The First Congressional Debate on Public Carry and What It Tells Us About Firearm Regionalism

In the aftermath of District of Columbia v. Heller, a prominent issue remains unresolved: whether, or to what extent, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms outside of the home. This Article explores this unresolved issue through a newly uncovered source, the congressional debates surrounding the District of Columbia\u27s public carry law in the 1890s. These debates provide new insights into the understanding of the right to keep and bear arms in the years following the drafting and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Two conclusions can be drawn from the debate. First, there was no national consensus regarding a right to public carry under the Second Amendment. This is important because the Supreme Court in Heller stated that the Second Amendment codified venerable, widely understood liberties. Second, the Senators\u27 and Congressmen\u27s varied positions on the Second Amendment and the permissible scope of public carry regulations generally fell into regional patterns. Representatives of states in the North and West supported a more limited public carry right, while those representing states in the Deep South, with some exceptions, supported a broader Second Amendment right. Because the Northern Republicans were the ideological force behind the drafting and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, their restrictive view of public carry should be given special weight when determining the constitutionality of contemporary public carry regulations

Judging History: How Judicial Discretion in Applying Originalist Methodology Affects the Outcome of Post-Heller Second Amendment Cases

This Article aims to assess how the federal appellate courts have applied the originalist methodology in Second Amendment cases in the decade since Heller. It reviews how courts’ varying approaches to historical analysis—specifically, how courts have addressed what historical period to look to, how prevalent a historical tradition must be, and whether to address history at a high or low level of generality—can drastically affect the outcome of cases. As Justice Scalia acknowledged in McDonald, “Historical analysis can be difficult; it sometimes requires resolving threshold questions, and making nuanced judgments about which evidence to consult and how to interpret it.” Examining how courts answer these threshold questions and make nuanced judgments about history is necessary if courts are going to make consistent and predictable decisions in Second Amendment cases. In researching this Article, the author looked at fifty of the most significant Second Amendment cases across the federal circuit courts and analyzed their treatment of several methodological points. Ultimately, this research shows that while there is a near unanimous national consensus within the federal circuit courts on the overall framework for assessing Second Amendment challenges—known as the “two-step test” or the “two-part test”—there are important unresolved methodological issues that have an important impact on how Second Amendment cases are analyzed and decided. These methodological issues, which exist within the consensus framework, allow judges to influence the ultimate decision in a case while appearing to apply objective criteria. This Article aims to bring these issues to the fore and to encourage further consideration of these important originalist methodological points

\u3cem\u3eNYSRPA v. Bruen\u3c/em\u3e and the Future of the Sensitive Places Doctrine: Rejecting the Ahistorical Government Security Approach

On November 3, 2021, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, a Second Amendment case challenging New York’s concealed carry licensing system. The justices’ questions focused not only on who may obtain a license to carry a firearm in public, but also where those with a license may or may not bring their weapons. These questions acknowledged that the Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller provided a carveout for firearms restrictions in “sensitive places,” providing “schools and government buildings” as just two examples. In the fourteen years since Heller, state and federal courts have upheld firearms restrictions in a number of locations under the sensitive places doctrine. However, in anticipation of a wave of sensitive places litigation following the Bruen decision, several conservative scholars now seek to limit the doctrine to only those locations protected by strict government security measures, such as metal detectors and security guards. This article demonstrates that such an approach is inconsistent with our nation’s history of regulating public carry and both historical and present-day case law, including Heller

Distribution of cells responsive to 5-HT6 receptor antagonist-induced hypophagia

Open Access funded by Medical Research CouncilPeer reviewedPublisher PD

The Role of Soy in Vegetarian Diets

Soyfoods have long been prized among vegetarians for both their high protein content and versatility. Soybeans differ markedly in macronutrient content from other legumes, being much higher in fat and protein, and lower in carbohydrate. In recent years however, soyfoods and specific soybean constituents, especially isoflavones, have been the subject of an impressive amount of research. Nearly 2,000 soy-related papers are published annually. This research has focused primarily on the benefits that soyfoods may provide independent of their nutrient content. There is particular interest in the role that soyfoods have in reducing risk of heart disease, osteoporosis and certain forms of cancer. However, the estrogen-like effects of isoflavones observed in animal studies have also raised concerns about potential harmful effects of soyfood consumption. This review addresses questions related to soy and chronic disease risk, provides recommendations for optimal intakes, and discusses potential contraindications. As reviewed, the evidence indicates that, with the exception of those individuals allergic to soy protein, soyfoods can play a beneficial role in the diets of vegetarians. Concerns about adverse effects are not supported by the clinical or epidemiologic literature. Based on the soy intake associated with health benefits in the epidemiologic studies and the benefits noted in clinical trials, optimal adult soy intake would appear to be between two and four servings per day

