Abstract
Armed with newly available data on early American gun laws and a sharp analysis of the intersection of individual gun rights, governmental authority, and the crafting and interpretation of the Constitution, political scientist and constitutional scholar Robert Spitzer challenges what he finds are key myths and misinterpretations offered by gun rights supporters. In Guns across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights, Spitzer attempts to wrest from the NRA and its allies the false narratives they extol, substituting in their place empirical evidence documenting a history of American gun control, modest rates of gun ownership, and, until the controversial 2009 D.C. vs. Heller 5-4 Supreme Court decision, virtually no judicial support for an individual-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Spitzer’s previous work has often focused on the Second Amendment and the gun debate. Guns across America provides new data along with original synthesis and analysis of gun laws, gun rulings, gun culture, and gun politics, past and present. Scholars have previously written about some American myths of gun culture, ownership, and violence, but Spitzer’s latest work is a game-changer: it eviscerates the idea that contemporary gun control policies and proposals are anti-American, as gun rights advocates would have us believe.
The book’s jacket provides the key argument and contribution: that gun regulations are “as American as apple pie.” Spitzer shares new evidence that not only have there been a wide array of gun control laws dating to colonial America, but today’s laws are much weaker than many of those established and enforced in previous centuries. Even gun registration and gun bans were not uncommon—including in sparsely populated states like Montana and Kansas and in the thick of the so-called “Wild West.” As part of his thesis that current gun regulations challenge neither citizens’ rights nor any kind of American gun culture, Spitzer also argues both that regulating assault weapons poses no threat to gun rights and that expanding self-defense via Stand Your Ground laws perverts our history.
People purchase guns for hunting, sport shooting, fun, and self-defense. Gun rights organizations and their deeply committed supporters also purchase firearms for a more symbolic reason: to send a warning to the federal government that individuals have the right and are willing to fight tyrannical actions. Spitzer leans heavily on John Locke’s writings to understand governments’ roles in protecting and threatening freedom. He argues that tyranny is best understood as a government violating its contract with the people (e.g., via slavery, violence), and the majority of the people must agree that this is what’s occurring. A minority of the people accusing the government of tyranny for lesser reasons falls well short of this definition. Further, it threatens not only the legitimacy of the government, but the freedoms that government helps ensure for its citizens.
Spitzer’s summary of political philosophy and American democracy challenges the view that contemporary gun control laws come anywhere close to approaching the definition of tyranny. Citizens in any society relinquish some freedoms as part of the social contract to ensure that most other freedoms are protected. Chief among the freedoms that all governments restrict is the use of force. When societies lose control of the use of force to individuals or non-governmental groups, anarchy, violence, and coups soon follow. Armed rebellions against a representative government are not exercises in freedom, Spitzer argues, but treason. The American Revolution, held up by gun rights groups as Exhibit A of the need for an armed citizenry, bears no resemblance to contemporary American society because the American colonists lacked democratically elected representation.
The heated rhetoric of NRA leaders and their slippery slope arguments that gun regulations portend the elimination of all individual rights and freedoms have not been confined to social discourse. A smattering of anti-government patriot and militia groups has taken up arms against government officials, most recently and notably the Bundy family. Rancher Cliven Bundy was arrested in 2016, two years after he and armed sympathizers threatened federal officials trying to prevent him from illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. His son Ammon Bundy led and was arrested for the 2016 armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building in Oregon. Spitzer asserts that no society can be maintained, not even one offering such a broad array of individual rights and freedoms as our own, if armed rebellions against the federal government like these are part of individual citizens’ constitutional rights. And they are not, he says.
The last two chapters of Guns across America—on Stand Your Ground laws and New York gun laws, respectively—are not as seamlessly integrated into the overall narrative as are the earlier chapters. The Trayvon Martin case brought these laws the national attention they deserve after roughly half of U.S. states passed Stand Your Ground laws, but these changes and the Castle Doctrine laws that preceded them are less about guns and more about self-defense. Spitzer uses the concluding chapter to share his experience of building a legal semi-automatic rifle in New York, as well as obtaining a pistol permit. He concludes that New York State’s comparatively restrictive gun control regime is not really restrictive at all and certainly does not interfere with anyone’s gun rights. The specific case of New York is well chosen, although I would note that federal (more so than state) restrictions on guns lie at the heart of gun rights discourse claiming threats to individual rights and freedoms.
In sum, Robert Spitzer has written a sober, meticulously researched, exhaustive, and critical book on the history of gun laws, gun ownership, and the role of individual gun rights vis-à-vis federal government authority. There is no false equivalence to be found in his work; he lets the overwhelming evidence of the longstanding American tradition of restrictive gun laws speak for itself. Alas, gun politics continue to be as contentious as any social issue, and gun policy is as politicized as any as well. Spitzer’s book sheds much-needed light on some of the myths of early America that are used to generate opposition to gun control. Despite wading into political philosophy, constitutional law, and complex U.S. court decisions, Guns across America is an accessible and enjoyable read, sure to appeal not only to scholars and students of the gun debate, political science, and sociology, but to a general audience as well.