THE BOSTON GLOBE has a piece about Joyce Malcolm’s book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience. (Here’s my FoxNews piece on the book from week before last). The Globe piece is surprisingly sympathetic, proving again that the tide seems to be turning on this issue.
I should note that Prof. Malcolm has said on an academic email list that she was misquoted, and never said that all guns are outlawed in England (though in my opinion that wouldn’t be that much of an overstatement), and that she did not describe antigun law professor Carl Bogus as “just a lawyer.” Reading Bogus’s quote, however, a rather tart reply was called for. Bogus describes Malcolm’s work as “discredited,” an amazing statement given that he’s still defending the work of Michael Bellesiles. Then again, maybe it’s not an amazing statement, given that he’s still defending the work of Michael Bellesiles. (In a display of candor that sets a new standard for such coverage, the Globe even describes Bogus not only as a law professor but as “former director on the board of the advocacy group Handgun Control Inc.”)
I’d be interested in seeing Bogus provide some evidence to support his statement on Malcolm’s work.