden, Colorado. The newsletter is electronically distributed by the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Washington. Thus, the Second Amendment Foundation will be given your e-mail address.

Dave Kopel's Second Amendment Newsletter. July 30, 2002.
Dave Kopel's Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence  Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.
http://www.independenceinstitute.org
=============================
Delivery of this newsletter comes courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation, in Bellevue, Washington
http://www.saf.org
=============================
Please visit Dave Kopel's website, containing articles on the Second Amendment and other freedom topics.
http://www.davekopel.org
==============================
Table of Contents for this issue
1. New from Kopel: NPR debate, NRAlive.
2. Eightteen State Attorneys General Defend Second Amendment
3. NRO's The Corner.
4. Major quotes: New York Times, recent scholarship.
5. Links

=============================
1. New from Kopel

Dave Kopel debates Michael Beard (Coalition to Stop Gun Violence) on the National Public Radio program "Justice Talking." You can listen to the one-hour debate in Real Audio.
http://www.justicetalking.org/getshow.asp?showid=221

NRA Live, July 24.
Kopel discusses his new textbook, "Gun Control & Gun Rights."
http://www.nralive.org/
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/GCGR.htm

Coming soon on National Review Online:
"The Goose and Gander Amendment."
What if the government weren't allowed to exempt itself from gun control laws?
http://www.nationalreview.com

========================
2. State Attorneys General defend 2d Amendment.

Eighteen state Attorneys General have written a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft commending his recognition of the Second Amendment as an individual right.
http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/pryorlet.pdf

The Attorneys General letter acknowledges that the right to bear arms protects public safety, and cites a Kopel/Gallant/Eisen NRO article on the failure of gun control in Great Britain.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment071800c.html

===================================
3. Kopel's writing for "The Corner" weblog on National Review Online

July 22, 2002
BAD IDEA [Dave Kopel]
Using the military for domestic law enforcement, as Tom Ridge and Joseph Biden are now proposing, is a terrible idea. Biden was part of the Congresses which have used the drug was as a pretext to repeatedly gut the Posse Comitatus Act (which forbids use of the military in domestic law enforcement).

As I detail in a chapter of a Cato Institute book, the loopholesin the Posse Comitatus Act have led directly to the deaths of manyinnocents who had nothing to do with drugs. This is becausesoldiers are warriors, not peace officers. Soldiers are trainedto destroy an enemy quickly and ruthlessly; this training isprecisely the opposite of training for peace officers, who aresupposed to minimize the use of force and to scrupulously respectconstitutional safeguards.

Biden is now claiming that the Posse Comitatus Act currently bars soldiers from shooting at terrorists who are about to use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. This claim is extremely dubious, because the Act simply forbids the military from being used for law enforcement; the Act does not forbid the military from being used for military purposes -- such as killing enemy invaders.

When Japanese planes started bombing Pearl Harbor, nobody asserted that the Posse Comitatus Act prevented the Army and Navy from shooting at the Japanese planes; nor could anyone credibly claim that the Posse Comitatus Act would have barred the Army and Navy from shooting down Japanese planes while they were flying over Oahu on the way to Pearl Harbor.

Notably, no one today is claiming that the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of an F-16 to shoot down a hijacked commercial airliner. Quite plainly, nothing in the Posse Comitatus Act today forbids the American military to kill enemy guerillas and irregulars who have entered American territory.

The best anti-terrorism changes in the Posse Comitatus Act would be to repeal all of the drug-war loopholes which were created in the 1980s. By relieving the military from the non-military job of marijuana interdiction, Congress would instantly makemore resources available for a genuinely military job: terrorist destruction. Book chapter:
http://www.davekopel.com/CJ/chap/AfterProhibition.htm
 

July 18, 2002
MAGAW RESIGNS [Dave Kopel]
Transportation Security Administration head John Magaw has just resigned, due in part to MSNBC's exposure of failures and cover-ups at the TSA. The resignation offers President Bush an opportunity to demand of the TSA the same kind of accountability he is demanding of private corporations, and to appoint a leader who will improve security rather than build a bureaucracy. In holding confirmation hearings on Magaw's replacement, Congress should insist that Magaw's replacement specifically repudiate Magaw's failed policies -- including misdirected screening of airport passengers and an anti-gun policy so ridiculous that even Barbara Boxer opposes it.

================================
4. Some recent citations and quotes

The Effects of Arming Pilots.
By Adam Liptak.
New York Times
July 14, 2002:

Other legal issues relating to the bill are more straightforward, such as how it would apply as pilots moved among states with conflicting gun laws. The federal government may override state laws on guns, said David Kopel, the author of a book on gun law and policy.

"In terms of Congressional power over domestic travel, that's an easy thing to do," Mr. Kopel said. "Their power to say a pilot can carry a gun to and from the airport, regardless of state law, is clear.

"The international question," he continued, "is a trickier one." A pilot defending the cockpit in a foreign airport would be subject to that nation's laws, he said, and immunity from lawsuits and prosecution there can only be achieved through treaties. The bill would require that the State Department "take such action as may be necessary to ensure that a federal
flight deck officer may carry a firearm in a foreign country when necessary to participate in the program."

James Forman
CHILDREN AND GUNS: ADVOCACY GROUPS SPEAK OUT,
12 The Future of Children 165 (Issue no. 2, Summer/Fall 2002)
published by the David & Lucille Packard Foundation.
http://www.futureofchildren.org/usr_doc/tfoc_12-2_full.pdf

Some recent journal articles with Kopel citations:

James Lindgren, Book Review FALL FROM GRACE: ARMING AMERICA AND THE BELLESILES SCANDAL, 111 Yale Law Journal 2195 (June 2002).

