Hey looky here. Reason Magazine editor-in-chief and former esteemed Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms guest Nick Gillespie launched my humble TV show into the stratosphere today. He embedded my show on their Reason Hit and Run blog. Why would he do such an awesome thing? Because cartoonist Henry Payne was on my show to talk cartooning with recently retired Colorado Springs Gazette cartoonist Chuck Asay. Thanks Reason!

This past Friday I had our education policy analyst Ben DeGrow on my TV show. He came on to talk about how teachers can get their political union dues back through what they call the “every member option” refund. If you know anyone that teachers in Colorado, please share this video and information with them. Check out IndependentTeachers.org for more info.

Our good friends at Liberty on the Rocks want you to know about their upcoming Christmas party to celebrate the holidays, new years, and free market education. If you don’t know about Liberty on the Rocks yet, you should. LOTR is the free market drinking club you wish you could have joined back in college. The Denver chapter is throwing a heck of a Christmas party this Friday, December 16th at the Colorado Auto Dealers Association (CADA) that I will be attending. (Yeah, I am a featured guest. Meaning, you can drink and hang out with me… if you buy me drinks). If you have Facebook, check out the event information here. For those of you still stuck in the stone age, here is the information:

Where can you enjoy a tasty alcoholic beverage while discussing liberty and politics with others? Or sing Christmas karaoke with liberty activists, elected officials and good friends? Or receive a gift from a stranger? All while supporting free market education?At the Liberty on the Rocks Christmas party – that’s where! So mark your calendars for another great event at CADA, where you can celebrate freedom while enjoying great food, conversation and time with your friends. And who can forget the chance to talk politics *and* sing karaoke?

We will have secret Santa gift giving – where anyone bringing a gift will get one in return! In addition to great food, karaoke, a cash bar and plenty of others to mingle with. There will also be cake to celebrate the upcoming third anniversary of Liberty on the Rocks.

Admission is $15 and includes one drink ticket, complimentary snacks and a cash bar.

*SUPPORT FREE MARKET EDUCATION*

All proceeds go to support the Liberty on the Rocks Free Market Education Project, which aims to distribute free market literature and information to hundreds of people across the country through local networks.

We hope to see you there. Be sure to bring your secret Santa gift (optional), your appetite for good food and your karaoke singing voice!

PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS TODAY AT: http://denver.libertyontherocks.org/

Come join me for free markets, food, booze, and education. Help spread the message of liberty this Christmas season!

Wow. Michael Sandoval hits a home run over on our Environmental Policy page. His latest work completely destroys the idea that green = clean. It’s the standard line we hear all the time. “Wind is clean!” “Solar is clean!” “Save our environment!” Well, sorry to let the cat out of the bag, but green is not clean by any stretch of the imagination. But don’t take my word for it, let Michael explain here.

If you had to choose between watching public affairs television on a Friday night or a poke in the eye, which would it be? On this Friday night’s Devil’s Advocate, first I am joined by the outgoing Mike Keefe to talk about his 35 years as editorial cartoonist at the Denver Post. Then the Independence Institute’s Ben DeGrow drops in to explain how teachers can request a refund of their “Every Member Option” union funds that otherwise go to state and local political campaigns. That’s 8:30 PM on Colorado Public Television 12.

Regarding Eugene Volokh’s post below about an NYU L. Rev. article, “The People” of the Second Amendment: Citizenship and the Right To Bear Arms. I just scanned the article, and there appears to be only a single footnote which directly cites any state statutes from before 1800. Note 125, accurately cites standard statutory compilations from Massachusetts and Connecticut for laws against selling firearms to Indians. Although the author is apparently unaware that by 1661 (Connecticut) and 1688 (Massachusetts) the laws were changed to allow gun sales (and even gun carrying in towns) by friendly Indians. The article suffers very severely from its near-exclusive reliance on secondary sources for the pre-1800 period, especially since some of those sources are highly tendentious.

To summarize the information from Chapter 3 of my forthcoming textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy (Aspen Publishers, available in late Jan. 2012) regarding American law pre-1800:

Women: No restrictions. Of course they did not serve in the militia. Laws requiring “householders” (whether or not they were in the militia) to have arms were common, and these usually included a woman who was the head of the house (e.g., a widow).

Free blacks: Some states had no restrictions, some states had bans on their owning guns. Free blacks served in some state militia, not in some other states, and in some states policies changed depending on military necessity. They were excluded from the federal militia by the Second Militia Act of 1792.

Slaves: Several states banned gun ownership, or allowed ownership only with the master’s permission.

