Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

My latest academic article published - Revisiting the Original Congressional Debates About the Second Amendment - #2A Thanks to the editors at Missouri Law Review for editing/publishing it. Read/download here: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol88/iss2/9/

Check out my new post on the Second Thoughts blog here .

Ethical Issues with Lawyers Openly Carrying Firearms    St. Mary’s Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics (Forthcoming) December 18, 2019 Abstract Ethical concerns arise when lawyers openly carry firearms to adversarial meetings related to representation, such as depositions and settlement negotiations. Visible firearms introduce an element of intimidation, or at least the potential for misunderstandings and escalation of conflicts. The adverse effects of openly carried firearms can impact opposing parties, opposing counsel, the lawyer’s potential clients, witnesses, and even judges and jurors encountered outside the courtroom. The ABA’s Model Rules of Professional in their current form include provisions that could be applicable, such as rules against coercion and intimidation, but there is no explicit reference to firearms. Several reported incidents with lawyers and firearms have occurred in recent years, and as states liberalize their “open carry” laws, as well ...

Gun Violence as an Obstacle to Educational Equality   University of Memphis Law Review, Forthcoming Abstract:  This paper addresses the issue of school gun violence as both a result and a cause of ongoing educational inequality. First, gun violence and homicides have reached epidemic levels in recent years among minority teenagers in the United States, and the constant disruption, trauma, and fear that go along with such day to day violence significantly affect the educational and psychological development of urban youth, and thus their eventual educational and career achievements. Second, media attention and recent legislative initiatives to permit or require guns in schools (arming teachers, etc.) focus on the comparatively rare phenomenon of active shooter scenarios (school massacres or shooting rampages), which are predominantly a suburban phenomenon, while ignoring the causes and effects of routine, lower-fatality gun incidents in poorer urban schools. Measures ...

Dec. 18, 2019 - forthcoming in Penn State Law Review Smart Guns, the Law, and the Second Amendment   https://ssrn.com/abstract=3500570   Abstract:  Smart guns, which originally meant personalized guns that only the owner could fire, had a false start as a promising new technology several years ago. Nevertheless, policymakers have shown renewed interest in the wake of highly publicized incidents of gun violence, as well as advances in technology. The first generation of smart guns foundered on problems with the reliability of the technology, as well as a legislative misstep that would have banned all other guns as soon as smart guns appeared in the retail market, triggering massive boycotts of certain manufacturers and dealers, and a subsequent abandonment of the project by the gun industry overall. Newer technologies, however, such as improved biometric grip identifiers, precision-guided rifles that rarely miss, blockchain or “glockchain” automated tracking, ...

I have a new article draft posted on SSRN:  GOING GUNLESS   photo by  Maria Lysenko Stevenson, Drury D., Going Gunless (July 13, 2019).  Available at SSRN:  https://ssrn.com/abstract=3419585 Abstract Firearm policy in the United States is subject to longstanding political gridlock; victories and losses for each side of the issue run neck-and-neck. This Article inverts the problem and proposes a system for voluntary registration and certification of non-owners, those who want to waive or renounce their Second Amendment rights as a matter of personal conviction. The proposed system is analogous to both the registration of conscientious objectors during wartime conscriptions, and the newer suicide prevention laws whereby individuals can add their names to a do-not-sell list for firearm dealers – though the proposal made here is broader and more permanent. Voluntary registration, with official certification, would serve three important purposes. First, ...