David T. Hardy is a Tucson, Arizona attorney specializing in right to arms law and scholarship. This may be the result of genetics: his great-grandfather was an outlaw gunslinger who, under the alias of Charles Hardy, was elected a judge in Arizona Territory. He received his J.D. from the University of Arizona, where he was Associate Editor of the law review, and a member of the moot court team which won regionals and competed at nationals, and won the statewide competition for best mock jury argument.

In the early 1980s, he played a key role in organizing Congressional hearings into abuses of firearm owners, and then in drafting and negotiating the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act. In 2000, he was at the center of the reopening of the investigation of the Waco incident, won a series of Freedom of Information Act suits revealing critical data relating to the matter, and appeared on ABC Nightline, CNN, and Court TV. His data was cited by the Independent Counsel investigating (and trying to cover up) the incident as the “most troubling” evidence uncovered.

He has published four books (including the New York Times best-seller “Michael Moore Is A Big, Fat, Stupid White Man”) and twenty law review articles. His 1974 article, Of Arms and the Law, was one of the earliest law review articles to call for recognition of an individual right to arms. It documented discoveries that would in later decades be commonplace, e.g., in United States v. Miller, Miller’s attorney neither briefed nor argued, the use of “right of the people” to identify individual rights in other amendments, and references to arms rights in bill of rights proposals and in the ratifying debates.

His 1987 article, The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights, pioneered the concept of de-linking the Second Amendment’s militia and right to arms clauses (each having had a different origin and political constituency), an approach endorsed by Justice Kennedy during the Heller oral argument.

Another 1987 article, The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act: A Legal and Historical Analysis I, has been cited as authority in a Supreme Court dissent and by ten of the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals. Hardy’s 2009 article, Original Popular Understanding of the 14th Amendment as Reflected in the Print Media of 1866-68, was cited by the Supreme Court in McDonald v. City of Chicago, both by the majority, and by Justice Thomas’ concurrence.

Hardy authored or coauthored three amicus briefs in Heller and in McDonald. He has produced “In Search of the Second Amendment,” a documentary film on the right to arms which was nominated for the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award and won second place at the Skyfest movie festival. He also runs the gun law blog “Of Arms and the Law,” www.armsandthelaw.com.