I NOW HAVE IT.
THE BOOK IS CALLED: "A WELL REGULATED MILITIA - The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America." by Saul Cornell.
I WANT YOU TO KNOW THE PRODUCTION OF THIS BOOK WAS MASTERLY UNDERTAKEN WITH MANY PEOPLE INVOLVED....WHO AND HOW MANY? I'LL REPRODUCE THE FACTS FOR YOU FROM THE FIRST PAGES OF THIS BOOK.
.......The research for this book fills an entire six-drawer lateral file cabinet, and it would have been impossible to undertake a project of this scope and complexity without generous financial support. Funding for this project was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Much of the research for this book was done in conjunction with my work as director of the Second Amendment Research Center at the John Glenn Institute of Public Service and Public Policy. Generous funding for the center was provided by grants from the Joyce Foundation. Roseanna Ander, program officer at Joyce, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the centers work and of my scholarship. I would also like to thank Ellen S. Alberding, the president of the Joyce Foundation, for recognizing the need for high-quality historical research on the role of guns in American law and society. The staff of the John Glenn Institute provided a congenial home to work on this project. Particular thanks are due Larry Libby, Deborah Jones Merritt, Don Stenta, Deanna Stewart, Senator John Glenn, and Annie Glenn. Invaluable research assistance was provided by a number of graduate students at Ohio State University and elsewhere: David Bernstein, Nathan Dedino, David Dzurec, Amber Esplin, Steve Gara-bedian, Nathan Kozuskanich, John Maass, and Joe Stewart-Pirone.
Several colleagues in the history department at Ohio State read the manuscript and provided thoughtful suggestions, including Michael Les Benedict, John Brooke, and Geoffrey Parker. Randy Roth shared with me evidence drawn from his own forthcoming study on the history of violence in America. My thinking about the historical issues relevant to this project has benefited from the comments and insights of a number of scholars: Robert Churchill, Jan Dizard, Carole Emberton, Paul Finkelman, Robert M Goldman, Leslie Goldstein, James Henretta, Don Higginbotham, David Konig, Peter Onuf, Jack Rakove, Lois Schwoerer, Robert Shalhope, and Lou Falkner Williams.
In the age in which the Second Amendment was drafted most lawyers obtained their legal education by pouring over classic texts such as Blackstone's Commentaries and serving long apprenticeships. Although I have never attended law school formally I have spent hours reading Blackstone and other eighteenth-century legal texts. I have also sought counsel from a number of legal scholars on the fine points of constitutional law and interpretation, and particular thanks are due to them: Akhil Amar, Erwin Chemerinsky Michael Kent Curtis, Michael Dorf, Bernard Harcourt, Kurt Lash, Sandy Levinson, James Lindgren, Frank Michelman, Bryan Wildenthal, David Williams, and Adam Winkler. I owe a particular debt to Dean Larry Kramer of Stanford Law School for his support and guidance on many issues of consti-tutional law and interpretation.
A number of the ideas developed in chapters 5 and 6 were refined in papers presented at conferences at Fordham Law School and Stanford Law School. I would like to thank James Fleming and Martin Flaherty of Fordham and Bob Weisberg of Stanford for their help in organizing these two events and for advice on a multitude of issues. Dave Douglas kindly invited me to present my research on St. George Tucker at William and Mary Law School. Kenneth Katkin of Northern Kentucky Law School hosted a lively conference on the Second Amendment, during which several ideas in the book were formulated. Kate Desbarats, Jim Rice, and the members of the St. Lawrence Early American Seminar offered thoughtful suggestions about chapter 4. Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg generously invited me to give the Settle-Cadenhead Memorial Lecture at the University of Tulsa. I profited enormously from their generosity and thoughtful suggestions. A talk on the changing iconography of the armed citizen in American history at Georgetown yielded a host of insights, and I am indebted to Michael Kazin for this opportunity. Jack Censer's invitation to give the Finlay Lecture at George Mason University provided another excellent venue to try out the ideas in this book.
