Posted on 03/01/2005 9:14:15 PM PST by Antonio Ciaccia
Picture this: a public policy institute at Penn State University is awarded money to establish an abortion research center. The money to establish the center is donated by the Christian Coalition, and the appointed director of the center has written op-ed pieces in the past about how abortion is comparable to murder. Then the center releases documents authored by its director that discuss the interpretation of the Constitution that could forbid abortion all together.
Does this sound like a reliable source for fair research?
While the above scenario is fictitious, a very similar situation has arisen at Ohio State, thanks to our very own Second Amendment Research Center (SARC). In March 2003, the John Glenn Institute created SARC to “promote informed discussion of an important policy issue and stimulate interest in history as a dynamic field relevant to current policy issues.” The director of the center, Dr. Saul Cornell, a Constitutional historian, was chosen to shed light on the difficult topic of gun policy.
Cornell was no stranger to the issue of the Second Amendment. He had written on the topic many times before. In 2001, Cornell published a piece entitled “The Second Amendment Under Fire,” where he attempted to provide a fair analysis of the gun debate. In the piece, he invokes an idea that has been pushed by gun control advocates- the idea that the Second Amendment is a collective right. This interpretation of the amendment states that the right to bear arms is not a right for individuals to own firearms, but instead, a right for the military to bear arms.
In the piece, Cornell gives much credence to the collective rights argument and cites many examples to support the claim, but he offers little evidence from individual rights theorists, resorting to the hefty overstatement that “most historians, however, reject the individual rights interpretation.” This fringe interpretation was to be the basis of much work to come for Cornell. But his collective rights work was not to be his only hypothesis on the subject of gun control.
In 2000, Cornell and several other academics composed an open letter to Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association, attacking the group’s policy preferences, calling those policies “a disservice to all Americans.” The letter aimed to “prevent the killings and violence that plague our country today.”
While the NRA wasn’t too popular in most circles at the time, this letter was written on an entirely separate premise from his collective rights work, which went into full swing only a year later. A simple timeline of the writings shows that Cornell’s opinion was dead set beforehand on worrying about gun control, rather than Constitutional wording.
Yet despite his past hostility towards the right to bear arms and his highly controversial collective rights view, the Glenn Institute named him director and wanted to set up this research center as an intellectual home for the new collective rights interpretation. In 2003, SARC was established with a $400,000 grant from an alarming source: the Joyce Foundation, one of the nation’s most prominent gun control advocacy groups.
The Joyce Foundation has long been involved in the issue of gun control. It makes yearly donations to anti-firearm groups like Handgun Free America, a group “dedicated to the ban of private handgun ownership in the U.S.” As you can see, the prerequisites for funding from Joyce are not exactly based on two-sided debate. Even more startling is that Handgun Free America received only $35,000, while Ohio State’s SARC was given over eleven times that amount!
Ohio State is not the only place receiving large Joyce funding. Joyce funded research at UCLA concerning the Second Amendment to the tune of $900,000. The study looked into one-gun-a-month laws, the Clinton assault weapon ban, waiting periods, and the usefulness of gun locks. The council found no gun control measure had a positive effect in reducing crime. Needless to say, the Joyce Foundation was reluctant to share the findings, saying "more research [was] needed.” So when things didn’t turn out the way they liked, they kept everything quiet. Is this what we can expect here at Ohio State as well?
Since his appointment as director, Cornell has continued his work and has recently moved into his new office in Page Hall where he continues to research and write. His latest piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review from late January has been the source of much scrutiny. In a piece entitled, “Taking a Bite out of the Second Amendment,” Cornell does exactly as his title states, only after his bite, he chews up the Second Amendment and spits it back out.
In the piece, Cornell explicitly calls out the Department of Justice for deciding “to revise the Second Amendment.” The Department of Justice had recently released a report acknowledging the right to bear arms as an individual right, a statement that totally contradicted Cornell’s work. Normally, such a response is acceptable in an op-ed, but not in the case of Cornell. As a research director in a public policy institute, one must remain as objective as possible, and Cornell has now made it very clear that he has already made up his mind.
Cornell goes on to state in the article, “Although gun rights advocates have tried to claim that bearing arms did not have a military connotation at the time the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, they have never been able to provide a body of evidence to support their claims. The only evidence they have produced is a single text written by the losing side in the original debate over the Constitution.”
For those unaware, the group who won the battle of ratification of the Constitution was the Federalists, as Cornell states. But what he cleverly leaves out is the fact that the Bill of Rights (where the Second Amendment can be found) was drafted as a concession to the Anti-Federalists. The reality is that the text was written by the WINNING side in the battle of the Bill of Rights.
This past October, the Sentinel co-hosted a gun debate with the John Glenn Institute and Intercollegiate Studies Institute between two firearms experts, Jim Kessler from Americans for Gun Safety (arguing in favor of gun control) and John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime (arguing in favor of gun rights). During the selection process for a moderator, the Sentinel naturally went to Cornell. But after researching his works, it became clear that Kessler would have made a better moderator than Cornell. Cornell’s views against guns were more extreme than those of the man arguing against guns!
In order to make the comparison, one need only explore the words of Kessler: “I believe the Second Amendment is an individual right that allows restrictions,” Kessler said, “And while I’m not a Constitutional scholar, I’ve always known the Bill of Rights to be about individual rights, not collective.”
This is where SARC stands now. They have a director whose allegiances to one side were documented before his selection. They now churn out material that completely contradicts the Department of Justice and hundreds of years of Constitutional scholarship. And all the while, they are funded by a group with shady ties but a very clear agenda.
Research is a difficult thing, yet it is crucial to the credibility of the John Glenn Institute and the university as a whole that that research is done in the fairest, most objective way possible. While Saul Cornell and the John Glenn Institute may not be even be aware of the view of their program from an outside perspective, they should be made aware of the red flags popping up all around SARC. At a time when Ohio State’s top priority seems to be research, you would think that it wouldn’t take an astronaut to figure out that this is not a good example of what the future research university should look like. Then again, maybe it does.
You can only fault the process if the findings are tainted. The first question should always be; "Is it true?"
To 'bang' and 'banglist' keywords.
“most historians, however, reject the individual rights interpretation.” This fringe interpretation was to be the basis of much work to come for Cornell
How long do we have to dispute the fact that most liberal Constitutional 'scholars' even agree that the 2nd is an INDIVIDUAL right ???
All this "blah blah blah" about the 2nd amendment.
If the namby-pambys think that it was for a military outfit, WHAT did same outfit use BEFORE the amendment was passed?
Were armies forbidden arms ? Did George Washington defeat the British Army (who were charged with enforcing GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION and were doing so) with mere rhetoric and wordsmithing?
The Second amendment is CLEARLY, and without doubt intended that those who desire and want to possess and bear arms are BOUND to, by THEIR OWN WILL!
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