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A looming Supreme Court decision involving firearms and domestic violence will have wide-ranging implications on how gun laws are interpreted and enforced nationwide, and a Fordham Second Amendment expert may play a role.

Research from Saul Cornell, the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham, is included in the scholarship being published by the Fordham Urban Law Journal before the scheduled oral arguments in United States v. Rahimi on Nov. 7. In the case, the court will decide whether a 30-year-old law banning firearms for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders violates the Second Amendment on its face.

Just over a year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in another case (NYSRPA v. Bruen) that gun regulations must reflect the ways such laws were applied at the time of the Second Amendment, which led the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the ban on domestic abusers.

Saul Cornell, Ph.D. , the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History Photo by Gina Vergel

The Fifth Circuit said, well, domestic violence has been around for a long time. They didnt take away peoples guns. Therefore, you cant take away peoples guns.

But Cornell argued there is a good reason why guns werent taken away in the 18th Century. Although domestic violence is not new, at the time of the Second Amendment, domestic violence perpetrated with guns was just not an issue, because guns took too long to load and were not a good choice for impulsive acts of violence.

Theres a lot of complicated problems with how you would even begin to in good faith apply their method, Cornell said. Theres a huge opening for some kind of scholarship to give the court some direction, Cornell said.

The work being published includes statistical analyses, historical analyses such as Cornells, and descriptions of the ramifications of different legal decisions from some of todays most influential experts in the fields of gun violence, public health, gun regulation, and the Second Amendment. These scholars author amicus briefs, which judges rely on for insight, and serve as expert witnesses in court.

The Fordham Urban Law Journals editor-in-chief, Joseph Gomez, said he expects their work to be used as source material when the justices write their opinions in Rahimi. These scholars will be the most relevant source of expertise, he said.

The field of weapons and gun law historians is small, and Cornell is in high demand as an expert witness in firearms regulation cases across the country. He said he currently is involved in 20 active cases ranging from extreme risk protection order decisions to whether people applying to be foster parents should have to lock up their weapons.

Ive been working on gun regulation and the Second Amendment now since 1999, said Cornell. And because the Supreme Court last year issued this opinion that has created chaos in the lower courts, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. versus Bruen, it was clear to me and lots of people I talked to that since they changed the framework for evaluating laws, nobody knows how to implement the framework.

Before the Bruen decision in 2022, lower courts looked to both historical tradition of gun regulation and important government interest, such as public safety considerations, he said. But in the Bruen decision, the Supreme Court said public safety can only be considered if there were comparable laws at the time of the Second Amendment that took public safety into account. Cornell said this basically means you either have to find an analogous law, or at least a tradition, that seems to resemble the law in question today. And the big problem is life was very different in the 18th Century.

Lower courts must rely on the Supreme Courts guidance when interpreting gun laws. The pending Rahimi case provides the court with an opportunity to clarify how lower courts should apply the new framework laid out in Bruen, according to Kelly Roskam, J.D., the director of law and policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, who participated in the scholarship as well as the 2023 Cooper-Walsh Colloquium on Public Health, History, and the Future of Gun Regulation After Bruen that Cornell helped organize at the Fordham School of Law on Oct. 13.

The Fordham Urban Law Journal, Northwell Health Center for Gun Violence Prevention, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions co-hosted the event.

Cornell said, I know a lot of people in the gun violence prevention community, and many of them were concerned that if history is whats going to drive [the decision], does that mean all this great research we do about what actually is the problem and what is the solution is now irrelevant? It would be kind of crazy that they would just rely on what was known back then. I mean, thats usually not how we do things.

The Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision next June.

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Fordham Second Amendment Expert Could Help Shape SCOTUS ... - Fordham News

OPINION:

Hamas attacked as Israelis were wrapping up the seven-day Jewish festival of Sukkot on Oct. 7. As many as 1,200 Israelis and some Americans were murdered, thousands wounded, and hundreds more taken hostage. Hamas terrorists went into civilian areas and attacked defenseless people who were walking down the street or shopping in stores.

A Sept. 20 Jerusalem Post headline prophetically warned: Israelis should carry guns on Yom Kippur, police say. But as of 2022, only 148,000 Israelis carried permitted guns in public for protection just 3% of the adult Jewish population. Twenty years earlier, more than 10% of adult Jews in Israel had permits.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called the recent police statement dangerous. He echoed sentiments common among Democrats in the United States: Calling the citizens of Israel to come with weapons to the synagogue on Yom Kippur is not a security policy. It is dangerous populism.

