Don B. Kates shown leading a Second Amendment seminar years ago.
Attorney and Second Amendment scholar Don B. Kates, author of several books and papers on the right to keep and bear arms, has passed away. He was 75.
His books included Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out, The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence, which he wrote with Gary Kleck, and Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control.
He was among the earliest legal professionals to write about the Second Amendment as protective of an individual right. He attended Reed College and the Yale Law School.
A native of California, Kates brought the Second Amendment issue into the spotlight with an article in the Michigan Law Review in 1983, entitled: “Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment.” It was, according to a brief biography on Wikipedia, the first time such an article appeared in a “Top-10” law journal. Shortly thereafter, many leading legal scholars began to publish articles focusing on the amendment as guaranteeing an individual civil right.
Kates was once described as “the Johnnie Cochran” of the gun rights lobby by the Washington Post.
He worked closely with the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) almost from the formation of the tax-exempt organization. He was also a leading figure at legal conferences sponsored by the National Rifle Association, often leading panels that also included ranking scholars on constitutional law.
He chaired and lead a series of writers and scholars conference seminars hosted by SAF in Denver in 1976 and in St. Louis in 1977 which brought together some of the leading gun rights attorneys and college professors in an effort to encourage new scholarship on the original intent of the Founding Fathers with respect to the Second Amendment. Many of the articles, bolstered by impeccable historical research, later became footnotes to the landmark Heller and MacDonald case arguments before the US Supreme Court.
Kates was a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He received his J.D. from Yale University Law School and taught constitutional law and lectured on criminology at Stanford University, Oxford University, George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Melbourne.
A liberal who was also involved in the 1960s civil rights movement and poverty issues, Kates previously worked for the late civil rights lawyer William Kunstler (Kunstler & Kinoy) and the California Rural Legal Assistance, where he served as Director of Legal Research and Senior Litigation Attorney. After many years as a private practitioner in San Francisco, Kates was an associate with the firms Trutanich & Michel and the Law Offices of Donald Kilmer. He also maintained a civil liberties and rights practice that specializes in the right to bear arms.
In addition, had been Trustee for the Poverty Lawyers for Effective Advocacy, Member of the California State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Director of Litigation and Deputy Director for the San Mateo Legal Aid Society, Police Legal Advisor for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, Research Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, and consultant to the legal services program for the cities of Seattle and Berkeley and the state of Alaska. During the recent Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, Kates served as an advisor to the council in the Court of Appeals.
