The Gun Show - a podcast by WNYC Studios
from 2017-10-12T12:00
For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn’t happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case.
The key voices:
- Adam Winkler, professor at UCLA School of Law, author ofGunfight
- Jill Lepore, professor of American history at Harvard University
- Stephen Halbrook, attorney specializing in Second Amendment litigation
- Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party
- John Aquilino, former spokesman of the National Rifle Association
- Joseph P. Tartaro, president of the Second Amendment Foundation
- Sanford Levinson, professor at the University of Texas Law School
- Clark Neily,vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute, represented Dick Heller inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller
- Robert Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, helped finance Dick Heller’s case inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller
- Alan Gura, appellate constitutional attorney, arguedDistrict of Columbia v. Helleron behalf of Dick Heller
- Dick Heller, plaintiff inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller
- Joan Biskupic, author ofAmerican Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
- Jack Rakove, professor of history and political science at Stanford University
The key cases:
The key links:
- Black Panther Party protest theMulford Actat the California State Capitol in Sacramento
Special thanks to Mark Hughes, Sally Hadden, Jamal Greene, Emily Palmer, Sharon LaFraniere, Alan Morrison, Robert Pollie, Joseph Blocher, William Baude, Tara Grove, and theOakland Museum of California.
Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by The Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation.
Supreme Court archival audio comes fromOyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.
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