Don Kates

Who is Don Kates?

Don Kates is a retired American professor of constitutional and criminal law, and a criminologist and research fellow with The Independent Institute in Oakland, California. 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 has represented gun owners attacking the constitutionality of certain firearms laws.

Don B. Kates, Jr., 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 currently practices law, teaches, and writes on criminology. He is editor of Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy 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, Violence in America; and "Precautionary Handgun Ownership: Reasonable Choice or Dangerous Delusion," B. Danto, Gun Control and Criminal Homicide, forthcoming.