Stephen P. Halbrook is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and an author and lawyer known for his litigation on behalf of the National Rifle Association. He has written extensively about the original meanings of the Second Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment (the latter as applied to Second Amendment rights). He has argued and won three cases before the US Supreme Court: Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson-Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States. He has also written briefs in many other cases, including the Supreme Court cases Small v. United States (pertaining to the Gun Control Act of 1968) and McDonald v. Chicago. In District of Columbia v. Heller, he wrote a brief on behalf of the majority of both houses of Congress. More broadly, his decades of research on the Second Amendment contributed to the intellectual foundation of the Heller decision. He has written many books and articles on the topic of gun control, some of which have been cited in Supreme Court opions (Heller, McDonald, Printz v. United States). He has testified before congress on multiple occasions. Halbrooks most important scholarly contribution, however, was the book That Every Man Be Armed, originally published in 1986. The book was the most thorough analysis of the legal history and original intent of the Second Amendment.
