(This article was first published on CNN’s website on September 5, 2018.)

As the country reels from an unprecedented number of mass shootings in the past year, public support for prudent legislative action is about to slam into a jarring reality. Nearly every important state and local gun law is imperiled by the prospect of the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.

In a stunning triumph of what former conservative Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger once referred to as the NRA’s “fraud on the American people,” the US Supreme Court’s 5-4 District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008 ignored text, history and tradition in disregarding the Second Amendment’s reference to a “well-regulated militia.” (Continue reading this article on CNN’s opinion page here.)

John J. Donohue III has been one of the leading empirical researchers in the legal academy over the past 25 years. Professor Donohue is an economist as well as a lawyer and is well known for using empirical analysis to determine the impact of law and public policy in a wide range of areas, including civil rights and antidiscrimination law, employment discrimination, crime and criminal justice, and school funding. Professor Donohue previously was a member of the law school faculty from 1995–2004.