Gun Control

Gun Ownership: An Individual Right

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2019

First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History with the Gun by David Harsanyi (Threshold Editions, 2018); 321 pages. In David Harsanyi’s First Freedom, an entertaining jaunt through the gun’s important place in American history, the nationally syndicated columnist notes that the first real attempt to institute gun control was New York’s Sullivan Act. The impetus ...

Background Checks Violate Property Rights

by Benedict D. LaRosa June 18, 2019

In the early 1990s, I accompanied a friend and his 12-year-old son to a local gun show. My friend wished to purchase a .22 caliber rifle with which to teach his son to shoot safely and effectively. After much browsing, he found one at a reasonable price, one that suited both his needs and those of his son. The ...

The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment: Understanding the Court’s Landmark Decisions

by Brian Miller May 17, 2019

The Second Amendment is one of the most fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, and one of the most fiercely debated. Since it was first put to paper, legal scholars, gun owners and anti-gun activists have engaged in an endless discussion over the meaning and scope of the Second ...

Guns Rights and Property Rights

by Laurence M. Vance March 8, 2019

What is the relationship between gun rights and property rights? Because of recent actions by a state legislature, it might be best to look at this issue through the lens of church shootings. In October 2018, 11 people were killed and 7 injured in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In November 2017, ...

The Libertarian Angle: Venezuela and the Tyranny of Gun Control (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation February 27, 2019

Possession of firearms does not guarantee freedom, but it certainly doesn't hurt. The leaders of Venezuela surely understand this. FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Citadel professor Richard Ebeling discuss. Go to the podcast.

Libertarian Lessons: Gun Control

by Scott McPherson November 30, 2018

A free society respects each individual's right to pursue happiness. If our rights have been transgressed through some act of violence or fraud, it is the role of government to hold offenders accountable in a court of law, its rulings enforced by police officers and prison guards. But an officer of the law will not be available in a moment ...

Yet Another Government Weapon for Compliance and Control

by John W. Whitehead November 15, 2018

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana We never learn. In the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on ...

“The Birth-Right of an American”

by Scott McPherson November 1, 2018

Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American.... unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. — Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788 On ...

The IRA and Defensive Violence

by Scott McPherson October 1, 2018

Lo, we shall rise up. And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water. — Pink Floyd, “Sheep” In the 1960s, inspired in part by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Catholics in Northern Ireland began agitating for radical changes to a system they believed had been oppressing them for nearly half a century. Six counties in Ulster, in the ...

Are Europeans Re-Thinking Gun Control?

by Scott McPherson June 1, 2018

The civil unrest of the 1960s threatened many Americans, particularly those living in major cities, and the urban population was exploding. Rising crime and particularly armed violent crime shocked and scared voters, and for more than two decades the Second Amendment was the scapegoat — an anachronism, “misinterpreted” by “gun nuts,” deserving of repeal. Draconian gun laws, including gun ...

Gun Control in Britain Has Failed

by Scott McPherson April 16, 2018

Around 1920, the British Parliament in London began whittling away at the right to own firearms. Recognized at least from the days of king Billy and his Glorious Revolution, the right to arms was slowly but steadily eviscerated as any rise in crime or some shocking event invigorated anti-gun sentiment in a country marching to the Left. New “common ...

Gun Control Doesn’t Lower Crime (Or Make Us Safer)

by Scott McPherson April 10, 2018

The United Kingdom has historically enjoyed a low crime and murder rate, and has very strict gun laws. This fact has regularly been exploited by anti-gun politicians and cultural elites on both sides of the Atlantic to push the dangerous lie that gun control is necessary in the fight against crime and violence. But when the UK's crime rate – ...