Poor whites: To claim that they were excluded from gun ownership or from militia service is absurd. There were absolutely no property or wealth restrictions on gun ownership, nor on service in the militia. To the contrary, many states had programs to supply poor people with guns (“public arms”) for militia service, if they could not afford their own. Further, the laws requiring householders to be armed often required that the household provide arms to adult male servants. State laws also required that when an indentured servant finished his or her term of service, the master must provide the former servant with “freedom dues” so that the servant could begin independent life. The freedom dues were specified set of goods; in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, freedom dues for male servants included a firearm. In short, the state laws of the 17th and 18th centuries in America were generally prescriptive about gun ownership by poor people, and the prescriptions were to put guns into the hands of the poor.

The author of the NYU article asserts that “arms bearing was considered congruent to voting, holding public office, or serving on juries.” That’s incorrect for “bearing” in the sense of carrying a gun for personal use, since there were no wealth, sex, age, or citizenship restrictions on carrying. And the claim is even more incorrect if “bearing” is meant in the restrictive sense of “bearing for militia service.” Militia laws always mandated service by all males (except, sometimes Blacks or Indians) in a certain age range. Period. The only exemptions were for specified professions (e.g., clergy). Militia duty was generally required starting at age 16 or 18 (which was before voting eligibility). Indeed, during the end of the 18th century and the early 19th century, one of the standard,successful, arguments for broadening the franchise by eliminating the property requirement for voting was that anyone who served in the militia deserved to vote. E.g., “Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.” Thomas Jefferson letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816.

Catholics: In Maryland, temporarily barred from gun ownership during the French & Indian War.

Dissenters: During the Revolution, there were plenty of instances of confiscating guns (sometimes with compensation) for militia use from people who would not take a loyalty oath to the new nation, or who would not serve in the militia (this included plenty of religious pacifists in Pennsylvania). During the early theocratic days in Massachusetts, 75 supporters of the religious dissident Anne Hutchinson were disarmed.

The author’s thesis is that illegal aliens and legal non-resident aliens should be allowed to own guns. Part of his argument is to construct and then criticize the supposedly historical “gendered,and class-stratified understanding of persons permitted to own guns.” The author could have made a stronger historical argument for his position if he had accurately described the gun laws of 17th and 18th century America.

Well, it’s that time again. Time for us at the Independence Institute to say, “I told you so.” It’s quite easy to say I told you so when you have FasTracks around. Anyone can do it really. All you have to do is this: read RTD’s cost estimates and completion dates and… not believe a word of it. They continue to underestimate costs and completion dates for every single one of their rail lines. And why shouldn’t they? It’s the best strategy for selling an inefficient, bloated public works project to voters. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet caught on that “X amount of dollars” really means “X times 5 amount of money.” And “completed by year 20XX” really means “completed by year 20XX + 30 years.”

It’s been the same story, full of lies and deceptions since the 1970’s. Check out this short video we made chronicling RTD’s lies over the years.

The question remains: will voters be fooled a third time? We know RTD will ask for more money. That’s for sure. We just don’t know when they’ll come groveling back to voters to fund the same project yet again.

How many times are you willing to pay for the same project?

That’s the title of my new law review article, currently in the editing process at the Charleston Law Review. A draft is available at SSRN, and comments are welcome. The final part of the article suggests how the history might inform our modern understanding of Second Amendment rights.

If you did not have the opportunity to join us last month to honor retiring Colorado Springs Gazette editorial cartoonist Chuck Asay with our prized Vern Bickel award, have no fear. Thanks to our great friend Michael Sandoval, we have video of my opening remarks and those of syndicated editorial cartoonist Henry Payne of the Detroit News and my favorite – Reason Magazine. You can catch the opening remarks in the video below:

In the second video, you’ll hear the end of Henry Payne’s opening remarks, see Chuck receive the award and say a few words:

Here we go again. The Left’s latest attempt to defame the Tea Party movement appears in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine. In the article, “Debt and Dumb,” the authors distort the founding era record and our Constitution to vilify Tea Partiers. As we’ve seen recently, the Constitution is back in vogue and even the Left is using it to further their big government agenda. (”What’d the founders think? Well, look at Hamilton!”)

Um, okay. Let’s look at him.

Rob Natelson deconstructs the Vanity Fair article in this constitution.i2i.org blogpost. As Rob notes, VF does a great job revising history to fit their beliefs. Over on iVoices.org, Rob sits down with one of my minions to talk about the VF article and why it’s dead wrong. Podcast here.