Concealed carry is much more widespread in the United States than in Israel. In 2022, 8.5% of American adults had permits. Outside of the restrictive states of California and New York, about 10.2% of adults had permits. And these numbers dont even account for the fact that there are now 27 constitutional carry states where it isnt necessary to have a permit to carry.

California, with one of the lowest concealed handgun permit rates and the strictest gun control laws in the country, shouldnt hold itself out as a model for the rest of the country to follow. The periods after 2000, 2010 and 2020 show a consistent pattern: Californias per capita rate of public shootings is always much greater than in the rest of the country.

On Sunday Oct. 8, the day after the attack, Israel radically changed its policy on who could carry guns publicly. Today, I directed the Firearms Licensing Division to go on an emergency operation in order to allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves. The plan will take effect within 24 hours, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir posted on X.

In response to terrorist attacks for decades, Israel put more police and military to protect people, but they found that no matter how much money they spent, they couldnt cover all the possible targets.

Before Israel began letting civilians carry handguns in the 1970s, terrorists committed attacks in Israel almost entirely with machine guns. Afterward, terrorists usually used bombs.

The reason was simple: Armed citizens can quickly immobilize a gun-wielding attacker, but no one can respond to a bomber once the bomb explodes. Still, armed citizens have occasionally succeeded in preventing bombings.

Like their Israeli counterparts, American police recognize their own limitations.

A deputy in uniform has an extremely difficult job in stopping these attacks, said Sarasota County, Florida, Sheriff Kurt Hoffman. These terrorists have huge strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for a deputy to leave the area or pick an undefended location. Even when police or deputies are in the right place at the right time, those in uniform who can readily identify as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, Shoot me first. My deputies know that we cannot be everywhere.

Police1, the largest private organization for law enforcement officers, surveyed its 749,000 members and found that 86% of them believed that casualties from mass public school shootings could be reduced or avoided altogether if citizens had carried permitted concealed handguns in public places. An incredible 94% of mass public shootings occur in places where civilians are banned from having guns.

And 77% of Police1 members supported arming teachers and/or school administrators who volunteer to carry at their school. No other policy to protect children and school staff received such widespread support.

When a life-threatening crisis strikes, there might not be time for police to arrive. Amid such a massive assault by Hamas, it was simply impossible for the Israeli police and military to protect all civilians.

Unfortunately, some lessons are learned the hard way. If only more Israelis had been armed at the time of the attack, more of them would be alive today.

John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author most recently of Gun Control Myths.

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Second Amendment matters in a time of crisis - Washington Times

Continuing his push to protect hunter safety and Montanans Second Amendment rights, U.S. Senator Jon Tester today spoke with outdoor industry leaders and hunters in Billings to discuss his bipartisan law that requires the Department of Education to restore school districts ability to use federal resources for school archery, gun safety, and hunter education programs.

In Montana, safe and responsible hunting is a part of our outdoor heritage and Ill stand up to anyone who tries to get in the way of that,said Tester.When the Department of Education came out with this decision, folks in Billings and across Montana spoke up, and together we were able to get my bipartisan bill swiftly signed into law that will protect hunter safety courses and our Second Amendment rights for generations to come. Montanans sent me to the Senate to stand up for our rural way of life, and I wont let any unelected D.C. bureaucrat threaten our outdoor traditions.

Hunters ed is something thats woven into the fabric of who we are as a people,said Jake Schwaller, Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Board Member. As we have an influx of new people coming into our state to become part of this community, the ability to educate them and bring them up to speed on this long heritage that we hold is so important and our public schools are the place that we do that. Keeping the federal funding available is so crucially important So with a full heart from our 3000 dues-paying members and every hunter in Montana, thank you Senator.

Ive been hunting with my dad ever since I was five years old, and I completed hunters safety when I was twelve. I shot my first deer when I was twelve and that was only because of hunter safety,said Even Trewhalla, a young Billings hunter who has completed Montana hunter safety courses. I want to say thank you Senator Tester for advocating for hunter safety.

As part of his efforts to protect Montanans Second Amendment rights, Tester led the charge to push back against the Biden Administrations initial decision to strip funding from these longstanding safety classes. Tester quickly expressed his concerns to the Biden Administration in an Augustletter to theDepartment of Education. Tester then filed hisDefending Hunters Education Actand worked tosecure the bipartisan supportof Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and Mike Braun (R-Indiana). Senator Testers bipartisan bill was endorsed by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Boone & Crockett Club, National Wildlife Federation, Congressional Sportsmens Foundation, and Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

To drum up additional support for his bipartisan bill, Testerpenned a columnin Montana state-wide newspapers arguing that the Biden Administration had made a poor decision that will hurt thousands of students who benefit from these resources every year.

