Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne D. Eisen

Doctor Paul Gallant and Doctor Joanne D. Eisen are the joint CCRKBA Gun Rights Defenders of the Month for July.
 “Gallant and Eisen are two of the more important gun policy researchers in the world, and are playing a major role in the struggle against United Nations gun prohibition,” reports Dave Kopel, Research Director of the Independence Institute.  Kopel nominated the two scholars for the joint Award.
 Kopel himself should be familiar to Point Blank readers.  He has been honored with various CCRKBA awards for his own numerous scholarly efforts on behalf of the individual right to keep and bear arms.
 Gallant is an ophthalmologist, and Eisen is a dentist.  Both live in New York State.  They are Senior Fellows with the Independence Institute, in Colorado. 
 Gallant and Eisen are members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.  They write extensively on the relationship between gun prohibition and genocide.  One of their most important articles, forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review, examines the Darfur, Sudan genocide, and demonstrates that – because none of the politically correct methods to stop genocide have succeeded – groups targeted for genocide have a right under international law to possess defensive arms.  This is the first scholarly article to demonstrate in detail that there is any form of an international right to keep and bear arms.
 Kopel writes that, “Paul and Joanne are not only the best at what they do; they’re the only ones who do what they do.”
 He explains:  “The international gun prohibition movement includes hundreds of anti-gun research organizations; many of these so called ‘non-government organizations’ receive heavy funding from governments, for the purpose of creating an intellectual climate hostile to gun ownership.  At the intellectual level, Paul and Joanne are virtually the only producers of scholarship which challenges the anti-gun international propaganda.”
 Among the countries which Gallant and Eisen have written about are Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, Canada, Albania, Bosnia, England, Mali, Kenya, Sudan, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Bougainville, Cambodia, East Timor, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, and Sri Lanka.  They also have authored many articles about gun rights in the United States. Their work has been translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese.
 Among their current projects are gun prohibition laws applied to slaves and to free blacks in antebellum America, and the human rights violations resulting from UN-imposed gun prohibition in Kenya.
 Early in their writing careers, Gallant and Eisen wrote frequently for Guns & Ammo and Gun Week.  Later, they co-authored many columns with Kopel for National Review Online.  Today, they write several times a year for America’s First Freedom, usually biographies of pro-gun heroes, such as NRA President and Civil War General Winfield Scott Hancock, or First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  Their main focus, though, is on articles for academic journals.  They have written many major scholarly articles in journals such as the Brown Journal of World Affairs, the Journal of Firearms & Public Policy, and the Texas Review of Law and Politics.
 Among their topics are  microdisarmament (gun confiscation one country at a time), economic development (refuting the propaganda that gun ownership impedes Third World prosperity), and the relationship between gun ownership and sovereignty.
 In an article published by Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, Gallant and Eisen wrote that, “instead of finding unbiased scientists among the firearm prohibitionists searching for the truth, what we’ve found, instead, is intentional distortion, outright lying, and bait-and-switch tactics, the extent of which boggles the mind – a whole cadre of anti-gun ‘junk scientists’ resorting to lies and propaganda, because that’s the only means of keeping their agenda alive.”
 All of their work has a consistent theme: standing up for victims.
 During the days of the Roman Republic, citizens were taught to admire the ancient hero “Horatio at the Bridge” and his two friends who fought off the Etruscan invaders at a narrow pass – risking their lives to give the other Romans time to destroy the bridge over the River Tiber.
 The grateful Romans erected a statue of Horatio.  CCRKBA can not afford to commission a statue, but we can gratefully offer this Award to our modern Horatios – Paul Gallant and Joanne Eisen – who are fighting so hard to defend citizens all over the world from the barbarism of victim disarmament.