I suspect that even after McDonald, most gun controls will be upheld, either on the theory that certain kinds of gun possession are outside the scope of the Second Amendment as interpreted in Heller (e.g., bans on gun possession by felons), or on the theory that the gun control imposes only a slight burden on the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense and thus doesn’t “infringe[]” that right. (See here for more on that.)
But what about limits on gun possession by 18-to-20-year-olds? New York City totally bars gun possession by 18-to-20-year-olds. Illinois bars gun possession by 18-to-20-year-olds, except with the permission of a parent, and sometimes not even then. Many other states bar handgun possession by 18-to-20-year-olds. See N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00; N.Y. City Admin Code § 10-303; NYPD, Permits | Rifle/Shotgun Permit Information; 430 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. §§ 65/2(a)(1), 65/4(a)(2)(i) (barring gun ownership or possession by under-21-year-olds unless they have the written consent of a parent or guardian, and the parent or guardian is not himself disqualified from owning guns, which entirely bars 18-to-20-year-olds from possessing a gun if their parents are dead, or if the living parent or parents are felons, nonimmigrant aliens, mental patients, or otherwise disqualified from owning a gun in Illinois); Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§ 29-34, -36f (banning handgun possession by anyone under 21); N.M. Stat. § 30-7-2.2 (2004) (banning handgun possession by anyone under 18). Federal law doesn’t ban such possession, but it does bar gun dealers from selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds, which makes handguns available to 18-to-20-year-olds only by the good graces of a nondealer third party who is willing to sell to them.
As I noted, there’s a possible argument that gun possession by 18-to-20-year-olds is also outside the scope of the Second Amendment as interpreted by Heller, because historically the age of majority has been 21. But I doubt that this would work, because the pre-1970s cases that I’ve seen involving lesser constitutional rights for minors — lesser free speech rights, lesser religious freedom rights, and lesser criminal procedure rights — involved age cutoffs of 18 or less. Whatever setting the age of majority at 21 might have meant for purposes such as contracting, parental authority, and the like, it seems not to have affected those other constitutional protections. So my sense is that these laws might well be struck down, especially if courts take seriously the Court’s suggestion that “incorporation will [not] require judges to assess the costs and benefits of firearms restrictions and thus to make difficult empirical judgments in an area in which they lack expertise” and that instead “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government — even the Third Branch of Government — the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.”
RKV says:
10 USC 311 provides for membership in the militia for all able-bodied males ages 17-45 (and for some females) with a few exclusions. Nota bene: age limits identical the the first US militia act (of 1792). Can’t very well have a “well-regulated” militia when members can’t possess the equipment to perform their Constitutionally defined missions (Article 1 Section 8). Can we?
June 28, 2010, 6:04 pmBrett Bellmore says:
While the courts might articulate such theories, I suspect the actual theory in operation would be, “We’ll uphold every last law the Supreme court doesn’t specifically direct us to strike down, because we like gun control. And we, (The lower courts) can uphold laws faster than the Court can order us not to.”
June 28, 2010, 6:07 pmToday's Tom Sawyer says:
That’s a much better question…..how old was old enough when the drafters created the 2nd Amendment?
June 28, 2010, 6:15 pmRKV says:
The answer to your question, Tom, is 17.
June 28, 2010, 6:19 pmBart DePalma says:
Prof. Volokh:
How do you figure? After the extension of the Second Amendment right to the states, the other major holding in McDonald is finding that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and not “watered down.” Apart from the opinion’s noted exceptions concerning felons and the mentally ill, sensitive places like government buildings and reasonable restrictions on the commercial sales of firearms, all other restrictions should be subject to strict scrutiny requiring a compelling government interest and the least restrictive regulation.
As a criminal defense attorney, I have a handful of state laws which I plan to target as unconstitutional like denying the right to those with prior juvenile adjudications and injunctions against the right without hearing or evidence of actual danger.
I suspect that McDonald will have far broader reach than folks realize.
June 28, 2010, 6:27 pmKenneth C. Brooks says:
You guys just don’t get it. The right to possession of a gun is a fundamental right. We are not talking ownership. We are talking posession. The first line of attack will be those laws that ban the carrying of a loaded gun, like we have here in California. You can carry a gun on your person, but it can’t be concealed and it can’t be loaded. Therefore, like the First Amendment, step one will be the litigation to enable fast track review of any ordinance or legislation without an actual case or controvery based upon the chilling effect of an infringement of the right to self defense. Then you go after those ordinances and legislation that infringe the fundamental right. So I guess you are saying that 18 and 20 year olds don’t have a right to self defense. LOL.