Barbara Stark, AFTER/WORD(S): 'VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN DIGNITY' AND POSTMODERN INTERNATIONAL LAW, 27 Yale Journal of International Law 315 (Summer 2002).

Richard C. Ausness, TORT LIABILITY FOR THE SALE OF NON-DEFECTIVE PRODUCTS: AN ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE OF THE CONCEPT OF NEGLIGENT MARKETING, 55 South Carolina Law Review 907 (Summer 2002).
 
Jennifer C. Evans, Comment, HIJACKING CIVIL LIBERTIES: THE USA PATRIOT ACT OF 2001, 33 Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal 933 (Summer 2002).

================================
Links Section:

International

INDIA: THOUSANDS OF WOMEN AGED 12 TO 35 RECEIVE SHOOTING INSTRUCTION
Navakal.Com
June 30
http://www.navakal.com/news/national/200206301024.asp

Where Gun Control Goes.
David Carr and Dale Amon
British farmer Tony Martin sued for protecting life and property during burglary.
http://www.coldfury.com/Entries/00000169.html

Additional information on the Tony Martin case:
http://www.guncontrolnetwork.org/uk7.htm
http://www.tonymartinsupportgroup.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/

england/newsid_2074000/2074077.stm

GUN-FREE UK: A COUNTRY IN THE CROSSHAIRS
BBC News Online
January 4, 2002
While Britain has some of the toughest firearms laws in the world, the recent spate of gun murders in London has highlighted a disturbing growth in armed crime.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1741000/1741336.stm

GUN-FREE UK: BRITAIN IS NOW THECRIME CAPITAL OF THE WEST
Sophie Goodchild Independent (UK) July 14, 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=314832

DID BRITISH GUN CONTROL WORK?
Iain Murray
Stats.org
June 21, 2001
http://www.stats.org/statswork/britgun.htm

==============================
Law

WISCONSIN SETS NEW SELF-DEFENSE KILLING STANDARD
DENNIS CHAPTMAN
Ledger-Enquirer.Com
July 24, 2002
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/3645891.htm

Allegheny County Sportsmen's League lawsuit against former Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge and the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police for maintaining a registry of firearm ownership in violation of Pennsylvania state law section 6111.4
http://www.acslpa.org/
Pennsylvania law
http://www.hhi.com/foaceducfund/

foacedufundfiles/PA-UFA/Sect6111-4.html

Flex Your Rights
How to properly assert your constitutional rights during police searches.
http://www.flexyourrights.org
 

=====================
Children/Zero Tolerance/Maximum Intolerance

Second-grader in Nixa, Missouri, is suspended for bringing a toy gun to class. Many parents object, and demand that the child be expelled.
http://www.kspr33.com/Global/story.asp?S=827196
http://www.nixa.k12.mo.us/ctwebpgs/ctmainpg.html
 

City of Cleveland outlaws airgun possession by minors and prohibits airguns guns in public places.
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/

summaries/reader/0,2061,550965,00.html

==============================
Politics/Activism

Coming Out of the Closet
Deroy Murdock
National Review Online
July 1, 2002
Report on Pink Pistols, the gay gun rights group.
http://nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock070102.asp

MICHIGAN CANDIDATES TAKE COVER ON GUN QUESTIONS
Dawson Bell
Detroit Free Press
July 5, 2002
http://www.freep.com/news/politics/guns5_20020705.htm

==============================
Terrorism

TWO WRONGS DON'T TAKE MY RIGHTS, PART II
The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) would empower public health officials to impose police state conditions that would make ordinary martial law look like the Second Continental Congress in comparison.
http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/other/USAPatriot.htm#MSEHPA

Homeland Security: Still Not Serious
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Fox News Online
July 11, 2002
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,57390,00.html

Arming Airline Pilots A Must
American Conservative Union
http://cf.townhall.com/rd.cfm?id=28392

Bush Flying Blind on Armed Pilot Issue
Dr. Michael S. Brown
NewsMax.Com
July 17, 2002
http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2002/7/16/202155

Guns in the Cockpit Mean Safe Passage through Unfriendly Skies
Kathleen Parker
Orlando Sentinel
July 14, 2002
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/orl-edpparker14071402jul14.column

Syracuse University TRAC center.
FBI wasting too many resources on non-terrorist issues.
http://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/index.html
http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/index.html
http://trac.syr.edu:85/tracatwork/articles/congress/senatejudcom020614.pdf

=============================
Scholarship/Research

A PRIMER ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
NELSON LUND, J.D., PH.D.
Virginia Institute for Public Policy
http://www.virginiainstitute.org/publications/primer_on_const.php#c4

JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS
SYMPOSIUM ISSUE
Guns, Crime and Safety.
Vol. 44, No. S2, October 2001
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/journal/contents/v44nS2.html

Articles in the symposium include:
Violence, Guns, and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis
By JEFFREY A. MIRON
       
The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths
By DAVID B. MUSTARD
       
Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime
By JOHN R. LOTT, JR., AND JOHN E. WHITLEY

The Impact of Banning Juvenile Gun Possession
By THOMAS B. MARVELL   

Gun Myths and the Warrior Spirit
Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D.
Newsmax.Com
July 10, 2002
Richard Poe's book, "The Seven Myths of Gun Control."

==============================
Al Qaeda delenda est!