Don Kates

Don Kates was a retired American lawyer and research fellow with The Independent Institute in Oakland, California who focused on promoting gun rights. His books include Armed: New Perspectives On Gun Control, Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out, Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy, and The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence (with Gary Kleck). As a civil liberties lawyer he had been retained by the National Rifle Association to represent gun owners attacking the constitutionality of certain firearms laws. The Washington Post described Kates as the "Johnnie Cochran" of the pro-gun lobby, noting his polemical attacks on public-health research on firearms injuries and writing that Kates "has muddied the waters of truth so thoroughly that wading into them is a daunting task."

Kates attended Reed College and Yale Law School. During the Civil rights movement, he worked in the South for civil rights lawyers including William Kunstler. Thereafter, he specialized in civil rights and police misconduct litigation for the federal War on Poverty program. After three years of teaching constitutional law, criminal law, and criminal procedure at Saint Louis University School of Law, he returned to San Francisco where he practiced law and writes on criminology. He is editor of Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy (San Francisco: 1984, Pacific Research Institute) and the Winter 1986 issue of Law & Contemporary Problems. He is author of the entry on the Second Amendment in M. Levy & K. Karst, The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution; "Firearms and Violence: Old Premises, Current Evidence," in T. Gurr (ed.), Violence in America (1989); and "Precautionary Handgun Ownership: Reasonable Choice or Dangerous Delusion," B. Danto (ed.), Gun Control and Criminal Homicide, forthcoming (1990). He died on November 1, 2016.

Bibliography

• Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control (w/ Gary Kleck, gun control, Prometheus Books, 2001) ISBN 1-57392-883-6
• Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy Publisher: Ballinger Publishing Company (May 1984) ISBN 0-88410-922-4, ISBN 978-0-88410-922-8
• The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms & Violence (w/ Gary Kleck and John K. Lattimer, gun control, Pacific Research Institute, 1997) ISBN 0-936488-39-5
• Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out Publisher: North River Press Publishing Corporation (February 1979) ISBN 0-88427-034-3, ISBN 978-0-88427-034-8