June 28, 2010, 6:27 pmBC says:
Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I tend to agree with Brett. I find it striking that not even one of the Heller dissenters was intellectually honest enough to say, “I don’t agree with Heller, but if it’s a right then it ought to be incorporated.” This is all politics, not principled judging, as Stevens’ risible dissent makes abundantly clear.
June 28, 2010, 6:38 pmAsterix says:
At least where I live, it’s also illegal to buy pistol ammunition if you’re under 21. This leads to some rather silly in-store arguments regarding what ‘pistol’ ammunition is (usually around .22 LR.) I don’t believe any of these cases have discussed the right to have ammunition available and legal for purchase (presumably at non-punitive prices.)
June 28, 2010, 6:40 pmRKV says:
“The first line of attack” has already been filed by Gura. Sykes and Pena to be specific. Nordyke was already pending.
June 28, 2010, 6:42 pmNoah says:
“because historically the age of majority has been 21″
Back in 1971, somebody rewrote history.
26th Amendment to the US Constitution” The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
June 28, 2010, 6:58 pmRKV says:
1792 < 1971
June 28, 2010, 7:06 pmDilan Esper says:
How do you figure? After the extension of the Second Amendment right to the states, the other major holding in McDonald is finding that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and not “watered down.” Apart from the opinion’s noted exceptions concerning felons and the mentally ill, sensitive places like government buildings and reasonable restrictions on the commercial sales of firearms, all other restrictions should be subject to strict scrutiny requiring a compelling government interest and the least restrictive regulation.
There are many, many incorporated rights (i.e., they are fundamental), that are either per se rules (such as the jury trial right, cannot be abridged even if it would meet strict scrutiny) or are subject to lesser levels of scrutiny that strict scrutiny (such as abortion after Casey, unreasonable searches and seizures, the right of pre-trial detainees to not be punished), etc.
So one doesn’t follow from the other.
Honestly, I don’t think there are 5 votes for ANY standard of review, and that’s why you haven’t seen one from the Court.
June 28, 2010, 7:14 pmDilan Esper says:
Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I tend to agree with Brett. I find it striking that not even one of the Heller dissenters was intellectually honest enough to say, “I don’t agree with Heller, but if it’s a right then it ought to be incorporated.” This is all politics, not principled judging, as Stevens’ risible dissent makes abundantly clear.
Actually, I thought the dissents here were much better than they were in Heller, even though I agree with Alito’s ultimate conclusion. Stevens is EXTREMELY persuasive in knocking down the Thomas position that the Court should use the P&I clause, basically saying this is a stalking horse for all sorts of new judicially created rights. And Breyer’s dissent may be the best opinion he has ever written as a Supreme Court justice– it isn’t so much that his history is right, as it is that he basically has the Heller and McDonald majorities dead to rights in terms of overstating their historical claims and ignoring the conclusions of actual expert historians in favor of non-expert, ideological “lawyer’s history”.
In the end, I think there’s an individual right to bear arms because the text of the second amendment says so, and it should be incorporated under SDP because most of the rest of the bill of rights has been. But the historical claims being made by the Court are completely one-sided and contestable, prepared by advocates, not historians.
June 28, 2010, 7:19 pmJHF says:
The Second Militia Act of 1792 directed those age 18 and less than 45 to be enrolled in the militia. The lower limit of 17 came later.
June 28, 2010, 7:36 pmBC says:
he basically has the Heller and McDonald majorities dead to rights in terms of overstating their historical claims and ignoring the conclusions of actual expert historians in favor of non-expert, ideological “lawyer’s history”.
I thought the opposite. Breyer’s dissent was little more than a lengthy whine that the majority wasn’t persuaded by the historical revisionism of the Saul Cornells of the world. It was pathetic.
June 28, 2010, 7:39 pmDilan Esper says:
BC:
Bear in mind, to much of the historical community, the RKBA scholars are the revisionists.
That’s Breyer’s point. For better or worse, he’s always been a big believer in experts and expertise, ever since he was on the First Circuit. He’s saying that IF you are going make history a big part of constitutional interpretation, then you have to listen to experts because lawyers and law professors are always going to give you slanted selective advocacy posing as history.
