Don Kates is a catalyst in the chemical reaction of criminology and Second Amendment constitutional law scholarship. More than most people, Kates efforts were responsible for the reconfirmation of that individual right by the United States Supreme Court.
Kates is the intersection of a stereotypical college professor (which he is) and a rabid activist (which he might deny). Yet his intelligent perspective on the relationship between humans and government shows that the two are not mutually exclusive and that, in the area of arms, they are positively united.
I’ve known and worked with Don for over 20 years. I’m proud to call him a colleague, mentor and friend.
An Effort, Then An Avalanche
In gun control’s golden era, Kates was a nearly lone voice in the constitutional law wilderness. At a time when an orchestrated attempt was in full drive to redefine the Second Amendment into uselessness and to abolish private gun ownership, Kates was writing and lecturing the next generations of scholars on exactly the opposite. Holding onto classic republicanism/liberalism, Kates spoke media heresy in proclaiming that the American constitution expressly secured an individual right to arms. But Kates illustrated his points to historical excess, noting that in antiquity the only disarmed people were slaves. Kates wove these historical facts into the same fabric of understanding as had the authors of the Bill of Rights. He would demonstrate with current and ancient news contrarian notions, such as all modern revolutions were by armed masses fighting a superiorly armed government and that disorderly individual action succeeds better than utopian order directed from above (what the Chinese government perpetually calls a “harmonious society”).
by C.D. Michel