Tester thenspoke on the Senate floorahead of the final passage of his bipartisan bill and urged his colleagues to join him to defend Montanas way of life.

President Bidensigned Testers bipartisan bill into lawon October 6th, 2023.

As a proud gun-owner and strong supporter of the Second Amendment, Tester has repeatedly opposed banning assault weapons and will always protect the rights of law-abiding Montana gun owners.

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PHOTO RELEASE: In Billings, Tester Talks Impacts of his Law to ... - Jon Tester

The Center for the Study of Guns and Society at Wesleyan brought together historians, museum curators, legal scholars, journalists, filmmakers, and other subject-matter experts for the Centers second-annual flagship conference, Current Perspectives on the History of Guns and Society, which took place October 13-14. Through panel discussions, a film screening, and other sessions, the conference shed fresh light on the ever-expanding role of history in Americas contemporary gun discourse.

[See photos from the event.]

How have the uses and meanings of guns changed over time? asked Jennifer Tucker, professor of history and the Centers founding director. How does historical knowledge inform how we grapple with questions about firearms in society, culture, and courts of law? Today, as never before, there is a great contemporary demand for this kind of rigorous historical analysis.

Wesleyans Center for the Study of Guns and Society is doing unique and vital work to enrich our national conversation on firearms. The Centers annual conference connects experts from a huge range of backgrounds so we can learn from one another, said Brian DeLay, the Preston Hotchkis Chair in the History of the United States in UC Berkeleys History Department.

The history of firearms use, regulation, and place in American culture is a largely neglected academic subject. Yet since the Supreme Court handed down its watershed NYSRPA v. Bruen decision in 2022and, in effect, began requiring modern-day firearms restrictions to have regulatory counterparts in early American historyprofessional historians have become increasingly common in courtrooms that hear Second Amendment cases. On a panel entitled Use and Abuse of History in Second Amendment Litigation, historians spoke of logging seven-day workweeks in the wake of the Bruen decision, applying their expertise in cases pertaining to high-capacity firearm magazines, self-assembled weapons colloquially known as ghost guns, and other present-day issues without easy precedents.

The way that I have tried to approach it as an expert witness and a historian, instead of just trying to answer the basic questionwhats an analogous law to firearms on a subway?is to step back and ask a broader question and try to show the court the change over time thats happened, said Brennan Gardner Rivas, a historian and independent scholar. That context can make a big difference in sorting out some of the arguments that are just silly.

In another session moderated by CNNs Richard Galant, a panel of working journalists drew on their own experiences to share the global resonance of Americas relationship with guns as well as the ways in which reporters approach covering gun violence, from conveying its public health dimensions to weighing whether to publish images of its consequences.

Theres a deep, deep problem in gun culture in the United States that has little to do with law-abiding gun owners, said Mike McIntire, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The New York Times (and an avowed gun owner), who in 2013 co-authored a series of investigative stories on gun violence in America. It gets into a whole milieu of overlapping thingsnot just ideology but also the psychology behind why people desire certain kinds of guns to begin with, the marketing, the commercial aspects of it. In some ways, its kind of this unholy merging of the free market and politics and ideology.

As in the Centers 2022 inaugural conference, this years event examined firearms from a range of atypical angles, from the intentional design behind firearms exhibits in museums, to a deeper exploration of the role of faith in firearms history, to a screening of the 2023 film Good Guy with a Gun.

Discussions at the conference covered a variety of subjects related to guns in U.S. history from the colonial era to the present, including presentations by 15 eminent historians. For example, Jonathan Obert (Amherst) spoke on the markets and manufacture of 19th century small arms; Antwain Hunter (UNC Chapel Hill) discussed firearms, race and community in antebellum North Carolina; and Lindsay Schakenbach Regele (Miami University) explored some of the myths and realities of guns and westward expansion.

In another session, historians Jessica Dawson (West Point), Michael Grigoni (Wake Forest), and Jenny Legath (Princeton)all of whom are doing cutting-edge research on how religious identities shape individuals relationship with firearmsprovided much-needed historical and sociological context. I did not realize the degree to which the NRA utilized religious rhetoric to reshape its advocacy of firearms in the latter half of the 20thcentury, said Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of history and associate director of the Center for the Study of Guns and Society.

Historian Caroline Light (Harvard), whose research has traced the entwinement of the nations ideals of armed citizenship and concepts of race and gender, and Brian DeLay (UC Berkeley), a leading historian of the U.S. arms trade, presented research on the historical record of guns in 19th and 20th century U.S. history and law.