Now, the solution to this is not to get so hung up on history, of course. But since the conservative wing is screaming about how important history is, the idea that you would do your history without consulting real expert historians, based on what lawyers say, is deeply problematic. Breyer’s absolutely right.
June 28, 2010, 7:52 pmBart DePalma says:
Dilan Esper says:
There are many, many incorporated rights (i.e., they are fundamental), that are either per se rules (such as the jury trial right, cannot be abridged even if it would meet strict scrutiny) or are subject to lesser levels of scrutiny that strict scrutiny (such as abortion after Casey, unreasonable searches and seizures, the right of pre-trial detainees to not be punished), etc.
I am unaware of any substantive right expressly guaranteed in the Constitution and found to be fundamental by the courts for which a lesser scrutiny is applied to its core guarantees.
The so called right to abortion is a legal fiction found nowhere in the Constitution which was never held to be fundamental by the courts.
It is true that intermediate scrutiny is applied to non-content based time, place and manner restrictions which only indirectly affect speech. However, one of the core guarantees in the Second Amendment is the right to bear or carry firearms. One does not usually carry firearms around the home, which implies that this guarantee is for public carry of firearms. Thus, time, place and manner carry restrictions go to a core guarantee of the Second Amendment and arguably require strict scrutiny. On the other hand, the Court has been careful to avoid the issue of public carry in Heller and McDonald, leaving this an open question.
June 28, 2010, 8:12 pmRKV says:
Experts like Michael Bellesiles for instance? I’ll take Hamilton in the Federalist, St.George Tucker or Blackstone over Howard Zinn. Just don’t confuse primary sources with historians. Joyce Lee Malcom’s work is seminal, accurate, and fair – not revisionist.
June 28, 2010, 8:15 pmFederal Farmer says:
Lawyers can’t read history books? The history is there, always has been. That’s why they call it history. Modern politically sensitive historians chose to ignore that history is what created the fiction that denied our fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
June 28, 2010, 8:29 pmBC says:
Not really. I mean, sure, there’s a very vocal group of historians like Cornell who have made it their lifes’ work to influence the scholarship in ways that are favorable to the anti-gun cause. But to suggest that these people represent some sort of mainstream? Uh, no; if that was the case they wouldn’t need to hold symposiums excluding people who disagree with them.
Except for the trifling fact that, well, he’s wrong. The majority didn’t “do [their] history” based solely on what lawyers say, without consulting real expert historians. Both the majority opinion and Thomas’ concurrence contain voluminous references not only to scholarship from honest-to-goodness historians, but to original sources. The problem for Breyer is that this isn’t, to use your term, “contestable” — at least, not to any significant extent. A fair-minded review of all the relevent, non-partisan historical scholarship largely compels the majority’s conclusions. Thus Breyer is left to pretend that anti-gun mythology deserves the same weight as actual history, and whine that the majority is guilty of not listening to experts.
June 28, 2010, 9:14 pmMatthew Carberry says:
Not being uppity Mr. Volokh, but care to list (or give the total number of) the “many other states” that bar mere possession at 18? If it’s not a clear majority and particularly if they are restrictive states (Illinois and New York or the rest of New England) in most other ways I’m not sure that particular restriction is meaningful in and of itself as opposed to merely being symptomatic of a general anti-gun tenor in that state.
Admittedly I’m a Westerner, and an Alaskan to boot, and I in turn do assume you’ve done your homework, but that seems wrong to me based on most states I’ve ever bothered to check.
June 28, 2010, 9:14 pmDilan Esper says:
I am unaware of any substantive right expressly guaranteed in the Constitution and found to be fundamental by the courts for which a lesser scrutiny is applied to its core guarantees. The so called right to abortion is a legal fiction found nowhere in the Constitution which was never held to be fundamental by the courts.
This is Humpty Dumptyism. Bart changes the definitions of common terms and then says under his definitions, there’s no fundamental rights that don’t get strict scrutiny.
I will repeat, again, that the jury trial right is fundamental, and doesn’t get strict scrutiny, it’s per se. The right against unreasonable searches and seizures is fundamental, and searches are reviewed for reasonableness, not whether they are necessary to uphold a compelling state interest. The right of a pre-trial detainee not to be abused at the lock-up is fundamental, and is subject to rational basis review. Finally, the right to an abortion, which whether Bart likes it or not is the law of the land as decided by nine people who have both more intelligence and more authority than he has, is reviewed under an undue burden standard.
