Guns across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights

by Robert J. Spitzer

In vast swathes of America, the sacredness of the Second Amendment has become a political third rail, never to be questioned. Gun rights supporters wear tri-cornered hats, wave the stars and stripes, and ask what would have happened if the revolutionaries had been unarmed when the British were coming. They have had great success in conflating unfettered gun ownership with the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and all things American, even in an era of repeated mass shootings. Yet the all-too-familiar narrative of America's gun past, echoed in the Supreme Court's Heller gun rights decision, is not only mythologized, but historically wrong.
As Robert J. Spitzer demonstrates in Guns across America, gun ownership is as old as the nation, but so is gun regulation. Drawing on a vast new dataset of early gun laws reflecting every imaginable type of regulation, Spitzer reveals that firearms were actually more strictly regulated in the country's first three centuries than in recent years. The first "gun grabbers" were not 1960's Chablis-drinking liberals, but seventeenth century rum-guzzling pioneers, and their legacy continued through strict gun regulations in the 1920s and beyond. Spitzer examines interpretations of the Second Amendment, the assault weapons controversy, modern "stand your ground" laws, and the so-called "right of rebellion" to show that they play out in America's contemporary political landscape in ways that bear little resemblance to our imagined past. And as gun rights proponents seek to roll back gun laws and press as many guns into as many hands as possible, warning that gun rights are endangered, they sidestep the central question: are stricter gun laws incompatible with robust gun rights? Spitzer answers this question by examining New York State's tough gun laws, where his political analysis is complemented by his own quest for a concealed carry handgun permit and construction of a legal AR-15 assault weapon.
Not only can gun rights and rules coexist, but they have throughout American history. Guns across America reveals the long-hidden truth: that gun regulations are in fact as American as apple pie

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

277 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2015

About the author

Robert J. Spitzer is Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York, College at Cortland, where he has taught for nearly forty years. He has also been a visiting professor at Cornell University for almost thirty years. Spitzer is Series Editor for the book series "American Constitutionalism" for SUNY Press, and for the "Presidential Briefing Book" Series for Routledge. He's received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and served as President of the Presidency Research Group, an international association of presidency scholars (affiliated with the American Political Science Association). He has testified before Congress on several occasions, and is often quoted and interviewed by American and international news outlets, and contributes regularly to newspapers and other media outlets. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Reviews

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spritzer, a professor at SUNY-Courtland, wrote this pretty good book (in 2015) that discusses why we have a federal government, the Constitution’s Second Amendment, and many other current laws and actions intended to curtail and regulate guns in the U.S. He also covers the special situation in New York state and describes his personal experience there.

In general, the writing is clear and easy to follow and Spitzer’s positions are reasonable and make sense - as far as they go - however he fails to address the matter of mandatory gun buy-back programs and thus, in my opinion, just puts another coat of paint on the real problem: a violence-loving populace awash in a sea of weapons designed for killing human beings.

[Andréa]

Note: I received a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spitzer has done a great service in writing this book. It is very readable, but also quite comprehensive.
Some key takeaways: gun laws WORK, particularly limits on magazine capacity, and on certain types of weapons.

Gun control is older than America, and was much broader and more intrusive than today in many states for much of our history.

Screening WORKS. He shows how he qualified for a gun permit in NY, and how this screening might have stopped several of the mass shootings in recent years. Would it stop all? No. Do drunk driving laws stop all drunk driving?

It concludes with a useful compendium of every gun law ever in American history. Y0u will be stunned with how many we have had throughout our history.

For more on how I thought about this book, see my review essay in Am Interest:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/...

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A review and description of the history of gun laws in the US. It was certainly an interesting read. The author makes the point that the US has a long history of regulating guns, there have been 1,000 gun laws among the states and federal government. And I loved his analogy that any new law/regulation is certain to be met with some resentment, as it was with drunk driving laws, cars had to have seat belts, then drivers had to actually wear the seat belts, and now no-smoking laws. New York State's stricter gun law (2012) is working. Stand your ground laws are not working. Yeah, bring on those stricter gun laws!

[Atif Taj · Rating 3 out of 5]

From 1791 to 2007, no federal court struck a law as the violation of the Second Amendment. That is true as any fundamental mathematical law. The guns regulations are as old as guns themselves and a lot of them, including concealed weapons, are more stringent than those in conservative states.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dispassionate history of gun rights in the U.S., from the colonial period up through the present. It starts by dissecting the historical origins and context of the second amendment phrase, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state ...", and proceeds to how the Supreme Court has interpreted the meaning and intent of that phrase over the nation's history. It then covers, in considerable detail, a history of state and federal regulations on guns. It then moves to a discussion of "stand your ground" statutes that have cropped up in the last dozen years. It concludes with a discussion of regulations adopted in New York following the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, as an example of regulations that can reduce the risk of gun violence, with minimal burden on gun rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled over the nation's 230 year history that the second amendment is intended to ensure that states can form a militia to defend itself - from internal rebellion as well as external threats (the nation did not have a standing army in its early years). It was never intended nor interpreted to mean that citizens can arm themselves against the government; government has a monopoly on force, otherwise society would be in constant turmoil and upheaval.

The book also demonstrates a healthy history of regulations in the various states. This includes gun registration, requirements that ammunition be stored in armories, no carry laws, bans on particular kinds of weapons, and who should be prohibited from owning guns in order to ensure public safety. It has only been in the last few decades that gun laws of been scaled back, culminating with the Supreme Court's Heller decision in 2008 which established, for the first time, a individual right to own a gun for self-defense. This trend represents a radical shift from how gun rights were interpreted for the nation's first 200 years. The author suggests that the NRA, in conjunction with the gun industry, has been the major driver in this shift.

Interesting fact: the number of guns per capita has doubled in the past quarter century, yet the number of households owning guns has steadily been declining.

[Melek · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a nice, well-searched book about gun rules and regulations in America, starting from early days and ending with a great appendix about state gun laws between 1607-1934. Unfortunately, the best part of the book was that appendix, which says something about the writing in it. It's not very neat, and at some points, it looks like the author tried to put as much information as he could find.

What I liked most is, the author doesn't seem to be choosing a side in all this, so the book reads pretty objectively. You don't feel like the author is trying to force you to pick a side but rather, he is putting the facts in front of you and letting you choose something. Assuming you can find your way in the big chunks of hardly relevant information, that is.

Overall, it was good to read to have some opinion about the issue, but not to make references from. 2.5/5

[Tom Cahill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by the book. I assumed it was going to be a libertarian-leaning take on guns. It isn't. But it is a nuanced and well-researched argument for regulation. Spitzer goes all the way to Locke to demonstrate his thesis. He also argues that the Heller decision was aconstitutional and judicial activism. Richard Posner,a colossus of libertarian legal thought criticized Scalia's argument (if not his decision) on Heller. In the last chapter to belie the thesis that it is impossible to get a gun in pro-gun safety New York, Spitzer narrates his successful attempt to get a Colt-manufactured AR-15. Probably the best written and argued book I have read for Spitzer's position

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be required reading for anyone who wants to have a debate on gun laws and their history in this country.

Well researched and informative without being dry, Guns Across America is a great resource covering gun laws and requirements from the founders days to current Stand Your Ground laws.

[Adam Berry · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit dry, but definitely an interesting take on the gun debate.