Provides the first comprehensive post-Heller account of the Second Amendment as constitutional law - dispelling many myths along the way.

A former editor at the New York Times examines the war over gun control in America and the rigid and intolerant ideologies that have informed the debate on both sides for more than 50 years. 20,000 first printing.

In June 2008, the Supreme Court had its first opportunity in seven decades to decide a question at the heart of one of America’s most impassioned debates: Do Americans have a right to possess guns? Gun Control on Trial tells the full story of the Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which ended the District’s gun ban. With exclusive behind-the-scenes access throughout the process, author Brian Doherty is uniquely positioned to delve into the issues of this monumental case and provides compelling looks at the inside stories, including the plaintiffs’ fight for the right to protect their lives, the activist lawyers who worked to affirm that right, and the forces who fought to stop the case.

A simple guide to understanding your Second Amendment...

How ordinary Americans, frustrated by the legal and political wrangling over the Second Amendment, can fight for reforms that will both respect gun owners’ rights and reduce gun violence. Efforts to reduce gun violence in the United States face formidable political and constitutional barriers. Legislation that would ban or broadly restrict firearms runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Second Amendment. And gun rights advocates have joined a politically savvy firearm industry in a powerful coalition that stymies reform. Ian Ayres and Fredrick Vars suggest a new way forward. We can decrease the number of gun deaths, they argue, by empowering individual citizens to choose common-sense gun reforms for themselves. Rather than ask politicians to impose one-size-fits-all rules, we can harness a libertarian approach—one that respects and expands individual freedom and personal choice—to combat the scourge of gun violence. Ayres and Vars identify ten policies that can be immediately adopted at the state level to reduce the number of gun-related deaths without affecting the rights of gun owners. For example, Donna’s Law, a voluntary program whereby individuals can choose to restrict their ability to purchase or possess firearms, can significantly decrease suicide rates. Amending Red Flag statutes, which allow judges to restrict access to guns when an individual has shown evidence of dangerousness, can give police flexible and effective tools to keep people safe. Encouraging the use of unlawful possession petitions can help communities remove guns from more than a million Americans who are legally disqualified from owning them. By embracing these and other new forms of decentralized gun control, the United States can move past partisan gridlock and save lives now.

Stephen P. Halbrook's The Founders' Second Amendment is the first book-length account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders' own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions. Mr. Halbrook investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the passing of the Founders' generation. His book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the arguments behind the drafting and adoption of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the men who created it.

A leading constitutional historian argues that the Founding Fathers viewed the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but rather an obligation a citizen owed to the government to arm themselves and participate in a well-regulated militia.

Shall Not be Infringed: The New Assaults on Your Second Amendment is a history of the relatively short gun control debate in America and a revealing description of how those hostile to the Second Amendment use polls, studies, and numbers to confuse the public. Expert pro-gun advocates David Keene and Thomas Mason tell the story of the battle fought in the courts, Congress, and state legislatures across the country as well as in the media and even the United Nations. Guns have become a symbol over which battle after battle is fought, all the while hiding the end game of a cultural shift to government dominance. Although the Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to “keep and bear arms,” candidate Clinton and the Democratic Party have promised to pick Supreme Court justices who will overturn this ruling. Gun control advocates insist the Court was wrong and a new Court should reverse that finding, stripping American gun owners of the Constitutional protection that has thus far made it impossible to ban gun ownership. Addressing vital issues such as deterring and preventing crime, troubling presidential and Congressional politics, problematic anti-gun proposals, and so much more, Shall Not Be Infringed is an essential read for our times.

Are you worried that your Second Amendment rights will be taken away? Are you sick of patronizing politicians, celebrities, and media pundits claiming you don't have the right to own guns?Do you want to know the real story of the Second Amendment, so you can decide what it means for yourself? The Second Amendment Manifesto is for you.In true stories stretching from ancient Greece to modern-day America, you'll quickly discover how the Second Amendment came to be, why it's worth protecting over two centuries later, and what you can do to defend it right now.You'll learn . . . The real reason the Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment (it wasn't for hunting deer).The ancient Greek philosophy that led to the American right to bear arms.The single biggest threat to your Second Amendment rights that almost no one knows about.The three things you can do right now to save your constitutional right to bear arms (before you lose it forever).How to buy and safely use guns, ammunition, and other "military" equipment to protect yourself, your community, and your country.. . . and more.By the end, you'll know more about the Second Amendment than most of your fellow Americans ever will-and a lot more than most politicians, lobbyists, and lawmakers. So, if you want to . . . Understand your Second Amendment rights like never before . . . Discover why gun rights are worth fighting for . . . Learn what you can do right now to protect this "inalienable" right from the tendrils of tyranny and oppression . . . . . . you want to read this book today.

From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception. In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans. From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless--revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished. Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don't), their life--as surely as Philando Castile's, Tamir Rice's, Alton Sterling's--may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson's penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.