Fundamental right only sometimes = strict scrutiny.
June 28, 2010, 9:24 pmDilan Esper says:
Experts like Michael Bellesiles for instance? I’ll take Hamilton in the Federalist, St.George Tucker or Blackstone over Howard Zinn.
This is just right wing anti-intellectualism– whether or not the people you mention did good history, that doesn’t make Scalia, Thomas, or conservative lawyers into historians.
Lawyers can’t read history books? The history is there, always has been.
This is also right wing anti-intellectualism– historians use scientific techniques and are subject to peer review as they develop better and better hypotheses about the past. It’s not just a matter of reading books or having your clerks look some things up.
Except for the trifling fact that, well, he’s wrong. The majority didn’t “do [their] history” based solely on what lawyers say, without consulting real expert historians. Both the majority opinion and Thomas’ concurrence contain voluminous references not only to scholarship from honest-to-goodness historians, but to original sources. The problem for Breyer is that this isn’t, to use your term, “contestable” — at least, not to any significant extent.
Of course it is. Scalia cherry-picked in Heller, and hundreds of historians– including conservative ones– said so.
And that’s the thing. It’s perfectly fine for lawyers to cherry-pick. It’s our job. But it’s a bad way to do history.
June 28, 2010, 9:30 pmHarvey Mosley says:
IANAL, so I apologize if this is a stupid question. Are there any enumerated, incorporated, fundamental rights that have the enumerated portion (keep and bear arms, for example) subject to less than strict scrutiny?
June 28, 2010, 9:31 pmBrett Bellmore says:
Ayup. That’s why Bellesiles won the Bancroft award, and kept it for so long: Because professional historians are towers of cautious objectivity compared to laymen.
The truth is that any profession whose output has political implications becomes embroiled in politics, and historians are conspicuously not an exception. Anti-intellectualism? I’d say the appeal to authority is more anti-intellectual than the belief that anybody who takes the time can come to an informed opinion.
June 28, 2010, 9:43 pmRKV says:
Dilan, I have a degree in History. I know more about historiography than you do apparently. As for your arguments, they are lawyerly, which in other words means they are bs. Name calling (“anti-intellectual”) is appropriate when the historians were frauds – e.g. Bellesiles. Back to historiography for lawyers – you have to “cherry-pick” that is to reduce the data to representative samples somehow, or there’d be more data than humans could absorb. The fidelity with which you do that is the issue old son. Personally, having read the materials (Heller, McDonald, all the amicus briefs on both sides, The Federalist, Joyce Lee Malcom, Hardy, Cramer, St. George Tucker, Blackstone and many others) I think that Scalia and Alito did OK with the history part. Thomas did even better than those two justices in McDonald if you could be bothered to read his concurrence.
June 28, 2010, 9:53 pmReaderY says:
Why isn’t membership in the militia akin to voting?
June 28, 2010, 10:01 pmRKV says:
Reader, for the current legal definition of the militia and of militia membership see 10 USC 311 (current federal law, last revised in 1956)…
TITLE 10 > Subtitle A > PART I > CHAPTER 13 > § 311
§ 311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
June 28, 2010, 10:07 pm(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
BC says:
I’m unaware of any prominent conservative historian who made a persuasive argument that Scalia was less than faithful to the history. Virtually all of the complaining about Scalia’s alleged cherrypicking emanated from butthurt anti-gun partisans.
June 28, 2010, 11:12 pmDilan Esper says:
IANAL, so I apologize if this is a stupid question. Are there any enumerated, incorporated, fundamental rights that have the enumerated portion (keep and bear arms, for example) subject to less than strict scrutiny?
Yes. Fourth Amendment, reasonableness test.
Fifth Amendment as applied to pre-trial detainees, rational basis.
Eighth Amendment, evolving standards of decency.
Those are three. There may be more.
By the way, it doesn’t matter whether a right is “enumerated” or not. There isn’t a separate test for “fundamental enumerated rights”. Abortion is a perfectly legitimate constitutional right at this point and time, has been said to be fundamental and incorporated, and does not take strict scrutiny. The fact that conservatives don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant to the discussion.
