Common Use, Lineage, and Lethality

Below is an article from the UC Davis Law Review that references Trevor Dupuy 75 times, references me 9 times and references Susan Rich 8 times. The article is Common Use, Lineage, and Lethality by Darrell A. H. Miller & Jennifer Tucker: Microsoft Word – 55-5_Miller_Tucker.docx (ucdavis.edu).

It still seems strange to me that a group of legal scholars are actually paying attention to the Theoretical Lethality Index (TLI) that Trevor Dupuy came up with in 1964, but we are flattered by the mention. This has been discussed before: Opinion: Now that guns can kill hundreds in minutes, Supreme Court should rethink the rights question | CNN. And then there is this: The Left’s Shark-Jumping Conclusions On NY Carry Case – Bearing Arms. These are all linked to this blog post: What Is The Relationship Between Rate of Fire and Military Effectiveness? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).

I will be speaking at the Center for the Study of Guns and Society at Wesleyan University in Middleton, Conn. on 14-15 October 2022. The link to it is here: Center for the Study of Guns and Society – Wesleyan University-based center dedicated to interdisciplinary humanities study and teaching on the social and cultural history of firearms (gunsandsocietycenter.com). Click on this: Quantifying Arms Lethality in Historical Perspective – Center for the Study of Guns and Society (gunsandsocietycenter.com). Should be interesting. I have never actually attended an academic conference.

I gather the conference is open invitation:  Conference – Center for the Study of Guns and Society (gunsandsocietycenter.com).

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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5 Comments

  1. The first article you referred to and written by a female is typical manure written by journalists who have probably never fired a gun in their entire lives. Absolute drivel. She quoted a case in which the death toll could have higher in the same time by simply driving a heavy construction vehicle in that crowd. But that would have been “media sexy”.

  2. Wow, that is an amazing amount of biographical print on Trevor Dupuy to be found in a law journal.

    With the current court (correctly, in my view) not trying to redefine language instead of leaving it to legislators and “the people” to update laws and the Constitution (the amending of which could use a lot of help from today’s contract lawyers), it seems to me that the law journal article writers should have referred to “an arm is an arm is an arm” rather than to “a gun is a gun is a gun” when imagining how the authors of the 2nd Amendment were conceptualizing the right to bear arms. Too much print is being used to create work-arounds rather to make amendments or to write laws that fit with the actual wordings of existing laws and amendments. Here’s a suggestion involving the using of the existing wording of the 2nd Amendment for a gun (military weapon?) control policy:

    An Approach to Gun Control that Wouldn’t Violate the Second Amendment

    There is an approach to “gun control” that seems rather obvious given the preamble to the meat of the Second Amendment: a militia-based approach to handling gun control along the lines of legislating a requirement that anyone who bears arms (perhaps, limited to firearms or a precisely defined class of military-style firearms rather than including bows and arrows, knives, swords, spears, spearguns, crossbows, etc.) automatically be drafted into a special branch of the National Guard or Reserves.

    This special branch (that could make special accommodations based upon health, age, gender, etc.) would subject its draftees to firearms training (perhaps even obtaining NRA support by having NRA provide some gun-safety training), military discipline (including by JAG), psychological screening, psychological counselling (even though that hasn’t prevented all crazy acts with firearms by regular military personnel), and other relevant military requirements. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that some of the gun bearers would be excited about the opportunity to be identified as soldiers (while not being required to see action in war zones because of having been drafted into this special branch).

    This would accomplish many of the aims of gun control in a way that doesn’t violate the Second Amendment.

    To reiterate, being drafted wouldn’t abridge the right to bear (or own) arms. As courts have affirmed, the preamble to the Second Amendment doesn’t limit the bearing of arms to a militia setting (or even to a militia-based rationale, it’s just the rationale that was on the minds of the amendment’s authors); however, there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents the U.S. Congress from legislating the placement of the gun issue into a militia setting. Just as a sales tax or some identification requirement doesn’t abridge the right to bear arms, being placed on the list of those drafted for a special branch of the National Guard wouldn’t abridge the right any more than would being on any other list (for example, on a list of voters whose right to vote wouldn’t have been abridged if a law had been passed that stated that all who register to vote are automatically drafted into the armed services or into some civilian conservation corps). Some might not want to bear/own arms if they have to pay a sales tax or if they have to be on some list or if they have to be drafted, but they still have the right. The exercise of a right doesn’t have to be costless to the person exercising that right; otherwise, having the right to bear arms would require that the government (Federal, State or lower jurisdiction) would have to bear the expense of buying the arms for the person exercising the right to bear arms. The cost, to the bearer of firearms, could include service in a special branch of the National Guard or Reserves. Lawyers could make this argument work!

    Until we, the people, choose to amend our overly broad Second Amendment, this militia-based approach to gun control could be the way to go in order to get more of a handle on insanity-based violence (facilitated by firearms) within a gun-happy society.

  3. The National Guard doesnt want you over age 42, unless you are a medical doctor, lawyer or chaplain.

    The State Guard is already defined as the organized militia by congress. However, only about half the states have a standing State Guard.

    • Tom, it’s not a matter of what others currently want. It would be a law created by Congress (with the help of contract lawyers : – ) as a workaround until there is an amending of the 2nd Amendment (an updating with the help of contract lawyers to cover current and any possible future contingencies, even by creating an instrument to arbitrate difficult contingencies so that the courts aren’t put into the position of having to “fudge” their reading of the law in order to avoid unintended/chaotic consequences rather than simply judge cases by applying the laws as written by legislatures).

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