Many Christians cite the Bible in their support of gun control legislation. Members of other religions do the same with their sacred texts.
But defenders of existing gun rights often also have religious reasons. And whatever their disagreements on other matters, the natural rights philosophers such as Blackstone, Montesquieu, Hobbes, and Locke who provided the intellectual foundation of the American Revolution saw self-defense as "the primary law of nature," from which many other legal principles could be deduced.
In this lecture, David Kopel explored religion, self-defense, and the relationship between the two.
About the Speaker
David Kopel, associate policy analyst, is research director at the Independence Institute and adjunct professor of Advanced Constitutional Law at Denver University, Sturm College of Law. He is the author of The Truth about Gun Control, No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement, and How to Fix It, Antitrust After Microsoft, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies?, and nine other books. He is an expert on firearms policy, juvenile crime, drug policy, antitrust, constitutional law, criminal sentencing, and environmental law.