The Comet Interceptor Mission

Here we describe the novel, multi-point Comet Interceptor mission. It is dedicated to the exploration of a little-processed long-period comet, possibly entering the inner Solar System for the first time, or to encounter an interstellar object originating at another star. The objectives of the mission are to address the following questions: What are the surface composition, shape, morphology, and structure of the target object? What is the composition of the gas and dust in the coma, its connection to the nucleus, and the nature of its interaction with the solar wind? The mission was proposed to the European Space Agency in 2018, and formally adopted by the agency in June 2022, for launch in 2029 together with the Ariel mission. Comet Interceptor will take advantage of the opportunity presented by ESA’s F-Class call for fast, flexible, low-cost missions to which it was proposed. The call required a launch to a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point. The mission can take advantage of this placement to wait for the discovery of a suitable comet reachable with its minimum ΔV capability of 600 ms−1. Comet Interceptor will be unique in encountering and studying, at a nominal closest approach distance of 1000 km, a comet that represents a near-pristine sample of material from the formation of the Solar System. It will also add a capability that no previous cometary mission has had, which is to deploy two sub-probes – B1, provided by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, and B2 – that will follow different trajectories through the coma. While the main probe passes at a nominal 1000 km distance, probes B1 and B2 will follow different chords through the coma at distances of 850 km and 400 km, respectively. The result will be unique, simultaneous, spatially resolved information of the 3-dimensional properties of the target comet and its interaction with the space environment. We present the mission’s science background leading to these objectives, as well as an overview of the scientific instruments, mission design, and schedule

Meritless Historical Arguments in Second Amendment Litigation

Since Heller Second Amendment litigation and scholarship has focused in large part on questions about the historical understanding of the Second Amendment. One area where this historical analysis has been especially pronounced is in litigation over the scope of the Second Amendment right outside of the home. Litigants, amici, and scholars fiercely debate the meaning of historical statutes, treatises, and cases, arguing about the scope of the right to carry arms outside of the home at the time of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments’ ratifications. Most law review articles attempt to address difficult or hotly contested legal issues. This is not one of those kinds of articles. This article will instead address the frivolous arguments made by many plaintiffs in public carry Second Amendment cases, some of which have unfortunately made their way into district and circuit court decisions. These arguments, often made in a misleading sentence or two, usually take a few paragraphs to effectively rebut, paragraphs which the state and local governments defending against challenges to gun laws generally do not have the time, necessary expertise, or word count to include in their briefing. This article aims to provide easy answers to these arguments, hopefully allowing both the courts and the parties to focus on the actual issues in the Second Amendment debate

The Nonracist and Antiracist History of Firearms Public Carry Regulation

This term, the Supreme Court will consider New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, a Second Amendment challenge to New York State’s concealed carry weapon licensing system. Bruen is the first major Second Amendment case that the Court will decide on the merits in more than a decade. Briefing by the plaintiffs and gun rights scholars has in large part focused on arguments that laws regulating the carrying of guns in public, as well as gun regulation more generally, were historically intended to discriminate against minority groups. This argument is consistent with a broader effort in the conservative legal movement to tie conservative goals—using public funds to support parochial schools, prohibiting abortion, and banning affirmative action—to racial justice or minority rights. The argument essentially goes: present day gun laws are unconstitutional because gun laws of the past were intended to discriminate. But the plaintiffs and gun rights scholars cherry-pick this history of expressly racist laws primarily from the antebellum and early Reconstruction South. These states enacted broad restrictions on the rights of both enslaved persons and free people of color, including restrictions on the possession and carrying of firearms. In contrast, there is a long history of gun regulation across the country, including carry regulations, which has been applied to the general population without an intent to discriminate against minority groups. This tradition of gun regulation is the forebearer of modern gun laws, not historical laws targeted at minority groups. When assessing the historical scope of the Second Amendment, courts should look to this nonracist history, not cynical arguments about racist Southern laws. This article will first lay out the overwhelming tradition of nonracist gun laws, which are the predecessors to modern gun regulation. The article will then discuss how the originalist analysis should address explicitly racist historical laws and why courts should look to the nonracist history of gun regulation when assessing the scope of the Second Amendment right