Welcome to the texas book festival. Im rick dunham, the Washington Bureau chief of the Houston Chronicle and the creator of the texas on the potomac, and been hijacked to perry per president ial because some governor is running for president right now. In my extracurricular life im Journalism Institute of which the crown jewel is the National Journalism library and libraries are important because libraries are what the texas book festival is all about. The book festival raises money for Public Libraries in texas and for literacy programs. All the books you buy benefit the libraries of the state of texas. I highly recommend that you buy gunfight. Our author will sign books after our program in the book signing tent up congress avenue. So, ive been asked by the folks at cspan to ask you to turn off or silence your cell phones. Weve had some problems earlier today. And if you want to take out your concealed weapons permits now, its probably a good time. Also, concealed weapons, dont take out because if you take them out, theyre not concealed anymore. What were here today to talk about gunfight, the battle over the right to bear arms in america. Its written by adam winkler. Hes a professor of law at ucla and a specialist in american constitutional law. His wideranging scholarship has touched on a diverse array of topics including the right to bear arms, affirmative action, and judicial independence. Hes a frequent contributor the the daily beast and the huff huff post. Hes commentary has been featured in places as varied as cnn, new york times, and the wall street journal. His other published work includes coediting the sixvolume american constitution. Gunfight has received outstanding reviews. Its truly a groundbreaking work. And here to tell us more about it is adam winkler. Ill start with a basic question which is whats the basic idea of the book . Well, thank you. Thank you for the wonderful introduction and thanks to the texas book festival for having me and all of you for being here too. So, gunfight weaves together the dramatic, what one reviewer called grishamlike legal drama behind a land mark Supreme Court case, the first Supreme Court case to clearly and unambiguously hold that the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to hold guns for personal protection. It weaves together that story with the stories of our remarkable, fascinating Hidden History of guns. In my research, i found that the right to bear arms is one of our oldest most established Constitutional Rights, yet at the same time weve also always had gun control. Americans have always tried to balance gun rights with Public Safety. And our efforts to balance those two things have shaped america in really fascinating and unexpected ways. And so i look at the lessons of our efforts to draw that balance between gun rights and Public Safety and also try to map out a way that we can break the current stalemate on guns by looking back to the past and understanding better how the right to bear arms has coexisted with gun control since the founding era. So, the book itself centers on a Supreme Court case probably everyone here knows about, District Of Columbia versus heller. Can you talk a little bit about what the facts were in that case and why the case is so important . Well, the Supreme Court had mentioned the Second Amendment over the years, it had very strenuously avoided ruling on what the meaning of the Second Amendment was. So, despite the fact we know in our culture that everything ends up in the Supreme Court eventually, the Supreme Court was determined for many decades not to rule on the Second Amendment. They just left that to the lower courts and to the legislatures. This heller case was the first time not only the Supreme Court unambiguously held that the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to own guns for personal protection but the first time that the court struck down a law that a gun control law for violating the Second Amendment. And the law that was struck down was a law in washington, d. C. It was a ban on hand guns but also a ban on the use of long guns for anything but Recreational Purposes. So, you could own a rifle or a shotgun but you could only it had to be locked or disassembled and you could only unlock or assemble it for Recreational Purposes like hunting and shooting, target shooting. A d. C. Court had held specifically that if a burglar is breaking into your home, you are not allowed to assemble your gun for selfdefense and use it for selfdefense because that wasnt a recreational purpose. So, you could take your gun and maybe you could bang someone over the head with it, but you werent allowed to shoot someone with it if they were threatening your life. So, the Supreme Court stepped in and ruled on this case. One of the remarkable things about the case was that the lawyers who pursued it, although they were trying to invigorate and find judicial protection for the nras view of the Second Amendment, the nra was opposed to the lawsuit from the get go and did everything they could to stop it from going to the Supreme Court. Why would they do that . Thats counterintuitive. Why would the nra not want this case to go forward . The nras stated reason was they were afraid of losing. They didnt want their view of the Second Amendment rejected by the United StatesSupreme Court, especially this Supreme Court, which has a majority of republican appointees. It