(from sigsauer.com) Madison’s draft of the Second Amendment declares that “the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.  He could have left out “of the People” without loss of meaning if he intended to guarantee that natural right to all.  Alternatively, he could have defined the class of protected persons with some other term.  For example, the Third Amendment pertains to “the Owner”.  The Fifth Amendment read...

(from vice.com) [Ed: On May 2, DRGO received an email from a VICE reporter who said "I would love to tell you more about what I am working on and to hear your thoughts" about a proposed documentary about "firearms and dementia". Dr. Przebinda, our Project Director, replied offering to talk. No response. So I sent the longer reply below on May 9, taking the opportunity to point out some of the shortfalls in a documentary about women shooters, provided as an example of VICE's work: Fear and Lo...

[Ed: Kevin Murphy said that our articles inspired him to write this. We said that we want to repost it. We are, with his permission, and hope he will become a regular contributor. First published 4/24/19, updated 5/21/19 on GunGoal.com.] Suppose one is considering whether he/she should get a gun for home defense, disregarding all other factors such as 2A supporter and fun of shooting sports, one crucial determinant is how fast and reliable the cops could come to his/her emergency call. ...

(from usconcealedcarry.com) I drove down to the 5th annual United States Concealed Carry Expo which took place over the past weekend (May 17-19) in Pittsburgh. We routinely attend and speak at the Gun Rights Policy Conference each September, someone gets to the NRA Annual Meeting in April, and we’ve seen a member visit and review the National Shooting Sports Federation’s SHOT Show the past two Januaries in Las Vegas. This was only the second DRGO visit to this relatively new eve...

(linaahwmedia.blogspot.com) [Ed: The conclusion of the piece begun on Tuesday.] What lessons emerge from the pattern of such incidents, of which we’ve mentioned but four in vignette only?   First, is that if one party means to impose its will upon members of another party the former must effectively disarm the latter.  Such has been done successfully in diverse cultures throughout the world.  Overall, the results have too often been tragic.  American gun owners have learned the lesson...

(from dailyherald.com) [Ed: This is a piece rich in ideas and connections. It concludes on Thursday.] Frederick Douglass was loaned out for a year to Edward Covey in 1833 “to be broken”.  Prudent common-sense measures kept Blacks (slave and free) unarmed, or lightly armed at best.  “If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. . . I was somewhat unma...

(from crooked.com) Of course, this thought experiment presumes some definition of “common-sense gun laws”.  The phrase has no generally accepted meaning.  Pacifists might imagine an army with no guns.  Black Lives Matter might imagine an unarmed police force.  American gun controllers imagine an American army and police force with guns, but keeping guns out of the hands of nearly all ordinary people. To make this exercise meaningful to an American audience, let’s adopt the last of these ...

(from news.vanderbilt.edu) Ed: This discussion is not a policy proposal by DRGO, but does illustrate the kind of creative thinking sorely lacking in our "national conversation about guns".] In a recent blog post a couple of shooters wondered if they could pass the Texas live-fire qualification—blindfolded.  They succeeded with respectable, though not spectacular, scores.   (more…)