Given the prominence of the Second Amendment in recent legal scholarship I was extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to present drafts of nearly every chapter in the book manuscript at a series of faculty workshops at some of the nation s premier law schools. I would like to thank the following scholars for providing me with opportunities to try out earlier versions of my argument: Stuart Banner, University of California, Los Angeles; Jim Chen, University of Minnesota; Howard Erlanger, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Gerald Leonard, Boston University; Daniel Polsby, George Mason Law School; Chris Tomlins, American Bar Foundation /Northwestern University. I owe a special debt to Bill Nelson of New York University School of Law, who hosted me for two weeks and whose wonderful legal history seminar read an earlier draft of the entire manuscript and offered innumerable suggestions.
Although this manuscript deals with a host of important issues in American constitutional and legal history—including the right of revolution, popular constitutionalism, the evolution of the common law, federalism, the scope of the early American police power—it would be extremely naive to think that readers will not be curious about the connection between this history and the modern struggle over gun regulation. These issues are dealt with explicitly in the conclusion, which attempts to offer some suggestions about how an appreciation for history can raise the level of public discourse on this issue. In thinking about the contemporary resonances of my work I have benefited from lively exchanges with scholars and activists on both sides of this issue. Among the scholarly proponents of robust gun regulation who have generously shared their knowledge of this topic with me I would like to thank Carl Bogus, Phil Cook, John Donhue, David Hemenway Jens Ludwig, and Robert Spitzer. Proponents of gun rights have also generously shared their point of view with me, including Randy Barnett, Bob Cottrol, Jim Jacobs, Abigail Kohn, Nelson Lund, Joyce Lee Malcolm, and Eugene Volokh.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence invited me to participate in a forum at the National Press Club on the subject "Guns and the Second Amendment." I benefited from my discussions with several lawyers at the Brady campaign: Dennis Henigan, Jon Lowy Tony Orza, and Brian Seibel. Mat Nosanchuk, formerly of the Violence Policy Center (VPC), and Kristin Rand and Josh Sugerman, also of the VPC, took time out of their busy schedules to chat with me about the current state of the debate on this issue. Sue Ann Schiff of Legal Community against Violence was a great source of information about contemporary litigation in this area. An invitation from the Students for the Second Amendment and the National Rifle Associations Institute for Legislative Action to participate in a Second Amendment symposium provided me with another wonderful opportunity to discuss the meaning of this provision of the Bill of Rights. A number of the leading gun rights lawyers in the nation attended that event. In particular I would like to acknowledge David Kopel, Stephen Halbrook Richard Gardner, Don Kates, and David Hardy for sharing their passionate interest in this issue with me.
Shaping this manuscript into a book that could appeal to an audience beyond the academy required the efforts of many fine editorial pens. Heather Miller and Lauren Osborne gave earlier drafts of the manuscript a close and thoughtful reading. Charlie Finlay up-and-coming novelist, read the manuscript and offered excellent stylistic advice.
Michele Bove and Lelia Mander at Oxford University Press guided the manuscript through the production process. My brilliant and charming editor at Oxford University Press, Dedi Felman, read so many drafts of this manuscript that I feared this book on the Second Amendment may have violated Dedi's Eighth Amendment rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The unbridled enthusiasm for this project emanating from Niko Pfund, the academic publisher at Oxford University Press, was also a great source of inspiration.
My wife, Susan, and my daughters, Emma and Julia, endured too many hours with me at the computer screen. I appreciate their patience with a project that always seemed to take just a little bit longer to complete than I had hoped. I have dedicated this book to Emma and Julia. I hope that when they start their families someday this issue will no longer be so divisive and America will no longer be plagued by the problem of gun violence. Perhaps with a better sense of the history of this issue Americans can create the kind of society in which schools will no longer need metal detectors in their doorways.
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