Category guns

The Way of the Gun
“The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away.” In the opening paragraphs of To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout ponders the meaning of her brother’s broken arm. “It began with Andrew Jackson,” she decides: “if General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama,” and […]

Federalism 2: The Revenge
In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Among its various initiatives, it provided for the creation of a national background check system by which to screen prospective gun purchasers. This created a dilemma, however: the United States is a mess of separate and overlapping jurisdictions, and most crime is dealt with at […]