June 29, 2010, 12:42 amDilan Esper says:
Dilan, I have a degree in History. I know more about historiography than you do apparently. As for your arguments, they are lawyerly, which in other words means they are bs. Name calling (“anti-intellectual”) is appropriate when the historians were frauds — e.g. Bellesiles. Back to historiography for lawyers — you have to “cherry-pick” that is to reduce the data to representative samples somehow, or there’d be more data than humans could absorb.
What lawyers do is cherry pick for ideological purposes. Any historian who did that would get discredited.
Further, stop mentioning Bellesiles. Him and Mary Rosh are terrible historians, yes, but that doesn’t mean that the mainstream of history endorses fabricating data, making up studies on crashed hard drives, or sockpuppetry. Most historians do much better.
I’m unaware of any prominent conservative historian who made a persuasive argument that Scalia was less than faithful to the history.
Re-read Breyer’s dissent. His citations reach all over the ideological spectrum.
The only sense that there are no conservatives is if you define circularly, i.e., that any historian who disagrees with Scalia and the Movement isn’t a real conservative.
June 29, 2010, 12:45 amReaderY says:
There are still a few portions of the Bill of Rights that are definitely not incorporated, and some still up in the air. The rights to a grand jury and trial by jury in civil cases of $25 or more are definitely not incorporated; the Third Amendment right not to quarter soldiers may be.
June 29, 2010, 1:22 amBrett Bellmore says:
But the fact is, a substantial fraction of historians do. Bellesiles won the Bancroft award after Arming America had been exposed as having numerous blatant problems. Even getting the university to investigate was like pulling teeth.
I understand Bellesiles is an embarrassment to historians. But he’s an embarrassment which revealed a lot about historians to non-historians, and we’re not going to conveniently forget it.
June 29, 2010, 6:44 amToby says:
Un-incorporated parts of the Bill of Rights? How about all of 9 and 10, which apparently are incorporated not even into federal law.
June 29, 2010, 7:27 amzippypinhead says:
The 18-20 year old possession prohibitions (as opposed to Federal handgun purchase restrictions) exist only in a handful of states located, unfortunately, in jurisdictions where both the state courts and Federal Circuits have already evidenced a post-Heller antipathy toward Second Amendment issues. Successfully litigating legal challenges to age-based possession restrictions in such venues will be difficult.
However, anyone considering taking on this restriction should take a page from Alan Gura’s playbook – proper plaintiff selection is critical. I fully expect that most of the early challenges will basically be raised as defenses to under-age possession counts in criminal prosecutions of youthful crooks or gang-bangers who don’t happen to (yet) have sufficient criminal records or specific arrest facts necessary to be smacked with heavier charges like felon-in-possession, brandishing or use in a violent crime, etc. Very unsympathetic plaintiffs, and the courts will work VERY hard to preserve the charges. Which will likely result in a bunch of unfavorable precedents.
IMHO, the best plaintiff would be, say, an emancipated 19-year old National Guard MP enlistee who, after qualifying with the Army’s M9 pistol during training, legally wishes to acquire and possess a Beretta 94 (basically the identical handgun) in his civilian life. He submits the proper paperwork (whether a 4473 for a NICS-check purchase or a state registration/possession permit) and is denied solely because of his age. One problem any such challenge will face, unfortunately, is that the plaintiff will inevitably pass his 21st birthday before the appeals are over, raising mootness issues. The only way the case could survive at that point would be if the courts find the controversy is “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” That’s a fairly tough standard, but has been adopted in some rather high-stakes cases, like Roe v. Wade.
June 29, 2010, 12:50 pmCarden Chronicles says:
I have a 19 y.o. dependent that meets that criteria- mostly– enlistment is pending– We ‘attempted’ once to get a duplicate to Newsome v. Albemarle unfortunately, the Principal of the school would not bite and told his staff to let the “NRA” t-shirt go, despite school rules.
This would be in Kansas by the way…
June 29, 2010, 1:24 pmCarden Chronicles says:
Re-thinking this, I wonder if a gun store would even start a 4473, let alone get to the NICS check- they would be concerned about the BATF pulling their license for “attempting” to sell to a person under 21. However, it might be possible to base the case simply on the refusal of the store to even start the sale, based on Federal law. The store would then probably need to be named, with the United States as respondent…but I suppose the plaintiff and the store could settle (for $1 or such)…
Now, the idea of using Roe v. Wade to enhance a Gun case would probably INFURIATE the left– it would be worth it just for that!