was a conservative court. They didnt want this court to reject that view. That wouldnt help the nra. The lawyers involved in the case were a group of three libertarian lawyers who had no real substantial connections with the gun rights movement, had not argued or litigated gun cases before. They suspected that maybe the nra was fearful actually of winning, that the nra, they told me in interviews the nra survives on crisisdriven fundraising that warns gun owners that the governments coming to get your guns. If the Supreme Court said the government cant come to get your guns, what would that do to the nras crisisdriven fundraising . Whatever the reason, its clear the nra fought tooth and nail to keep this case from ever going to the Supreme Court. So, you were talking earlier about people using guns for personal protection being one of our oldest, most established rights. But the Supreme Court hadnt ruled, as youve said, over these past decades on the definitive meaning of the Second Amendment. So, if the Supreme Court never ruled on it, its been more than two seconds since the bill of rights was created. Why is the right to bear arms such an old and established tradition . Well, its interesting. The Second Amendment has been the subject of so much debate over recent years whether its the right to own guns for personal protection or a collective right of state militias to organize and form without federal interference. But what i found in doing my research for gunfight was that the right to bear arms is one of our oldest most established Constitutional Rights regardless of the Second Amendment. Every state has its own constitution, and almost every one of those states protects the right to bear arms in its state constitution. Clearly a right thats not associated with militia service. Some of those state provisions go back to the original founding. Many of them came in the early 1800s and mid1800s as states joined the union. They added provisions into their constitutions. In addition what i found in research for my book is that whatever you think about the Second Amendment, its pretty clear that the 14 amendment to the constitutional which was one of the provisions adopted right after the civil war to guarantee the freed men their equal rights, the 14th amendment was clearly designed in part to protect the right of the freed men to have guns. Right after the civil war, racist whites in the south were trying to take away freed mens rights to have guns for personal protection. The framework said repeatedly and often one of the purposes of the 14th amendment was to protect the freed mens right to bear arms. Again, you have all these historical disucussions over American History on the right to bear arms. What kind of gun control did the Founding Fathers have, or what was their concept of where we would head with personal use and ownership of guns . Well, the Founding Fathers very firmly believed in civilian ownership of firearms. They didnt believe in a Standing Army. They were afraid a Standing Army would be used corruptly by the president or whoever was governing to run rough shot over the liberties of the people and thought that a guarantee of democratic liberty was in an armed populous. They believed in the citizens militia, the idea that when called out to serve, you would run home, grab your gun, and be ready to fight in an instance, hence the minute men. They also had gun regulation. They barred large portions of the population from owning guns, not only slaves but freed blacks because they were thought to be a risk to Public Safety, they fight join in a revolt against the masters. They also were willing to disarm lawabiding white people, namely loyalist. Were not talking about traders, people fighting for the british. Were talking about what historians estimate were 40 of the population who were opposed to the revolution who thought it was a bad idea taking on the most powerful country in the world, great britain, and if you didnt swear loyalty you would be disarmed. They also had militia laws. They declared any male whos a free male between 18 and 45 was a member of the militia and had to outfit themselves with their own private firearm. It was their own version of the obamas health care individual mandate, only the framers didnt require you to buy insurance. They required you to go out and buy a gun. So, take us through history from the time of the Founding Fathers. How did america and the American Government balance this sense of the right to bear arms with what we would call gun control with curbs on how you could own weaponry . Well, as i mentioned, the Founding Fathers had such curves. We think today of the south as a bastion of support for gun rights, but some of americas earliest gun control laws came in the south. Bans, for instance, on concealed carry of firearms where it became popular in the early 1800s in the south. Those laws werent about disarming africanamericans. They were already disarmed in the south. But those laws were designed to discourage white men from getting into duels, honor duels which were common place in the early 1800s and law makers sought to stop that. Theres been gun control throughout American History. The wild west had some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Everyone in the untamed wilderness had guns, so much so that stagecoach drivers would ride with someone at great expense next to them with a