Guns: Not Just for the Home Anymore

- Brian Doherty, Reason The Washington Post has an interesting profile of longtime libertarian activist and fighter for gun possession rights, Tom Palmer. Palmer was one of the original plaintiffs in the Heller case, which vindicated the Second Amendment by overturning D.C.'s ban on handgun ownership. (Palmer was booted from the case for technical standing reasons before it reached the Supreme Court.)

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Palmer is now one of the plaintiffs in a new legal challenge to still-existing D.C. laws that prohibit the public carrying ("bearing," as in "the right to keep and bear arms") of your gun in D.C. The Post story features Palmer's dramatic retelling of the incident that convinced him in his bones, not just from his philosophical predilections, that bearing arms in public can save lives, since his bearing arms saved his from some gay-bashing thugs. (That story is also told in my book on the Heller case, Gun Control on Trial.) More...

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