June 29, 2010, 2:16 pmzippypinhead says:
Many gun shop proprietors would probably be reluctant to play along for the reason you suggest. But I have a feeling that the NRA could still easily find a member FFL willing to initiate a handgun NICS-check for a 19-year old as part of a RKBA challenge.
But the procedural posture of such a case might be better with the FFL as a co-plaintiff rather than defendant. After NICS denied the purchase, the FFL might then have a cause of action under §1983 styled as an unconstitutional deprivation of lawful commerce, with the lost firearms sale as injury-in-fact?
June 29, 2010, 2:54 pmJoe says:
I’d agree that laws barring handgun ownership by 18-20 year-olds have a good chance of being struck down, but aren’t the federal bans on buying a handgun from an FFL or buying handgun ammunition likely to be upheld under the presumptively valid “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” since it isn’t a complete ban?
June 29, 2010, 3:37 pmCarden Chronicles says:
Unfortunately, we now bring in “Commerce” which opens up the Commerce Clause and Gonzales v. Raich- which is probably the worst concurrence written by Justice Scalia. Even though, the person purchasing would be a resident of the state in which the purchase is made, and even though the home the fire arm would defend is in the same state, there would be the “possibility” that the gun could cross state lines, therefore Raich would “in theory” apply- based on Justice Scalia’s reasoning in applying the Commerce Clause…
(And I REALLY hate criticizing Justice Scalia)
June 29, 2010, 3:48 pmSCOTUSblog » Bonus end of Term round-up says:
[...] at Volokh, Eugene Volokh speculates about McDonald’s effect in states that ban gun possession by young [...]
June 29, 2010, 10:44 pmOrson Buggeigh says:
“What lawyers do is cherry pick for ideological purposes. Any historian who did that would get discredited.
Further, stop mentioning Bellesiles. Him and Mary Rosh are terrible historians, yes, but that doesn’t mean that the mainstream of history endorses fabricating data, making up studies on crashed hard drives, or sockpuppetry. Most historians do much better.” – Dilan Esper
“But the fact is, a substantial fraction of historians do. Bellesiles won the Bancroft award after Arming America had been exposed as having numerous blatant problems. Even getting the university to investigate was like pulling teeth.
I understand Bellesiles is an embarrassment to historians. But he’s an embarrassment which revealed a lot about historians to non-historians, and we’re not going to conveniently forget it.” – Brett Bellmore
Mr. Esper, the problem with Bellesiles and a significant minority of the historical profession is they decided to behave like an advertising agency for a political campaign instead of as historians. Belleiles fabricated information, mis-used sources, and apparently lied about what data he found where he found it. A significant block of historians, including some big names, still think Bellesiles was the victim of a right wing smear, not the victim of his own historical misconduct. Lawyers realize that in court, they have to be able to provide evidence for their claims, or the opposing counsel will demolish their case. Mr. Bellmore gets that point, though it seems to be hard for many academics, especially historians, to grasp. As Mr. Bellmore notes, the public isn’t going to go along with the historians who decided to cease doing history,and enter the world of propaganda, and let them pretend it never happened.
Like Mr. Bellmore, I have academic training in history – a graduate degree, and over twenty years of work as a historian. Unfortunately, there are some very well known historians who still carry water for Mr. Bellesiles, and he is busy trying to rehabilitate himself. He has shown no public understanding of his misconduct, or regret for his behavior. For me, that makes his work – all of it – suspect. I would NOT want to quote him in court.
July 1, 2010, 8:32 amBill Starks says:
Here in Washington State 18-20 year olds may indeed own and purchase handguns. RCW 9.41.240(Possession of pistol by person from eighteen to twenty-one) and RCW 9.41.060 (Exceptions to restrictions on carrying firearms). Even the federal Gov’t allows ownership of handguns for 18-20 year olds.
18 USC section 922 (Unlawful Acts) (subsection X)
July 3, 2010, 1:24 am(1) It shall be unlawful for a person to sell, deliver, or otherwise transfer to a person who the transferor knows or has reasonable cause to believe is a juvenile:
(A) a handgun;or
(B) ammunition that is suitable for use only in a handgun.
(2-4 omitted for space)
(5) For purposes of this subsection, the term “juvenile” means a person who is less than 18 years of age.