Showing posts with label gun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gun. Show all posts

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Is There a Right of Self-Defense? -- The US vs UK


New World Notes News
Vol. 2, No. 47 -- December 1, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #91 (December 1, 2009):

Joyce Malcolm discusses,
Is There a Right of Self-Defense?
-- The U.S. vs. the U.K.

Noted historian and legal scholar Joyce Lee Malcolm discusses the diverging English and American views of the ancient English right on which the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is based--the right of self-defense.

This legal right has been preserved in the United States but has largely been abolished in the United Kingdom. Malcolm's stories of the practical effects in England of this change fascinated her audience. Would you believe a homeowner jailed for holding a toy gun on burglars?

This program features the first two-thirds of a public lecture Malcolm delivered at the University of Hartford on October 7, recorded & lightly edited by yours, truly. The final third was included in installment #90, broadcast last week. You can listen to or download #90 (64 kbps mp3) at any time.

Next week: selections from Michael Parenti's lecture, "Political Liberties and Economic Democracy," recorded live on November 4.

"The Little Insurgent": Monument in Warsaw
commemorating the Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Click
photo to enlarge for detail. For more on the
Warsaw Ghetto (and its similarities to Palestine
today), see our photo essay, here.

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Joyce Malcolm on the Meaning of the 2nd Amendment


All graphics: Click to enlarge

This week in New World Notes, radio program #90 (Tuesday, November 24):

Joyce Malcolm on the Meaning
of the 2nd Amendment

In a nutshell:

An offbeat look at guns & gun-banning. I tell of my own development from a capgun-slinging 7-year-old to a liberal-academic gun-banner ... to somebody who knows a little about guns & gun laws and thinks the NRA is not totally wrong about everything.

Then historian & legal scholar Joyce Lee Malcolm discusses the meaning of the 2nd Amendment & the recent landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which affirmed the right of the individual citizen to keep & bear firearms.

Heller, though, applies only to the District of Columbia! Next year, in McDonald v. Chicago, the Court will decide whether the individual right applies to the rest of the country as well.

Joyce Lee Malcolm

Thought experiment

What do you understand this sentence to mean?--

  • A well-educated workforce being necessary
    to the prosperity of a free State, the right of
    the people to buy and read books shall not
    be infringed.

Does it, say, guarantee only the right of an employer to provide printed instructional materials as part of a formal job-training seminar?

Does it empower the government to ban the possession of racy novels or other literature having no connection with earning a living?

This week's song: Fred Eaglesmith, Time to Get a Gun

Miss part or all of our last 2 programs?

Our radio adaptation of the documentary Sir! No Sir! is good for the soul and good for the blood pressure. Learn more, listen online, or download the audio for future listening by clicking on this link.


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Coming soon -- Tuesday debut date on WWUH shown:

  • December 1 -- Joyce Malcolm asks, Is There a Right of Self-Defense? -- The U.S. vs. the U.K.

  • December 8 -- Michael Parenti on Political Liberties and Economic Democracy

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Malcolm's latest (Yale University Press, 2009)--nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize. More information at www.joyceleemalcolm.com .

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