shotgun in their hand. Our kids still say im riding shotgun when they get in the front seat. That comes from the wild west era. When you came into a town with the civilized people, you had to check your guns the the way you would check your coat like at a cold restaurant in winter. Not a winter in austin where its 90 degrees today, but maybe on the east coast. Where did you check your weapons . You had to check them with the sheriff or leave them at the stables with your horses. In fact as i was researching the book, theres a great photograph of dodge city taken during the height of the wild west period, 1870s and 1880s, and its a picture of dodge city. And it looked exactly like you would expect dodge city to look in the height of the wild west period, wide dusty road, horse tie in front of the saloon. The surprising thing is what lies in the middle of the street is a big billboard that says the carrying of firearms strictly prohibited. You came into a wild west town, you were not allowed to be a gun slinger with your guns on each hip and a rifle in your hand and a derringer hidden in your pants. I get the sense its like going into a restaurant now where you put your umbrella in a rack when you go into town. Now, we know horse thieves were hanged. Did people steal each others pistols or was it like an umbrella, you just picked up your own umbrella as you left town . Im sure there was plenty of thievery in the wild west with guns too. But you would get them and you would give them to the Law Enforcement officer. Research i didnt put the picture in there, but i found a photograph from a bar in juneau, alaska, that has a hand gun that was checked by none other than wyatt earp when he came to visit juneau and he had to leave town for reasons unknown in the middle of the night before the Sheriffs Office opened again. And the sheriff still to this day has the gun he checked and was not able to collect. Why do you think our concepts of the wild west, the gun slingers, are so wrong . Whats the reason that we have this romanticized or fantasized version of it . We think of the wild west as filled with gun fights night and day, guns blazing. We remember incidents like the shootout at the ok corral with wyatt earp where three people died and four people were wounded. Obviously thats been memorialized in movies and film ever since. The image of the wild west is quite wrong in fundamental ways and i think its wrong for the same reason why these places had gun control. If you were a small town on the outskirts of civilization, what did you want to become . You wanted to become a bigger town filled with civilized people. You wanted to attract businessmen and investors and good families that would come and create stability in your town. Small towns today still want those same things. And so thats why they enacted gun control laws so that Business People would feel themselves safe and families would move there because they thought the community was a safe community. What happened was after the frontier was closed, the same places emphasized and glorified the violent incidents of their past to attract tourists and the businesses to serve them. Thats why if you go to tombstone, arizona today you can see a reenactment of the shootout at the ok corral about five times a day. The reason we know so much about that is because it was so extraordinary at the time. It wasnt common place that you would have a shootout. And in fact historians have gone back and figured out that if these towns like tombstone, arizona, deadwood, dodge city, they average less than two murders a year. So, gun fights werent daily events. They were annual events. Its hard to have a discussion of gun rights and gun control without talking about the nra. In the past week, the nras been in the news because herman cain used to be president of the nra. Thats a National Restaurant association. And in texas when you say nra, its only the National Rifle association. Can you give a little historical background on the nra and guns and gun control, its creation . I read that it was once supporter of gun control. Can you explain that . Yeah. I mean, the nra today is known for being a very rarely compromising opponent of gun control. But it really wasnt always this way. The organization was founded after the civil war by two Union Soldiers who were convinced that poor union marksmanship was why the war lasted so long and wanted to improve marksmanship training. In the 1920s and 30s, the nra drafted and endorsed gun control laws, restrictive laws requiring anyone to have a license and only allowing the licenses to go to people who were suitable people with a proper reason for carrying firearms. In fact in the 19 i did research and found in 1934 when the federal government, Congress Passed its first major federal government control, the National Firearms act of 1934. It restricted access to gangster weapons like machine guns and sawed off shotguns. The nra president at the time Carl Frederick was asked to testify about it and he was asked specifically did the Second Amendment have any relevance to the National Firearms act . And his answer from the perspective of today is quite remarkable. He said i have not given it any study from that point of view. So, the head of the nra had never thought whether the most far reaching gun law today was impacted by the Second Amendment. All that changed in the late 1960s, early 1970s whe