Second Amendment Scholar and Documentary Producer Hails Supreme Court Decision

by Staff
November 28, 2007

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TUCSON, (christiansunite.com) -- The Supreme Court decided to review a decision striking Washington D.C.'s handgun ban as unconstitutional. The last time the Court addressed right to arms was in 1939, in United States v. Miller.

"The Miller ruling was ambiguous," said David T. Hardy, attorney and producer of the documentary "In Search of the Second Amendment." "For one thing, only the government filed a brief; Miller had no money for an attorney. For another, the opinion was written by Justice McReynolds, who was not only a racist, misogynist, and anti-Semite - he was also a terrible legal thinker."

The story of Miller, and of the American right to arms, is told by "In Search of the Second Amendment," in which twelve professors of constitutional law explore not only the Second Amendment, but also the contributions of the Black American experience to the 14th Amendment and its independent guarantee of a right to arms. These scholars conclude that the right to arms is an individual right on a par with freedom of speech and religion. An extensive Wikipedia discussion of their positions is available here. Clips of their interviews are also online here.

Hardy, whose 1974 law review article began the modern scholarly trend toward recognizing an individual right to arms, gave a historical perspective,

"In the 1970s, we were voices crying in the wilderness.'Everybody knew' the Second Amendment only meant States had a right to the National Guard. In the 1980s that began to change. Today, all the top scholars in American constitutional law, liberal and conservative alike, recognize that the right to arms is an individual one," Hardy explained. "The view that the Amendment only applies to the National Guard or similar units is represented only by a handful of writers, most of them bankrolled by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation."

Hardy, a N.Y. Times bestselling author, has published ten law review articles on the right to arms and firearms law, one of which has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and by twenty other courts. He is available for interview.

Second Amendment Films' website: www.secondamendmentdocumentary.com