The conference also offered a glimpse of firearms-focused research underway at Wesleyan. Maryam Gooyabadi, assistant professor of the practice in quantitative analysis, detailed a range of firearms data analysis projects at the Hazel Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC) in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Guns and Society. Projects include analyzing representations of firearms in media; marshalling data from different federal agencies to explore the factors influencing gun deaths; and tracking technological advances in firearms by examining patent records.

The conference closed with a roundtable discussion on current and future initiatives with presenters and attendees, including presentations by epidemiologist Matthew Miller (Northeastern/Harvards Firearm Injury Prevention Center) on current public health research relating to the effects of extreme risk protection orders, and historian Renee Romano (Oberlin), on a new effort to activate exhibits to address gun violence.

As the Centers most recent conference showed, our reckoning with firearms is as old as the Republic and as recent as todays front page. I dont think we need to wait for some sort of far-out moment in the future where you can look back into the mists of time to understand whats going on, said McIntire, the Times reporter. Its happening to us right now.

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Center for the Study of Guns and Society Explores History's Growing ... - Wesleyan University

By Erik Wasson, Billy House and Steven T. Dennis Bloomberg

House Republicans have dispensed with Jim Jordan as their nominee for the U.S. speakership and now several more are preparing to enter the fray.

The new field began to take shape minutes after the party voted by secret ballot to rescind Trump loyalist Jim Jordans nomination to the leadership post.

Republicans plan to hold another candidate forum on Monday, allowing candidates time over the weekend to mount their campaigns, interim speaker Patrick McHenry said. Another nomination vote would be held as early as Tuesday.

Here are some of the lawmakers expected to try to claim the nomination:

Emmer, the partys third-ranking official, has begun making calls for a speaker bid, according to person familiar with the calls.

He has had a tense relations with some Donald Trump supporters, in part because he voted to certify Joe Bidens 2020 election victory. There also had been some criticism of him for leading the House GOP political arm in 2022, when the party picked up the majority, but a narrower one than expected.

The Oklahoma Republican has been waiting in the wings since former speaker Kevin McCarthys Oct. 3 ouster. He said Friday he would seek the speakership.

Hern, who chairs the 176-member Republican Study Committee, could win over some moderates as a more centrist alternative to Jordan, whose strong-arm tactics have backfired on moderates and more traditional Republicans.

The Florida Republican is a Trump acolyte and member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who has served as a surrogate for the former president on the campaign trail. He has described himself as a Trump supporting, liberty loving, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment Black man, and a person who will bring the fight to the swamp creatures.

Donalds forged a plan to keep the government open while cutting domestic spending, which more conservative members rejected.

A spokesman confirmed Friday he is running for speaker.

The House Budget chairman says hes seriously considering a run next week. Even before Jordans nomination was pulled, Arrington was calling colleagues to gauge his support in the fractious party, a Republican official said.

Arrington, who first came to Congress in 2017, has advocated deep cuts in federal spending to bring down budget deficits by $16 trillion over 10 years. Moderates have opposed his proposal and may be reluctant to back him as speaker.

Johnson, a former RSC chairman and a current member of the House GOP leadership team, is making calls to lawmakers about a potential bid, a spokeswoman confirmed.

The Louisiana Republican is a stalwart social conservative and member of Republican leadership team with a reputation for collegiality. He authored a Commitment to Civility pledge when he arrived at the Capitol in 2017 that was also signed by other incoming lawmakers.

The Georgia Republican surprised lawmakers last week when he challenged Jordan for the nomination, receiving 81 votes.

Scott, who served as class president for the Tea Party wave of Republicans elected in 2010, has moderated in approach during his career. He defied Trump when he voted to certify the results of the 2020 election. Scott challenged Jordan for the Republican nomination and said immediately after Jordans nomination was rescinded that he would run again for the job.

The Pennsylvania Republican, who first came to Congress in 2019, told reporters hes weighing a run.

Meuser has styled himself as a small-government congressman with the interest of taxpayers first and foremost, and hes used his experience overseeing Pennsylvanias tax system to push for reduced spending.

The Michigan Republican is a former Marine Corps three-star general and the highest-ranking combat veteran elected to Congress. Bergman, who first came to Congress in 2017, announced his interest in the speakers job earlier this week.

With assistance from Mackenzie Hawkins, Jonathan Tamari and Maeve Sheehey.

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A new field of would-be U.S. House speakers takes shape after Jim ... - The Spokesman Review