A U.S. Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi has cited a book co-edited by Jennifer Tucker, founding director of the Center for the Study of Guns & Society, in an order on a case concerning a federal statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms.
“In reviewing the briefing and authorities presented in this case, and after conducting its own research, this Court discovered a serious disconnect between the legal and historical communities,” wrote U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves in his October 27, 2022 order. Simply put, “[t]he firearms history that appears in law journals and court briefs is not the firearms history familiar to many mainstream historians.” [A Right to Bear Arms? The Contested Role of History in Contemporary Debates on the Second Amendment 187 (Jennifer Tucker et al. eds., 2019)]
The order concludes by stating: “Not wanting to itself cherry‐pick the history, the Court now asks the parties whether it should appoint a historian to serve as a consulting expert in this matter.”
