Don Kates


Don Bernard Kates Jr., was an 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.
As a civil liberties lawyer he was 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 also wrote extensively on criminological issues related to firearms.
Kates grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended Reed College and Yale Law School. 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 wrote on criminology.
He was editor of Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy and the Winter 1986 issue of Law & Contemporary Problems. He was 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, Violence in America ; and "Precautionary Handgun Ownership: Reasonable Choice or Dangerous Delusion," B. Danto, Gun Control and Criminal Homicide, forthcoming. Kates died on November 1, 2016.